A Stunning Discovery About Mice

Dr. Jeffrey S. Mogil, a neuroscientist at McGill University, has made a stunning discovery about mice: they are capable of empathy. (See coverage here in the "Health" section of the  New York Times, or here, in Science Daily.)

Usually, people who advocate for animal experimentation do so under the guise of it benefiting humans. We can sacrifice an infinite number of animals to find, say, a cure for cancer. The ethical status of cruelty to the animals being experimented on and killed can then be filed under ”justifiable inhumane treatment.”

Try as I may, however, I cannot find any merit in Dr. Mogil’s experiments on mice. We are not Cartesians; we know that animals are composed of both mind and body. What could be the justification of “discovering” empathy through torture? Dr. Mogil should be careful—he is adding to the existing body of evidence that makes animal experimentation morally reprehensible, in addition to costly, ineffective, and inefficient.