Are pain-free animals ethical?
A few years ago, a 10-year-old Pakistani street performer made headlines because of a rare disorder: He was unable to feel physical pain. The boy — who walked on hot coals and pierced his arms with knives for a living — had a mutation in the gene SCN9A. His powers were a fluke of nature, but scientists have been working on bioengineering animals with the same bizarre disability. They’ve already succeeded in increasing pain thresholds in mice and theoretically could create an animal that feels no physical pain at all. Researchers, bioethicists, and medical historians at Johns Hopkins have been pondering the implications of this potential, particularly as it relates to lab animals. If scientists created an animal that could not sense pain, would its use in the laboratory be acceptable?
