Selfless Selfies?

I don’t know who started the idea of asking women to post ‘make-up free’ selfies on facebook, though I imagine that there are advertising executives around the world kicking themselves.  Awareness of cancer research has soared, but amid the ranks of the boldly bare-faced there has been no shortage of detractors. Many negative comments reflect little more than jealousy-inspired grumpiness; one issue, however, caught my eye almost as much as those pale, but mostly smiling faces.

With varying levels of intensity numerous critics have pointed out that cancer research often involves causing deliberate suffering to animals.  Is such behaviour, even in pursuit of an end that might increase human happiness or minimise human suffering ethical?  Is it ever right deliberately to inflict suffering on other creatures? Is this too great a price to pay for medical progress?

It is easy to turn a blind eye to all of this, but to do so is a mistake.  It is an uncomfortable fact that human cancer research involves a great deal of suffering for a great number of other sentient creatures.  Can this be justified?

Much treatment of animals that was once common-place, such as flogging working animals and cock-fighting is now, unacceptable.  Factory farming is widely criticised as is the use of animals for testing cosmetics. Fur coats have been consigned to the rubbish bin of fashion history where they belong and the use of animals in entertainment is under the spotlight.  It is entirely conceivable that at some point in the future, children will gasp in amazement and horror at the idea that their forebears once killed, skinned and ate other sentient creatures.

It seems to me that there are really only three arguments that can be used to support animal experimentation in the cause of medical research. The first is to hold that humans are intrinsically more important than animals and so, while inflicting gratuitous suffering on animals is unacceptable, there is nothing objectionable in inflicting suffering to advance human wellbeing.  The second is to say that while humans might not be intrinsically of greater value than animals, it is the natural order of things for species to promote their own welfare above others: a straight-forward Darwinian survival of the fittest struggle.

I suspect that both of these arguments will sit uneasily with very many people.  The third argument, however, is the most practically persuasive and the most honest.  If it comes to a choice between saving my child’s life (or even my own life) and inflicting suffering on an animal, I will instinctively act in favour of my family and myself.  Most other people, I suggest will act in a similar way.  When push comes to shove, I will act in ways that I would otherwise never dream of acting. My relational attachment to ‘my own’ as well as to myself trumps other considerations.  Maybe there is no such thing as an unselfish selfie….