Department of Philosophy PhD graduate Duncan Purves (2013) will be giving a talk entitled "The Ethics and Ecology of Genetic Interventions to Prevent Wild Animal Suffering" on March 14, 2018, from 3:00-4:00 in the Sievers Conference Room (S228), in the SEEC (Sustainability, Energy, and Environment Complex) building.
Abstract: Facts about the prevalence of suffering together with plausible moral principles yield a pro tanto moral obligation to reduce suffering. If we accept the moral principle that we ought, pro tanto, to reduce the suffering of all sentient creatures, and we recognize the prevalence of suffering in the wild then we seem committed to the existence of such a pro tanto obligation. This is the intuitive starting point for the moral argument in favor of genetic interventions to prevent wild animal suffering (WAS). Of course, competing values such as the aesthetic, scientific or moral values of species, biodiversity, naturalness or wildness, might be relevant to the all-things-considered case for or against intervention. Still, many argue that, even if we were to give some weight to such values, no plausible moral theory could resist the conclusion that WAS swamps these consideration. We consider two interventions with purported promise to prevent WAS that are based on gene editing technology. We concede that suffering gives us a reason to prevent it where it occurs, but we argue that the nature of ecosystems leaves us with no reason to predict that these genetic interventions would reduce, rather than exacerbate, suffering. Moreover, these interventions are accompanied by other potential moral costs. We conclude by proposing a way forward: to justify interventions to prevent WAS, we need to develop models that predict the effects of interventions on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, as well as animal well-being.