AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Animal laboratory technicians (henceforth lab technicians) are at risk of sustaining moral injuries when complicit in unethical experiments. Prima facie, it would be puzzling to offer the perpetrator of an unethical experiment psychological support in the form of moral repair. However, we argue that lab technicians are owed moral repair as a special case of our proposed duty of special concern. The duty of special concern states that special consideration must be given to the wellbeing of those who undertake substantial risks for the benefit of others. We make sense of the substantial risk of moral concern lab technicians face by drawing on Rawls’ notion of imperfect procedures of justice. Imperfect procedures of justice are those that aim for just outcomes, but procedures do not guarantee those outcomes. Animal experimentation belongs to this category, as it aims for only ethically permissible experiments to be conducted, yet this is not guaranteed by the procedures that determine which experiments are approved. The risk of moral injury falls heavily on lab technicians as they are charged with undertaking an unethical experiment. Hence, we make sense of the otherwise puzzling intuition that lab technicians have conducted an unethical experiment, yet are owed psychological support.