Maneesha Deckha (University of Victoria), “Animal Experimentation: An Inequitable Practice Out of Touch with the Structural Determinants of Health?” (Law, Ethics & Animals Program)

Event time: 
Thursday, October 10, 2024 - 12:15pm
Location: 
Sterling Law Building, Room 129 (127 Wall Street) See map
Event description: 
Though still preferred among the scientific community, animal-based research is attracting increased public scrutiny as AI and other animal-free technologies to learn about human health and disease proliferate. A rising cohort of scientists and other scholars and commentary have flagged the inefficiencies of animal-based models given the poor translation of findings to the human context, the unnecessariness of animal research given new technologies to replace them, and the ongoing ethical implications for animals as involuntary and suffering research subjects. In this talk, moderated by LEAP Faculty Co-Director Doug Kysar, University of Victoria Faculty of Law’s Professor Maneesha Deckha discusses an additional reason to question the continued preference for animal-based research: its inequitable nature in terms of the humans it might benefit and its unresponsiveness to the core drivers of human health and health inequities at both global and domestic levels, namely, the structural determinants of health. Prominent messaging about the continued need for animal research implies that all humans stand to benefit evenly from it. Professor Deckha argues, however, that a fairer assessment would acknowledge its considerable differentiated impact and role in exacerbating health inequities.
 
Maneesha Deckha is Professor and Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria in British Columbia where she directs the Animals & Society Research Initiative. Her research expertise includes critical animal law, vegan ecofeminist theory, and postcolonial theory. Professor Deckha’s work analyzes the gendered, culture, racialized, and species dimensions of law and she has published widely in law reviews, feminist journals, and edited collections. She is author of Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders and director of the open access documentary series, A Deeper Kindness: Youth Activism in Animal Law, available here and on YouTube: @ASRI-UVic. In Spring 2024 she was a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Zurich and a Senior Fellow at the Collegium Helveticum, ETH Zurich. Professor Deckha is a graduate of McGill University, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and Columbia Law School.
 
This event is part of the Law, Ethics & Animals Program at Yale Law School’s Falll 2024 Speaker Series. It is co-sponsored with the Yale Animal Law Society, the Yale Environmental Law Association, and the Yale Sustainable Food Program. Lunch will be provided; register here.
Admission: 
Free but register in advance