Normalising-the-Unthinkable-Report

the moral realm to include obligations to animals. Working in the Aristotelian virtue ethics tradition, RosalindHursthouse rejects the concept of moral status and argues that a well-developed account of the virtues wouldrequire compassion for animals (Hursthouse, 2011).Grounds for extending moral solicitude5.29. In contrast to these dominant tendencies in Western thought, the consensus among ethicists has movedtowards embracing three positions.The first is that animals have worth in themselves, what may be termed ‘inherent’ or ‘intrinsic’value. Sentient beings, or sentients, are not just things, objects, machines, or tools; they havetheir own interior life that deserves respect. This view extends worth to sentients as individualsnot just as collectivities or as part of a community.The second position is that, given the conceding of sentience, there can be no rational groundsfor not taking animals’ sentience into account or for excluding individual animals from the samebasic moral consideration that we extend to individual human beings.The third position is that it follows that causing harm to individual sentients (except when it is fortheir own good – for example, in a veterinary operation) requires strong moral justification. Somewould argue that such acts of harming innocent (i.e., morally blameless) sentients is wrong initself, and such acts are usually termed ‘intrinsically wrong’ or ‘intrinsically evil’.5.30. There are a number of considerations that provide grounds for granting animals moral solicitude: 3a. Animals cannot give or withhold their consent.5.31. It is commonly accepted that informed consent is required in advance from an individual when anyonewishes to override the legitimate interests of that individual. The absence of this factor requires, at the very least,that we exercise extraordinary care and thoughtfulness. The very (obvious) fact that animals cannot agree to thepurposes to which they are put increases our responsibility.5.32. It may be claimed that although animals cannot talk consensually and non-consensually, their actions maymanifest consent and the lack thereof. So, for example, it may be presumed that an animal who fights (and howlsperhaps) to stay out of a kennel is registering her will against being placed in a kennel. So maybe an animal canbehaviourally, and even vocally, manifest his or her lack of consent.5.33. Although we cannot deny the importance of these behavioural indications, they obviously fall short ofwhat humans mean when they speak of voluntary, informed consent. Consent makes sense, logically, only ifan individual is presented with alternative possibilities and has both the knowledge of what these possibilitiesrepresent and the freedom to choose one of them – and to do so without coercion. When an animal cries orhowls or reels in pain, she registers displeasure at her predicament, but registering displeasure (or pleasure)is not voluntary consent. In short, we can sometimes know how animals feel (largely negatively) about theirstate (and we do well to be sensitive to such indications). In that sense we do often (rightly or wrongly) presumeconsent, but presumed consent is still a long way from voluntary, verbal consent as we know it between humanbeings.5.34. It is pertinent to look at how the issue of consent has evolved historically in relation to the ethics of researchinvolving human subjects. The 1931 German Guidelines on Human Experimentation, which preceded theNuremberg Code, were claimed to be the first of their kind in providing protection for human subjects of scientificresearch, even though the 1900 Berlin Code briefly preceded them (Ghooi, 2011). Of note are the followingparagraphs:3The following rationale is adapted from Linzey (2009b).A Report by the Working Group of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics27