Exploring Bioethics - NIH Office of Science Education - National ...

11. Ask students, “Should human benefits always outweighanimal harms?”There will likely be students who do not believe that harm to animalsshould count for very much or—in rare cases—anything at all. Onthe other hand, some students may consider that harm to animalsand harm to humans carry equal weight. Clearly, the relative weightassigned to harm to animals will greatly affect students’ final analysis.12. Refer students to the purebred-dog case or the dyed-feathers case andask, “Do you believe that manipulating dogs’ genetic characteristicsor changing the color of a chick for human purposes—such as tohunt, to guard, to be aesthetically pleasing—is always ethicallyacceptable? When might it not be acceptable?”Students will likely want to distinguish cases in which the dog is bredto hunt from those in which it’s bred for aesthetic purposes. In thelatter case, some students might think that dog-breeding practices yieldtoo big an animal harm for too small a human benefit. Other studentsmight think that the harm to animals and the benefit to humansare not great. Even then, students might still find the modificationunacceptable.13. To conclude the discussion and prepare students for the nextactivity, ask them to start thinking about this: What about casesin which there are no, or only slight, animal harms? Is it alwaysacceptable to make these modifications?Activity 6:Exploring Respect as an Ethical ConsiderationEstimated Time: 15 minutesIn this activity, you introduce students to the concept of respect andengage them in a guided discussion of specific cases. It should be apparentby now that the likely harms to animals and expected benefits to humansare not the only reasons students have for their choices. The stickers willmost likely show that there are some who think that even if the animalharms are small, the modification should not be made, while others areundeterred by substantial harms to animals.Procedure1. Tell students who are still concerned by cases that include smallharms to animals that it appears they may have made decisionsabout the cases for reasons other than harms and benefits.They will discuss some of these reasons in this activity.6-16 Exploring Bioethics