The use of nonhuman animals in biomedical research intended to benefit humans continues to expand globally. Most animals used in biomedical research are housed in facilities where they depend on facility employees for their care. Attending to the needs of these animals is crucial both for the wellbeing of the animals themselves, as well as the quality of the data obtained from the protocols in which the animals are used. However, there are potential costs to those employed to undertake care work for animal research subjects, with evidence building about the emotional, psychological and moral harms to humans whose work invokes a tension between caring for animals and involvement in the pain, suffering or death of those animals.
Using a framework developed by Wendy Rogers, Catriona Mackenzie and Susan Dodds, I show the ways in which nonhuman animals in research and their human carers are inherently, situationally and pathogenically vulnerable. I further demonstrate that although the vulnerabilities of these two groups overlap in significant ways, there are important differences too. This supports an argument that while we can make significant progress on alleviating the sources of vulnerability for human carers by addressing the vulnerability of animals in research, the reverse is not the case. Namely, the situation of human carers may be improved in the absence of a shift in the vulnerabilities experienced by animals. Yet, given the more precarious standing of nonhuman animals in research and society more generally, there are normative reasons to prefer remedies which benefit both animals and humans.
Jane Johnson is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Discipline of Philosophy at Macquarie University where she employs the tools of field philosophy to address questions in science and medicine. Jane's work is driven by a commitment to the vulnerable and to research that improves lives, whether of patients undergoing surgery or animals used as part of research.