Improved Standards for Laboratory Animals?

Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 3 (3):293-302 (1993)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In February 1993, Judge Charles R. Richey of the United States District Court issued a summary judgment in the case of Animal Legal Defense Fund, et al. v. The Secretary of Agriculture, et al. The decision, which was in favor of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture to withdraw its current regulations governing exercise for dogs and the psychological well-being of nonhuman primates used for biomedical research and to issue new regulations containing only minimum, measurable standards. Both plaintiffs and defendants contended that they were seeking the best interests of the laboratory animals. The issue at stake is whether animals are better protected if the government establishes limited minimal standards or is allowed to require institutions to provide additional standards, which will be judged on the basis of their effectiveness in maintaining healthy animals. The Court avoided this dispute, however, by placing primary emphasis on applying the Administrative Procedures Act and stating that it was merely interpreting the "plain meaning" of the Animal Welfare Act, as amended. In this article, arguments are presented for interpreting the law in a far more flexible way than Judge Richey did. The conclusion is also reached that there were no winners in the Animal Legal Defense Fund case and that the real losers are the laboratory animals.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

A non-electrical rotation table for laboratory animals.F. S. Fearing & F. W. Weymouth - 1926 - Journal of Experimental Psychology 9 (1):67.
Standards for animal research: Looking at the middle.Rebecca Dresser - 1988 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 13 (2):123-143.
Validating cultural transmission in cetaceans.Rachel L. Day, Jeremy R. Kendal & Kevin N. Laland - 2001 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2):330-331.
The protection of laboratory animals: A response to Stephenson.James Parker - 1994 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 19 (4):389-394.
Laboratory animals and the art of empathy.D. Thomas - 2005 - Journal of Medical Ethics 31 (4):197-202.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-11-22

Downloads
17 (#742,076)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references