82 • Alternatives to Animal Use in Research, Testing, and Education 
Regan’s major thesis is that, as moral patients, 
animals enjoy a presumptive right not to be harmed. 
He considers this principle a radical alternative 
to utilitarianism. But once the reference to rights 
is filtered out, the utilitarian might find Regan’s 
theory quite congenial. Both Regan and utilitarians 
would hold that harm to animals is a bad conse- 
quence and so it would be wrong, in the absence 
of an overriding consideration, to harm them. The 
conflict between the two theories, therefore, lies 
in the kind of justification that each theory would 
permit to overturn this presumption. 
Regan offers two guiding principles (40). By the 
first, when the choice is between harm to a few 
and harm to many and when each affected indi- 
vidual would be harmed in a comparable way, then 
the rights of the few ought to be overridden. As 
Regan acknowledges, the utilitarian commitment 
to minimize suffering would have the same result. 
By the second principle, when the choice is be- 
tween harm to a few and harm to many, if a mem- 
ber of the affected few would be worse off than 
any member of the affected many, the rights of 
the many ought to be overridden. This "worse- 
off” rule parts company with utilitarianism in set- 
ting aggregate consequences aside and protecting 
minority interests. 
In view of this possibility, it is surprising to find 
that Regan calls for a blanket prohibition against 
the use of animals in research and toxicity test- 
ing. That conclusion would follow only if his two 
rules for defeating the right not to be harmed could 
never be successfully invoked in these areas. Re- 
gan is apparently drawn to this result by a con- 
straint he attaches to the rules: They hold only 
for harms suffered by innocent victims. Animals 
are always innocent, in the sense that Regan gives 
to that term (41). But human patients will be, too, 
and at least sometimes human agents will also be. 
Regan would have to show that these occasions 
can never arise in research, testing, or education, 
or that, if they do, the human agent/patient never 
faces the greater harm. His analysis does not show 
this. 
This difficulty aside, Regan’s theory can be read 
as holding, first, that the necessity standard can- 
not be applied until the innocence of all parties 
has been established and, second, that when it does 
apply, the worse-off rule should replace the util- 
ity principle in cases where they diverge. 
It is unclear whether the worse-off rule is prefer- 
able to the utilitarian principle for the purposes 
of animal use. But the notion of innocence, with 
its judicial implications, appears to have no place 
in the issue of experimental -subject rights for three 
reasons. First, the notion that animals are always 
innocent because they cannot be otherwise is prob- 
lematic. Innocence makes sense only when guilt 
does, because innocence means that one has done 
no wrong though doing wrong was an option. If 
animals are not rational decisionmakers, if they 
cannot choose between right and wrong, then the 
concept of innocence has little meaning. Second, 
most human subjects are probably innocent in the 
sense that Regan uses the term, so that the con- 
cept does little to advance the theory that ex- 
perimenting on humans is preferable to experi- 
menting on animals. Finally, even a guilty person 
may have certain rights. While a person guilty of 
a crime against society may be imprisoned or other- 
wise punished, society holds that the guilty have 
a right to avoid cruel and inhumane punishments. 
Bioethics similarly rejects the involuntary use of 
guilty prisoners in medical experiments. 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 
The present debate over animal use in research, 
testing, and education is marked by a cacophony 
of voices . A critical survey of the religious and philo- 
sophical backgrounds to the debate yields some 
hope that, if the competing voices were muted by 
reflection, they would begin to coalesce as varia- 
tions around a single theme. That theme would 
be the standard of humane treatment, extended 
to animals as well as to humans. 
Much has been made of the historical contrast 
between Western and Oriental religious views on 
animals. The biblical and theological texts in the 
Judeo-Christian tradition do not give us a princi- 
ple of unconditional respect for animals. Humans 
alone are accorded inherent value as being cre- 
ated in the image of God, and this gives them a 
license to use animals for their own purposes. Not, 
however, to abuse them. Cruelty and callous in- 
