Abstract
This chapter addresses the following key questions: Do the societal benefits of the research justify the use of animal models? Are live animals needed for child abuse research? Is studying child abuse using animal models different than studying other types of injury? Does the type of animal matter? Does the benefit of the research outweigh the rights of the animal? We conclude that, as the use of animals for research may be concerning from an ethical perspective, one must ask if the potential human societal benefits supersede the concerns about animal research and whether there are alternative research strategies, whether the animal model can adequately mimic the human condition, and whether the research scientific design is sufficiently valid to yield useful results. The use of animal subjects in abuse and trauma research may raise ethical concerns for the research’s potential of being especially cruel or unjustified to the animal subject.
*Rachel P. Berger is coauthor of this chapter
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Guttmann, K., Shouldice, M., Levin, A.V. (2019). Animal Research. In: Ethical Issues in Child Abuse Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94586-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94586-6_2
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