Animal Experiments and Rights

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 1999

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role of animals in humankind's search for knowledge. Since the Greek physician Galen used pigs for anatomical studies in the 2nd century, animals have been used by scientists to further human knowledge. Yet few, if any subjects in this country, raise such violent feelings and passions as animals and their place in our society. With the growing politicisation of animal rights, it is a subject which is increasing in intensity. Do animals have rights and do our needs permit us to use them still to enhance our own lives in the twentieth century? Is it still necessary to experiment on animals for the good of humankind? Or is that morally unacceptable and barbaric - particularly in the light of new research into animal consciousness?With Colin Blakemore, Professor of Physiology, Oxford University, President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of the Royal Society and targeted in the 1980s by animal welfare activists protesting at his research methods; Dr Lynda Birke, biologist, teacher at Lancaster and Warwick Universities, and previously worked for 7 years in animal behaviour at the Open University.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the NRTIME podcast. For more details about NRTIME and for our terms of use, please go to bbc.co.uk forwardslushradio4.
0:09.5	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:12.0	Hello, today we look at one of the most impassioned debates of the late 20th century in this country.
0:17.0	Animal rights and the use of animals in furthering scientific understanding.
0:21.0	What's the place of animals in our quest to increase human knowledge?
0:24.0	Is it still necessary to experiment on animals for the good of humankind?
0:28.0	Or is that morally unacceptable and barbaric, particularly in the light of new research into animal consciousness?
0:34.0	Colin Blakemore is professor of physiology at Oxford University and no stranger to controversies, they say.
0:40.0	In the 1990s, at the height of the BSE crisis, he spoke out saying eating beef was just not worth the risk.
0:46.0	In the 1980s, he was a target for animal welfare activists who were protesting at his research methods.
0:51.0	He was made president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1997.
0:56.0	Dr. Linda Berks, a biologist with a special interest in the social and political aspects of science.
1:01.0	Currently teaching at Lancaster and Warwick University's, previously she worked for seven years in animal behaviour alongside the neuroscientist professor Steven Rose at the Open University.
1:10.0	In one of her books, she wrote,
1:12.0	potential benefits to humans, and indeed usually only to specific subgroups of humans,
1:17.0	must not be used to justify subjecting people or other organisms to experimental situations we would not accept for ourselves or our loved ones.
1:27.0	Colin Blakemore, in a recent newspaper interview, you said,
1:31.0	I hate working with animals, I think it's wrong and I think it's evil, but I think for now it's a utilitarian equation.
1:37.0	It's necessary and the scientists must have honesty and integrity and be accountable.
1:42.0	What do you mean by saying that animal experiments are utilitarian?
1:46.0	One has to see our use of animals, not just for medical research, but all the ways that we use them.
1:55.0	As part of a balance of cost and benefit,
	...

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