Journal article
One R or the other – an experimental bioethics approach to 3R dilemmas in animal research
- Abstract:
- Sacrificial dilemmas such as the trolley problem play an important role in experimental philosophy (x-phi). But it is increasingly argued that, since we are not likely to encounter runaway trolleys in our daily life, the usefulness of such thought experiments for understanding moral judgments in more ecologically valid contexts may be limited. However, similar sacrificial dilemmas are experienced in real life by animal research decision makers. As part of their job, they must make decisions about the suffering, and often the death, of many non-human animals. For this reason, a context-specific investigation of so-called “3R dilemmas” (i.e., dilemmas where there is a conflict between the principles of replacement, reduction, and refinement of the use of animals in research) is essential to improve the situation of both non-human animals and human stakeholders. An approach well suited for such investigation is experimental philosophical bioethics (“bioxphi”), which draws on methods similar to x-phi to probe more realistic, practical scenarios with an eye to informing normative debates and ethical policy. In this article, we argue for a need to investigate 3R dilemmas among professional decision-makers using the tools of bioxphi. In a first step, we define 3R dilemmas and discuss previous investigations of professionals’ attitudes in such cases. In a second step, we show how bioxphi is a promising method to investigate the whys and hows of professional decision-making in 3R dilemmas. In a last step, we provide a bioxphi template for 3R dilemmas, give recommendations on its use, explore the normative relevance of data collected by such means, and discuss important limitations.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 3.7MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s11019-024-10221-y
Authors
+ Swiss National Science Foundation
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/00yjd3n13
- Publisher:
- Springer
- Journal:
- Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy More from this journal
- Volume:
- 27
- Issue:
- 4
- Pages:
- 497-512
- Publication date:
- 2024-08-17
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-07-27
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1572-8633
- ISSN:
-
1386-7423
- Pmid:
-
39153014
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2023176
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2023176
- Deposit date:
-
2024-08-29
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Rodriguez Perez et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- Copyright © 2024, The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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