Zeitschrift für klinische und medizinische Wissenschaften

Abstrakt

The Relevance of Joseph Fletchers Situation Ethics for Animal Experimentation in Clinical Studies

Osebor Ikechukwu Monday

The need for continual progress in medical research is one among the challenges today facing humankind. Ongoing, necessary medical research involving animal subjects will be defended from a Utilitarian standpoint. Animal experimentation can be conducted in such a way that injury and suffering to the animal subjects can be minimized. Clinical studies have been necessary for the eradication of many diseases, such as smallpox and polio and promise similar results for other medical conditions in the future. The ethical and emotional demands placed upon the experimenter during clinical trials, as well as the suffering of the animal subjects, presents us with an ethical dilemma concerning the moral justification of animal experimentation for clinical studies. Get rid of this; philosophers use critical methods. This paper will argue that inflexible ethical absolutism is too restrictive to proffer solutions in significant areas of conflict and that Joseph Fletcher’s “Situation Ethics” be the primary moral guide for animal experimentation.