I found a fascinating interactive website last week. Animal Ethics Dilemma is learning tool aimed at veterinary students, but anyone can play. As the name suggests, it shows where you stand on animal ethics, without any right or wrong answers. It does this by letting you develop a personal profile which can change as you work through its practical role plays. These cover farming, sports and wildlife as well as medical research.

It might be interesting if the site offered the option to see an ‘average’ profile. I can tell you that my initial profile was over 80% ‘utilitarian’, with a bit of ‘respect for nature’ and ‘contractarian’ thrown in. I was surprised to find that, after doing the role plays, my utilitarianism and contractarianism went down slightly, to be replaced by 11% ‘animal rights’! I think animals have a right to be treated well by us humans and we should avoid anything that causes unnecessary suffering, but that’s as far as it goes. My ‘relational’ score stayed resolutely at zero – indicating that I believe relationships are essentially human? I suspect that vet students might score quite highly on relational ethics.

The site includes explanations of all the ethical positions, and a list of ‘references’ – explanations of the various terms used in the case histories such as ‘genetic modification’.

Give it a go and, if you are registered to comment on this blog, let us know what you scored!