[Man and his fellow-creatures under ethical aspects]. / Mensch und Mitgeschoepf unter ethischem Aspekt.

It is for reasons of age I will have to terminate my work at the Literary Review in the form developed since 1995. The report is being reduced to a concentration of ethically relevant reviews as exemplified in the fourth-quarter issue of ALTEX. This is to ascertain that essential developments in this field will not be overlooked. Insofar, the Literary Review will be continued under the heading "New literature concerning topics of animal ethics". The more central topics of animal ethics are being "used up" the more new questions are being formulated. Thus it was that during the last few years the plant-world, long neglected, was rediscovered and received attention through the publication of important works. Another recent discovery concerns itself with "cognitive ethology" which developed out of the critique of behaviourism and which is dealt with in a separate chapter in this issue. But there is also a "classic" of ethics who has been reviewed and interpreted anew repeatedly. In her book "Albert Schweitzer, a prophet of medical ethics", Heike Baranzke describes Schweitzer's ethics as not sentimental or nostalgic but rather as a radically modern stance, committed to the enlightenment. Manuel Schneider, also, conveys a comprehensive view of Albert Schweitzer's ethics in "Life in the middle of life - the relevance of the ethics of Albert Schweitzer", a book edited by Altner, Frambach, Gottwald and himself in 2005. For this, in particular, he derives a possibility of a physiocentric ethics. By contrast, Beate Weinzierl approaches Schweitzer on a complete personal and human level in "Yearning for nature - access to inner and outer nature with Albert Schweitzer". Wolfgang Senz is undertaking a critical appreciation of Albert Schweitzer's concept of "life" and this, foremost, in the light of Schweitzer's rejection of the Cartesian "I am". In the end, Jean Claude Wolf cannot manage without citing Schweitzer either, referring to him in his not accepting the (western) world's excessive meat consumption as a "cruel necessity". Klaus Peter Joern also enters into Schweitzer's fundamental argumentation in his "A good bye to the disparagement of our fellow creatures". Quotation: "It just cannot go on that Christianity lets the validity of the commandment of love end at the behaviour towards humans, simply because that is the tradition. We rather have to, in this instance, deny the authority of the Bible it's due respect, as this has deemed Schweitzer already inevitable." The killing of animals, irrespective of the motives, remains a critical issue in the understanding (or the lack thereof) with regard to the dignity of all creation. Manuela Linnemann, Charles Patterson, Evelyn Ofensberger and the German Veterinary Association for the Protection of Animals have dealt with this issue extensively. As always, more space is taken up by publications dealing with legal questions and developments. In particular, the conference report of the Protestant Academy at Bad Boll should be mentioned "Animal protection on good constitution". Contributions to this report, edited by the academy, include Hans Georg Kluge's "The governmental aim 'animal protection' and it's implementation in jurisdiction" and Johannes Caspar's "effects of the governmental goal 'animal protection' in the protected area of unconditional fundamental rights". Regarding animal experiments, the last two position papers commissioned by the Foundation for animal-free research (FFVFF), dealing with perspectives of 3R research, have been published within the period of time covered by this report. Alternatives in basic research (with once again rising numbers of experimental animals) and in biomedical education are the themes dealt with by Franz P. Gruber and his co-authors Thomas Hartung and David Dewhurst.

Case report: drug interference with MIBG uptake in a patient with metastatic paraganglioma.

Metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) labelled with iodine-131 ((131)I) has become a well established therapeutic tool for inoperable metastastic tumours of paraganglioma. There are different pharmacological substances known to interfere with MIBG-uptake which may result in a false negative MIBG scan. We present the case of a 26-year-old male polytoxicomanic patient with metastatic paraganglioma, who underwent MIBG therapy. During earlier therapies, MIBG uptake in the metastatic lesions was very high. A post-therapeutic whole-body scan subsequent to recent (131)I-MIBG therapy failed to detect the vast majority of metastatic lesions-except for two. (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) showed metastases with a similar distribution to the initial MIBG scan. The possible reasons for the discrepancy in the findings of the MIBG scans and the (18)F-FDG-PET scan are discussed with special emphasis on drug intake prior to MIBG administration, increased MIBG turn-over and unknown drug mixture interference with MIBG uptake.

[Man and his fellow-creatures under ethical aspects]. / Mensch und Mitgeschoepf unter ethischem Aspekt.

It may not be spectacular, but the compilation of a new comment on the German Animal Protection Law before the background of the new constitution is the most important medium and long-term event since the inclusion of animal protection into the constitution in Germany. The comment was also occasion to mark the ethically motivated change in the awareness of society, which has strengthened continuously since the eighties, not only entering the law as the "responsibility of mankind for animals as fellow creatures" but also posing a question to the ethicists, who have since been searching for answers. Eisenhart von Loeper who wrote the "Introduction to the law on the relationship between man and animal" and the comment on the first principle paragraph followed these endeavours of theology and philosophy. Under point 6.3 of this report on the literature some important results are summarised under the keywords "species-spanning humanity", "fellow creaturism", "anthropocentrism-criticism", "principle of equality" and "equity and rights of animals". Significant differences are evident in the comparison of the different concepts that have been developed in animal ethics, also regarding the expanse of the demands made for the benefit of the animals. The general opinion in philosophy that animal ethics and animal protection can only apply to the higher developed animals points towards a tendency to consider only a kind of "animal elite" morally relevant and worthy of protection and to exclude the mass of others as soulless automats by keeping the status quo and exposing them to indiscriminate use by humans. Species-spanning equality must be decidedly demanded.

