[This is my no-more-than-2000-word paper for my professional ethics class back in March 2009]
For tens of thousands of years since Homo Sapiens started to roam the earth, especially in the last ice age that coincided with the starting point of making and using tools by humans in late Paleolithic, people have been utilizing their exponentially increasing intelligence to gain advantages from their physical environments and biological surroundings. They have been doing so over the course of many millennia, first merely for their survival. For example, people in the past used animal’s bones to make weapons for hunting and wrapped their bodies with animal skins to keep themselves warm enough to stay alive and to be able to walk around finding food. However, while people keep getting more and more developed, as a rule of thumb, they become even more demanding. They expand their purpose of using animal way beyond a subsistence level, aiming to improve the quality of their everyday lives by ironically attempting to achieve the ever-increasing desire of physical convenience and safety and psychological satisfaction. This may very well explain why the use of animals that involves killing their lives, as time goes by, is becoming more common and more abundant, ranging from a relatively more heated discussed toxicological pre-marketing product testing to manufacturing a trendy Lacoste leather clutch bag.
For the cause of the inter-species justice, this paper is dedicated to find out whether it is ever justified for the superior specie of human beings to make use of animals’ lives and other biological properties in toxicological experiments—mainly focused on cosmetic products—and commercial goods productions merely for their own sake, starting off with a demonstration of what the uses of animals in the fields are. After that, it will impartially raise some arguments from both anthropocentric believers and animal activist groups together with already learned ethical principles of utilitarianism and Kantian theory. These will then be followed by some of the most common point of views that exist in Cambodian context in terms of local people’s attitudes toward the animal usage. Finally, it will wrap up the discussed matters and finishes with personal standpoint and recommendations as to what is supposed to be done with the issue being dealt with.
People’s demands for ever-escalating modish lifestyle and especially health safety have helped stimulate the use of animals in commercial products and product testing, respectively. Animal skins—most commonly seen to be that of crocodiles—are used to manufacture a wide range of clothing products such as bags, purses, wallets, shoes, shirts, belts, hats, and the like. Coats, in particular, are made out of furs from various animals including beavers, foxes, goats, kangaroos, jaguars, leopards, lynxes, rabbits, sheep, skunks, raccoons, otters, and so on. It is estimated that around 40 million animals every single years—over three fourth of them are from farms, and the rest are from the wild—are killed for their furs. Those fur products shovel 11.2 billion dollars, at least, for fur industry across the world each year. Animals are also specially used to make decorative products and souvenirs. Elephants’ tusks and buffalos’, moose’s, dears’ and rams’ horns are proudly used in interior decorations. Plus, plenty types of shells of all sizes are made into pendants, necklaces, bracelets, and even rings. Furthermore, before marketing some particular products that can possibly cause physical irritation and harm to human, scientists conduct many painstaking tests repeatedly of the products on numerous types of animals such as rats, mice, guinea pigs, hamsters, dogs, cats, sheep, cows, pigs, birds, fish, frogs, and monkeys to find out whether there is a desired effect and an unwanted side effect. According to Nature Magazine, in the three- or four-year time for each and every single chemical substance to be tested for toxicological purpose, an unimaginably huge amount of animals, from 5,000 to 12,000, are experimented without using anesthesia whatsoever. In the testing process, healthy animals are deliberately injected with diseases or exposed to chemical constituents. For examples, in cosmetic testing process, rabbits’ eyes are sprayed with perfumes to check if there are signs of injure and irritation, and sunscreens tests are done on guinea pigs. These tests, as the Humane Society of the United States writes, often cause redness, ulceration, hemorrhaging, cloudiness, blindness to the animals’ eyes and even tumors and other harsh conditions. Then the animals are eventually killed so that the testers can examine the animals’ innards for any indications of internal damages. Statistics shows that more than half of them, if not killed, die by themselves a few weeks after the tests. Fueled by such actions, cosmetic industry in European countries get staggering 50 billion dollar richer in 2000, and more than 150,000 people were employed. In 2002, 2.73 million experiments on animals were performed in the United Kingdom alone. Every year, a myriad 115 million animals are used in laboratories worldwide. This large amount of number of tested animal together with the aforementioned number of animals that are killed for goods productions show that people really do depend so much on the lives of other species for their safe, stylish lifestyles.
