Negotiating the necessity of biomedical animal use through relations with vulnerability

McGlacken, Renelle

Abstract

In the UK, claims are often made that public support for animal research is stronger when such use is categorised as for medical purposes. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of writing from the Mass Observation Project, a national writing project documenting everyday life in Britain, this paper suggests that the necessity of using animals for medical research is not a given but understood relationally through interactions with inherent vulnerability. This paper stresses the ubiquity of ambivalence towards uses of animals for medical research, complicating what is meant by claims that such use is ‘acceptable’, and suggests that science-society dialogues on animal research should accommodate different modes of thinking about health. In demonstrating how understandings of health are bound up with ethical obligations to care for both human and non-human others, this paper reinforces the importance of interspecies relations in health and illness and in the socio-ethical dimensions of biomedicine.

Citation

McGlacken, R. (2023). Negotiating the necessity of biomedical animal use through relations with vulnerability. BioSocieties, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-022-00295-3

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 28, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jan 7, 2023
• Publication Date: Jan 7, 2023
• Deposit Date: Nov 23, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 8, 2024
• Journal: BioSocieties
• Print ISSN: 1745-8552
• Electronic ISSN: 1745-8560
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-022-00295-3
• Keywords: Vulnerability; animal research; Mass Observation Project; ethics; care; health
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/14033336
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41292-022-00295-3