Broadening harms considered in research ethics

In typical lab research ethics, the following types of ethical considerations count against an experiment:

1. risks of harm to the world outside the lab

2. risks of harm to persons in the lab

3. risks of pain to conscious entities in the lab.

(The categories overlap: the persons in the lab are conscious entities, and pain harms them. Likewise, the persons in the lab have lives outside the lab, and harm to them in the lab can imply harm to what is outside the lab.)

Now, note that the harms to the world outside the lab can include things that neither harm persons nor cause pain to conscious entities, such as damage to a non-conscious ecosystem. Thus, an experiment that risks the escape of microbes that could cause the world-wide extinction of a plant species would be ethically problematic, even if there were only negligible risks of harm to persons or pain to conscious critters. Further, note that non-pain harms to persons in or out of the lab certainly do count against an experiment—that is why consent is so important.

But I think the above categories of harms are too narrow, as they leave out:

4. risks of non-painful harms to conscious non-persons in the lab

5. risks of harms to non-conscious non-persons in the lab.

As the extinction point shows, we do worry about such risks when they concern what is outside the lab. We should, I think, likewise worry about them when they are in the lab.

The premature death of a plant or insect is a bad thing, even if plants or insects are not conscious (I have no idea whether insects are): a good thing has been erased from the world before its time. Likewise, disabling an insect in an experiment is a bad thing, even if it does not cause pain to the insect. Indeed, depriving an organism, of whatever sort, of the kind of environment where it thrives is a a bad thing.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t experiment on plants. But the fact that a living thing is harmed, regardless of whether it is a person or it feels pain, is an ethical consideration against the experiment. This ethical consideration may be outweighed by the epistemic or pragmatic value of the information gained from the experiment. But for the experiment to be worthwhile, it needs to be so outweighed. It’s not automatic that a non-pain harm to a non-person is outweighed by information gains. Some information might be too trivial.