Titel: IX Annual Swedish Symposium on Biomedicine, Ethics and Society: Searching for the Animal of the Animal Ethics

Termin: 11.6.2007, 12:00 Uhr, bis 12.6.2007, 15:00 Uhr

Veranstaltungsort:
Seglarhotellet, Sandhamn , Schweden

Referenten: Prof. Marc Bekoff, PhD (University of Colorado) *** Helena Röcklinsberg, ThD (Lund University) *** Prof. Pär Segerdahl, PhD (Centre for Bioethics at Karolinska Institutet & Uppsala University) *** Françoise Wemelsfelder, PhD (Scottish Agricultural College)

Weitere Informationen:
http://www.bioethics.uu.se/symposium/2007/

Kurzbeschreibung: The bioethical discussion about whether it is morally right to use animals for biomedical research or agricultural purposes often has an understandable tendency to assume that the concept of animal is relatively well-defined – otherwise the discussion threatens to disintegrate into: “Is it morally right to use animals so-and-so, and by the way, what are we talking about?”

The aim of the IX Annual Swedish Symposium on Biomedicine, Ethics and Society is to redirect the bioethical discussion towards the more basic question of our knowledge of animals. What can we learn from ethology, evolutionary psychology or animal welfare science about animal behaviour and animal minds? Is there scientific consensus on what an animal is, or do scientists sometimes disagree in their basic outlook on animal mind and behaviour? What does ‘welfare’ mean when applied to animals? Is welfare something that we are supposed to measure, for instance, via stress hormone levels, or is it something that the animals can be said to express as sensitive and communicative subjects? Natural behaviour is often emphasized as a prerequisite for animal welfare, but scientists are often more doubtful about the validity of this concept than ethicists. Once again, the ethical discussion threatens to disintegrate into: “Natural behaviour is very important, and by the way, what is it?”

Answering these basic questions presupposes that we learn from interactions with animals and even from “using them”. This symposium thereby asks if a rational approach to animal ethics requires that we shift focus from asking whether we have a right to use animals, to discussing how we should treat animals in those cases where we actually need to use them, for instance, to know what we are talking about when we talk about animal ethics.

Animal ethics can have far-reaching consequences for the use of animals in biomedical research and agriculture. Discussion of how findings in animal science can become relevant for animal ethics is therefore urgent.

Kontakt: Centre for Bioethics at Karolinska Institutet & Uppsala University
Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences
Uppsala Science Park
751 85 Uppsala
SCHWEDEN
Tel.: +46 - 18 - 50 64 04
Fax: +46 - 18 - 6 11 22 96
bioethics@bioethics.uu.se%20
http://www.bioethics.uu.se/

Veranstalter: Centre for Bioethics at Karolinska Institutet & Uppsala University

Schlagworte: Tierethik