NML

• If the status of animals is no greater than being human property, then the use of animals in scientific procedures is not in itself immoral, particularly as experiments may develop cures for a variety of human diseases. If the animal dies as a result of any scientific procedure, that would be acceptable to Aquinas.
• Catholic Church 


  ‘Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice, if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives.’
• The use of scientific procedures to cure terminal diseases in humans would fulfil the primary precept to preserve (human) life.
• The pain inflicted on animals during experiments would be accepted by Aquinas if it was necessary to the experiment. If the pain was not necessary, and was inflicted by human cruelty, Aquinas would have a different view.

  Aquinas holds that if a person is cruel to an innocent animal, this is morally wrong, not for the sake of the animal, but because the person concerned:

  ‘ … might go on to do the same to men.’
• Given that animal welfare bodies such as the RSPCA are critical of dog cloning on the grounds that they cause pain and distress, with high failure and mortality rates, and that cloned animals frequently suffer physical ailments, natural moral law might reject cloning if the process amounts to unjustified abuse: