Buddhist Attitudes to Use of Animals in Scientific Procedures - Creating a Dialogue - Buddhist Ethics and Animal Life and Death

 Author: Ruth Wood

Buddhism and Animal Testing (using animals in scientific procedures)

Arguments that oppose using animals in scientific procedures:

Buddhists try to do no harm (or as little harm as possible) to animals. This reflects the teachings of the first moral precept - to abstain from taking life, as well as the intention of the Buddhist path to reduce suffering. Buddhists believe that the actions one performs and the emotions one experiences when doing so can be carried across multiple lives, suggesting that harming animals (even with the good intention of helping humanity) may become a pattern of behaviour which can effect one's karma and lead to a negative cycle of emotions and rebirths that a being will have to work hard to break free from. This provides a warning for scientists and laboratory workers who are involved in the regular testing of animals.  

  Buddhists try to show loving-kindness to all beings, including animals. This is particularly true of Mahayana Buddhists who uphold the 6 Paramitas and the Bodhisattva goal of ultimate compassion for all beings. A Mahayana Buddhist would view the suffering of mammals in laboratories as being unacceptable, particularly when these tests often link to undesirable human traits, such as vanity (cosmetic testing) or craving for permanence in a world affected by anicca (for example, anti-aging products that are first tested on animals). 

 The doctrine of right livelihood teaches Buddhists to avoid any work connected with the killing of animals. This is a clear command to scientists and the medical profession that animals should not be killed during scientific testing. This would mean that certain research, for example where animals are infected with fatal diseases in order to try and research vaccines and cures, would be seen as unacceptable as the ultimate outcome will be the death of the animal. 

The doctrine of karma teaches that any wrong behaviour will have to be paid for in a future life - so cruel acts to animals should be avoided. One could argue that cosmetics testing is particularly pointless and cruel, and that animal suffering cannot be justified to support the development of makeup or bath products which link heavily with vanity, craving and sensual pleasure - all concepts that are affected by anicca and will cause further dukkha (suffering) when they stop working or no longer satisfy the user.

Buddhists treat the lives of human and non-human animals with equal respect

Buddhists see human and non-human animals as closely related:

·        both have Buddha-nature (the ability to become a Buddha in the future) - this is evidenced through the Jartaka Tales, the stories of the Buddha's past lives. These stories tell of when the Buddha was a monkey or a tiger or another being, and how in those forms he was still able to grow in wisdom, perform moral actions and progress on the path to enlightenment. 

·        both have the possibility of becoming perfectly enlightened - all beings are impermanent and their current form is not indicative of the form or experience they will have in the future.

·        a being may be reborn either in a human body or in the body of a non-human animal, therefore all beings are treated with the same basic respect because they are, in essence, equal. 

•          Buddhists believe that is wrong to hurt or kill animals, because all beings are afraid of injury and death. One who observes an animal before it is killed, or whilst it is undergoing animal testing, can see that those animals are not happy or fulfilled, and that they feel pain and fear. This emotion is bound to have negative karmic consequences and create patterns that could be carried across multiple lives due to the teachings on the Chain of Dependent Origination - traits and experiences can be repeated in multiple lives, meaning that animals who are tested upon could experience further fear or depression in the future. 

Arguments that supporting using animals in scientific procedures: Buddhist behaviour towards and thinking about animals is not always positive.

• The doctrine of karma implies that souls are reborn as animals because of past misdeeds. Being reborn as an animal is a serious spiritual setback. It could therefore be argued that due to their inferior karmic form, it could be for the greater good that humans use these animals to further their own lifespans. This is particularly true of medical animal testing for the sake of developing new treatments to preserve human life. It could even be argued to be a worthy reason for the animal to suffer, as their suffering leads to a reduction is suffering for a large number of humans, for example through developing treatments such as chemotherapy to treat cancer. 
•  Because non-human animals can't engage in conscious acts of self-improvement they can't improve their karmic status, and their souls must continue to be reborn as animals until their bad karma is exhausted. Only when they are reborn as human beings can they resume the quest for nirvana. Therefore, it could be argued that animal testing can be justified due to their lower karmic forms.
• This bad karma, and the animal's inability to do much to improve it, led Buddhists in the past to think that non-human animals were inferior to human beings and so were entitled to fewer rights than human beings. If animals are below humans in the spiritual hierarchy, it could be argued to be morally right for humans to use them for their purposes. 
• Early Buddhists (but not the Buddha himself) used the idea that animals were spiritually inferior as a justification for the exploitation and mistreatment of animals. This shows that some Buddhists may take andro-centric teachings around the importance of the human form to justify the use of animals to further human life and experience. 

