Animal Testing: The Summum Bonum of Medicine

As part of the process for bringing new medications and technologies into the medical field, a common first step involves testing their efficacy on animals. This process is colloquially known as animal testing. This is a divisive topic due to the different views of morality that drive people’s support or lack thereof. One of the commonly used ethical frameworks is utilitarianism, which is a subset of teleology. This ethical framework is characterized by an emphasis on the outcome of an action, which defines whether the action is moral. An action that is moral must bring the greatest good…