This special Don’t Shout at the Telly forms the first programme in our new series on bio-medical science, supported by the Wellcome Trust. Dr Stuart Derbyshire, director of Pain Imaging at the University of Birmingham, introduces the issue by experimenting on volunteers. He then argues that as animals have no psychological self and are not conscious they cannot experience pain, as pain is not merely a response to physical stimuli. Discussants grapple with the complexity of the arguments and whether when experimenting on animals their capacity to feel pain even matters if it helps mankind.