[Man and his fellow-creatures under ethical aspects]

Since in 1995, ALTEX offered the literary report a kind of journalistic home and - being a scientific journal - opened up even more in the direction of the Arts, the ethical dialogue could gain in shape as well as in colour. To deepen this co-operation even further every fourth issue of the quarterly has "ethics" as its emphasis. This provides the chance to give access in one issue to topical texts which were mentioned in the report but could not be cited in full length. Aside from the consideration of valued personal contacts at this point, the co-operation between ALTEX and the archives for ethics in animal -, nature - and environmental protection at Karlsruhe gains in efficacy. The goal shared by both is the animal report on the development of ethical thought about the relationship between us as humans and our animated environment as it is mirrored in literature. The proximity to ethics is not the only particularity of our project. We also aim to maintain a platform within German professional scientific writing and, at the same time inform through examples form developments in the Anglo-Saxon sphere. A structure of presentation of these topics has developed over the years which still shows features of "happening by chance". Still, it is meant to facilitate access to requested topics. As in former reports, ethical themes predominate. At times, one can get the impression that finding generally acceptable criteria is of particular importance. These criteria are supposed to provide the possibility to divide animals into two groups: The highly developed ones which are to be highly regarded and the others, remaining widely outside of our ethical attention. But this is not all - further arguments are at stake which would permit us to exercise preference regarding human wishes in cases of conflict over the welfare - and survival interests of the animals. In this way, two restrictive models add up in the following manner: First, the scope of animals which have to be paid moral respect is being narrowed and secondly, human interest regarding the use of such animals is allowed clearly higher priority, so that in the balance, the animal hardly has a chance. The tightening of texts will be continued as announced in the preliminary remarks preceding the last report. Its first victim is the realm of biotechnology which could be referred to in a fragmentary manner. In its expanding scope and specialisation it simply cannot be mastered any more. Since personnel cannot be increased proportionally to the growing number of related issues the only remaining choice is the limitation of projects to a manageable level.

[Man and animal from the ethical view]

This review over the books, articles in Journals and newspapers in 1996 and 1997 reports about the development in the field of man-animal- and man-nature-relations. The review considers the following themes: development, trends and perspectives, philosophy, theology, eco-ethics, legal questions, animal experimentation, freedom of research, teaching and conscience, farm animals, hunting and fishing, zoo and circus, bio-technology, violence, killing, vegetarism and dignity of creatures. The review includes a bibliography with about 300 quatoations.

[About the question of ethical admissibility versus unadmissibility of animal tests in basic research]

When discussing responsibility for laboratory animals, always and again people refer to the Swiss self-commitment "Ethical principles and guidelines about scientific animal tests". This is justified, as item no. 4.6 of that text contains - among other many comparable codices - the remarkable claim to dispense with animal tests and the hoped-for findings if the test leads to unavoidable serious suffering of laboratory animals. Very characteristic examples for such tests are those conducted without anesthesia, because the findings sought after can only be derived from the reaction of the non-anaesthetized animal. Therefore the obvious question arises whether the sacrifice ought to be commenced in basic research. Good will towards good care of our fellow creatures would, by this, assume more concrete forms and gain power of persuasion.

[Ethical considerations on animal experiments]

The current state of the controversy on experimentation with animals is presented in overview in three chapters. The authors define 4 categories of personal involvement. There is the wholehearted "advocate", for whom experiments using animals are always necessary and who will only acknowledge well-founded scientific evidence against using them; next, the "defender" of animal experiments, who accepts that ethical evaluation of each experiment is necessary; then the "critic", who will challenge the majority of experiments for either ethical or scientific reasons; finally, there is the "opponent" of animal experiments, who for ethical reasons rejects animal experiments totally. Following this categorisation, one author (Scharmann) counts himself as "defender", while the other (Teutsch) is an "opponent" of animal experimentation. In the second chapter, guidelines are given for ethical evaluations based on the expected gain for man and animal on the one hand and the burden on the experimental animals on the other hand. In the third chapter, which deals with the outcome of deliberations on gain versus burden, each author presents his views separately, depending on his own conclusions. Scharmann takes into account the principle of "closeness", which allows him to find justification for certain animal experiments, because the suffering human is closer to him than the suffering animal. In basic scientific research, Scharmann can only accept experiments with a small burden of discomfort. On the other hand, for ethical reasons, Teutsch rejects experiments with animals even if there is a strong likelihood of an advantage for the human being. He explains this by claiming that there is no ethically relevant reason for treating animals any differently from humans. The fact that animals lack certain qualities, such as abstract thought, self reflection, or a sense of morality, cannot be regarded as being an ethically relevant argument for treating animals differently.