The issue of animal treatment has emerged as a major social concern over the past three decades. This ramified in a new ethic for animal treatment that goes beyond concern about cruelty and attempts to eliminate animal pain and suffering, whatever its source. This is evidenced by laws governing animal research in many countries. Insofar as toxicology can entail significant and prolonged animal suffering, it is at loggerheads with this new ethic. Ways are suggested for the toxicological community to put itself in harmony with the ethic and thereby preserve its autonomy.
For a detailed account of the social conditions giving rise to the demand for a new ethic for animals, see B. Rollin: Farm Animal Welfare ( Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1995) Part I. For a philosophically based rational reconstruction of the new ethic see Rollin B. (1992). Animal Rights and Human Morality, 2nd ed, PrometheusBuffalo, NY. For a utilitarian account of the new ethic see Peter Singer: Animal Liberation ( New York: New York Review of Books Press, 1975). For a rights based account see Tom Regan: The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
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See Rollin BE (1989). The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consiousness, Animal Pain and Science, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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Gaskell G. et al (1997). Europe ambivalent on biotechnology. Nature387: 845 ff.
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Rollin BE (1998). Social ethics, animal suffering, and the creation of transgenic animal models of human genetic disease. In: Bioethics and the Use of Laboratory Animals, Kraus AL, Renquist D (eds). American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine, Benoit , Dubuque, Iowa, pp 109—123.