This dependence of humans on animals solely for their own advantages, though helps boost economy and never causes any historically noticeable political problems, have been a very ethically controversial issue all around the world—especially where many animal rights advocates exist—ever since the theme of ethics expanded beyond a mere focus on humans hundreds of years ago. Most people who benefit greatly from the comforts of animal usage in commercial products or safety testing would anthropocentrically argue that every part of animals, including their physical assets and biological similarities to humans, should be utilized in whatever way necessary to serve humans’ wants and needs for many reasons, the most frequently heard of which are that animals are of less value and far inferior to people. Rene Descartes, a French philosopher, said that “animals were no more than complicated biological robots.” For the most famously known German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in addition, it is justified for people to use animals in “research”—in this case, the toxicological ones—because they have no rights of any kind. Also, animals do not think; act based on their instinct, meaning that they are not really conscious of what they are doing; do not have souls; do not have free wills; and especially, they do not have moral status. It is also argued that since the used animals, according to the supporters, are not sentient beings, and since they can be bred in farms, people can make use of them anyhow they want. They are people’s belongings, so by using them, utilitarian would argue, people do not violate anyone’s private property but enjoy what is available from nature. Plus, safety and pleasure can be maximized, while pain is negligible because it is outweighed by the formers. Thus to the majority of animal usage supporters, it is justified basing on the principle of utilitarianism to employ animals in any sort of testing and manufacturing that can produce benefits to humans. Now it is clearly demonstrated that both Kant and utilitarian would label animal goods productions and toxicology tests ‘ethical.’
Even though Kantian theory and utilitarianism are commonly used in the justification of animal uses, not every one agrees with them. Animal activists and many other deontologists besides Kant would articulate the opposite. They would state that the animal uses, though give a range of benefits to humans, are quite ethically wrong because the uses involve killing lives and violating other beings’ rights which are considered to be the most important values of all. The existence of this idea infers that animals, according to pro-animal groups, do actually have their own intrinsic values and inherent rights. Those rights are the rights not to be hunted, not to be experimented, not to be kept in zoo and used for entertainment, not to be selectively bred for any other reasons besides for the benefits of the animals, not to be killed for clothes or food or even medicine, and so forth. Using animals in goods productions and toxicology tests, no matter how much benefits they produce for humans, obviously violate the animal rights and hence unethical. Animal activists take it one step further by stating it clearly that “If humanity must suffer some disadvantages as the consequence of respecting animal rights, then it is the way it has to be.” This means no toxicological experiments at all, not to mention animal-based lifestyle.
The issue in Cambodian context, incidentally, is interestingly twisted. At least 80 percents of Cambodian people have long been following Buddhist teachings for centuries. As Buddha’s followers, they adhere to his teachings with no questions asked. One of the basic doctrines of the teachings that everyone—regardless to whether they are priests, monks, or laypeople—must follow is the Five Percepts, and at least two of them strongly condemn killings and exploiting others. Understandably, Cambodian would with respect surely do accordingly. Also, they would, in theory, do no harm and even pay respect to animals of all kinds because Buddha in his many past lives had reincarnated again and again as many sorts of animals. It is quite acceptable then to hypothetically say that they, in ethical terminology, are deontologists who are not like Kant. This, however, is not all true in practicality. Why most Cambodian people do not put their religion’s teaching in practice is another story, but the point here is that they actually regard animals as nothing but their own slaves by birth. Many of them proudly treasure taxidermy, so much enjoy using actual leather products, and hold on to the tradition of crushing and grinding entire animal bodies to make scientifically unconfirmed medicines. They would not even think of the issues of using animal in goods productions and of toxicology tests as ethically sensitive at all, let alone bothering about animal rights whatsoever. Therefore, it is quite safe to say that Khmer people, in general, are in fact like Kant or at least utilitarian.
As aforementioned, animals have long been used by humans and for humans’ good; the most ethically controversial ones are the uses of animals in commercial goods production and toxicology tests. The only two ethical theories learned in this professional ethics class—utilitarianism and Kantian theory—can both be applied to the cases and the justification of the uses, reflecting Cambodian attitude toward animals. Even so, animal activists do not just let those who support the uses get away with their anthropocentric ideas and actions in terms of ethics. They strongly argue that it is unethical for people to make use of animal for their own benefits. It is also personally viewed as unconditionally ethically unacceptable for most people to violate other beings’ rights and lives solely for their own sake for non-subsistence purposes and then attempt to justify the utmost selfish exploitation which is based unjustly on their mere opinions. Being more superior in terms of intelligence, civilization, and power does not by any means entitle this particular species with the authority to treat other species anyhow it wants. It is just as unethical as a more intelligent, more civilized, and more powerful German nation (According to Hitler, for sure) to exploit 6 million Jews and then kill them in World War II. It is recommended and demanded that the uses of animal discussed above be halted immediately for the sake of real justice.