Experimenting on animals – moral conditions

Buddhists say that this is morally wrong if the animal concerned might come to any harm. However, Buddhists also acknowledge the value that animal experiments may have for human health.

So perhaps a Buddhist approach to experiments on animals might require the experimenter to:

·        accept the karma of carrying out the experiment

·        the experimenter will acquire bad karma through experimenting on an animal

·        experiment only for a good purpose

·        experiment only on animals where there is no alternative

·        design the experiment to do as little harm as possible

·        avoid killing the animal unless it is absolutely necessary

·        treat the animals concerned kindly and respectfully

The bad karmic consequences for the experimenter seem to demand a high level of altruistic behaviour in research laboratories.

Buddhism and Animal Cloning

Buddhist doctrines could be argued to both support and reject the matter of animal cloning for reproductive purposes and medical experimentation. 

There is no stated position among Buddhists on cloning, so scholars like Campbell are left only to interpret the tradition's precepts on their own.

Arguments in favour of animal cloning: Buddhism might be willing to accept cloning,  C Campbell (Director of Philosophy and Ethics at Oregon State University) said, because it represents a leap in modern science and self-understanding that could be considered a path to enlightenment. The Dalai Lama and Thitch Nhat Hanh are both in favour of the links between Buddhism and science, so may allow animal testing if it allowed for great scientific breakthroughs.

Damien Keown (Buddhism, A Very Short Introduction, 1996) argues that unlike other religions that as there is no divine creator in Buddhism, Buddhists do not see the creation of a new animal (or even human) life as playing God. This is because it is impossible to "play God" when an omnipotent divine creator with a plan for humanity does not exist. Buddhism and science are therefore argued to be more compatible, because Buddhists do not see themselves as usurping the role of an omnipotent God when they reproduce animals via artificial methods. 

Arguments against animal cloning: 

However, Keown  does raise the question of what creating copies of beings will do within the context of Samsara: negative personality traits passed on through paticcasamuppada could be multiplied in animals that are cloned, leading to more karmic suffering of multiple beings. Do they carry the same karmic traits as the animal they were cloned from? Does this create a new being within Samsara? Is this being entirely new? These questions remain unanswered and of course cannot be answered via Buddhists scriptures, due to the contemporary nature of cloning technologies.

The  Eightfold Path prohibits harm to any sentient beings, which could be seen in the destruction of cells necessary to perform cloning research. Many embryos are destroyed in the process, or cloning gone wrong means that living beings are born incompatible with life - this could be argued to be tantamount to murder, depending on the attitude to the embryo that the Buddhist has taken. Peter Harvey (An Introduction to Buddhism, 1990) argues that Buddhists believe life begins at conception, so the ending of cloned lives is the destruction of a living being. On more practical grounds, Buddhism promotes ultimate respect to every sentient being, and that generally includes cells born out of research. Destroying such cells, even in research on animal cloning, runs contrary to Buddhist teaching.

"It is hard to see what purposes—scientific or otherwise—can justify the dehumanization that results when life is created and manipulated for other ends," Keown said. "We should not forget that Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly [the cloned sheep], failed 276 times before Dolly was conceived."

Buddhism and Using Animals in Organ Donation

In favour: Organ donation is giving an organ to help someone who needs a transplant. There are no injunctions in Buddhism for or against organ donation. Central to Buddhism is a wish to relieve suffering and there may be circumstances where organ donation may be seen as an act of generosity. It could be argued that an animal would receive good karma in a future life if its organs were used to relieve suffering after death.

Against: However, as karma is governed by the rule of intention, can this be the case? An animal cannot consent to giving up an organ so it would be difficult to argue that it would be helpful to an animal to use their organs after death.

Because of the moral precepts, it would be wrong for a Buddhist to kill an animal in order to use its organs, as this would be harming a sentient being who could be reborn as a human in the future and should be treated with respect. Animals cannot give informed consent so it could be seen as wrong to take their organs. In order for animal donations to be successful there has been a lot of animal testing which causes dukkha.

Students - Now Try This:

Create a concluding paragraph on Buddhist attitudes to the above issues: Animal testing, Animal Cloning and Organ Donation. Make sure to conclude your own overall opinion on how most Buddhists would interpret these actions.