The discussion of whether animals should or should not be used in medical research is highly controversial. The two most frequently discussed arguments are epistemological and ethical in nature; with respect to knowledge generation, some researchers claim that testing living animals is indispensable for medical research as only a full living organism can reveal the potential side-effects of, for example, a newly developed medical drug. Activists, on the other hand, point to alternatives such as in-vitro techniques and computer models that could replace at least a large portion of animal tests. At the same time, they question the transferability of results obtained from animal research to humans. With respect to ethics, the contentious issue lies in whether the interests of human health are, or should be, of higher value than those of animals when it comes to suffering pain, extending to whether they can have any interests at all.
This PBL case offers students the opportunity to debate the issue of animal testing in a multidisciplinary way.
Simon J. Büchner studied Cognitive Science and Philosophy in Freiburg and Cognitive Psychology in Amherst, Massachusetts, supported by scholarships from the Baden-Württemberg Foundation and the Fulbright Commission. He then worked in interdisciplinary research projects on human spatial navigation and received a PhD in Psychology from the University of Freiburg. As a graduate student, he was a visiting researcher at Concordia University, Montréal. Dr. Büchner is responsible for the Major Life Sciences at the University College Freiburg. This includes the development of the curriculum, the course offerings per semester, recruiting and supporting Teaching Fellows, as well as thesis supervision.
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