Nico Müller

Workshop poster with an image of a hand holding an organ-on-a-chip. (Title) Understanding Challenges and Opportunities for the Transition Beyond Animal Experimentation in Research and Safety Testing: What‘s New? What‘s Next? Animal use in science and safety testing persists at high levels – despite decades of advocacy and innovation in alternatives. Apart from technical challenges, this also raises urgent philosophical, ethical, legal, and social-scientific issues. This two-day online workshop focuses on new perspectives that can help to understand the intersection of scientific and human obstacles that slow down transition. Join the discussions to broaden your perspective on the animal experimentation transition and help to explore pathways to a future of innovative, responsible science. Organised by Love Hansell, Radboud U; Simon Lohse, Radboud U; Nico D. Müller, U of Basel Online, 19–20 March 2026 13:30–17:00 CET each day Register by 17 March: tinyurl.com/nam-workshop

📣 Upcoming Online Workshop, 19–20 March 2026

*Understanding Challenges and Opportunities for the Transition Beyond #AnimalExperimentation in Research and Safety Testing: What‘s New? What‘s Next?*

Register by 17 March: tinyurl.com/nam-workshop

#NAM #animalethics #philsci #animalstudies #STS

🚨 New paper out today 🚨

The message is simple: As we replace some animal experiments with alternatives, new animal experiments are also being innovated.

If our policy goal is inflicting less harm on animals in science, replacement won’t be enough. We also need a shift in model innovation. 🐭📉

The paper discusses what space for innovation there still is within animal models – arguing that it's essentially infinite, sadly – and what could potentially be done to steer science away from innovating ever more animal experiments.

Black and white portrait of scientist William Lane-Petter, taken in 1981. He's sitting in front of a bookshelf, looking up from a book or scientific journal.

Simple figure that shows a mouse exiting a pipeline thanks to replacement, but another mouse entering on the other end due to the innovation of new animal models.

That the replacement principle has this limitation isn't exactly a new insight. British scientist and regulator William Lane-Petter talked about it already in 1961, just two years after the #3Rs framework was first articulated.

So I'm calling this dynamic "Lane-Petter's Pipeline."

🚨 New paper out today 🚨

The message is simple: As we replace some animal experiments with alternatives, new animal experiments are also being innovated.

If our policy goal is inflicting less harm on animals in science, replacement won’t be enough. We also need a shift in model innovation. 🐭📉

Sentientist Political Liberalism This paper introduces sentientist political liberalism. Elaborating on the fundamental ideas in John Rawls's political liberalism, we propose that the scheme of fair social cooperation among persons ...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
In a new paper in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Eze Paez and I introduce “sentientist political liberalism,” an attempt to reconcile the ideas of society as a system of cooperation and public justification with taking animals seriously.

Nico Müller talking on stage, behind a big banner saying "Schweizer Tierschutz STS," meaning "Swiss Animal Protection SPA."

Nico Müller (left) and Love Hansell (right) smiling and giving a thumbs up

Had a good time at yesterday's Swiss Animal Protection meeting! 👍

I talked about why I think phase-out planning for animal experimentation is a good idea, if it's done well. 🐭📉

It was also great to meet Love Hansell again. Check out his work, if you haven't yet: doi.org/10.25453/pla...

If this sounds hard to do, that's because it is. But even just trying can be helpful. After all, we *do* make presuppositions about those difficult questions whenever we give ethical guidance on animal research. Spelling them out helps us and others in the debate to move forward.

A quasi-Rawlsian procedure helps to avoid both. First, you spell out the overall goal state you approve – how science and society (including animals) should ideally relate. Then, you try to map a way to get there, selecting for policies that are morally, politically, and strategically acceptable.

When considering these "macro-level" questions, it's hard to be sensitive both to ethical ideals and the particular real-world context. You're likely to end up either with ethical action-guidance that isn't actionable in context, or with actionable advice that's no longer ethical in nature.

…it helps to take big-picture questions about animal research ethics into view: Not "is this-or-that animal study justified here and now?" but "what, if anything, should institutions do to make science more animal-friendly over time?"

Screenshot of the article "How to Give Ethical Input on Animal Research Transitions: Ideal and Nonideal Theory" by Nico Müller, out now in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics!

📣❗New article out now!

rdcu.be/eSSNa

I explain how to do "nonideal animal research ethics" – it involves spelling out ethical goals first, then mapping ethical pathways to get there. I think we should do this more often because…

On the latest episode of Knowing Animals, I speak to Doris Schneeberger about her 2024 Palgrave book Envisioning a Better Future for Nonhuman Animals: Towards Future Animal Rights Declarations. The episode is available free below or in all the usual places.

knowinganimals.libsyn.com/episode-243-...

Email screenshot saying: "Dear Dr. Müller, We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript, "How to give ethical input on animal research transitions: Ideal and nonideal theory", has been accepted for publication in Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics."

🥳 I'll post the paper when it's out!

Alternatives to animal testing are the future — it’s time that journals, funders and scientists embrace them Biomedical research techniques that don’t involve the use of animals are gaining momentum, but those using innovative approaches still face resistance from some quarters.

It's pretty encouraging to read this in Nature! 🐭📉

I'd just add that (a) NAMs shouldn't be reduced to mere "alternatives" to animal models (just like chickpeas aren't just meat replacements); (b) bottom-up acceptance of NAMs is part of the solution, but some top-down strategy is needed too.

At this point, ban initiatives don't exert any significant political pressure. They don't scare anyone.

What they do achieve, however, is poisoning the political debate about animal experimentation. You can talk about transition strategies and people will respond that they're against bans. 🙄

Planning without Banning: Animal Research and the Argument from Avoidable Harms - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice The call for a planned phase-out is at the forefront of the political debate about animal experimentation. While authorities like the European Commission start taking a strategic approach to regulatory animal testing, they refuse to develop specific roadmaps for the phase-out of animal research. I articulate the central argument that is advanced against phase-out planning in animal research, the argument from avoidable harms: By restricting research, we may incur avoidable future harms and thus, while we may regret having to use animals in ways that harm them, for the sake of avoiding future harms we must not phase out animal research. The discussion of this argument yields two Conclusions: First, it applies only to ban-based phase-out plans, but not to plans consisting of a range of other interventions known from the literature on transformative governance. Second, the premises of the argument construe animal research as a necessary evil, thus as a conflict of unequal duties. But we have a duty not just to avoid avoidable harms, but also to avoid avoidable moral conflicts. This we can only do by taking a strategic approach. Thus, what initially looks like an argument against phase-out planning is in truth an argument for ban-free phase-out planning. This finding is important for practice because it shows that while government authorities’ reluctance to issue bans may be justified, their refusal to undertake strategic planning for the phase-out of animal research is not.

An immediate ban is not popular. Five losing initiatives since the 80s should teach us that lesson.

Meanwhile, we fail to discuss the non-prohibitive measures and strategies that could help to decrease overall harm to animals in science. I wrote about those here.

Surprising no one, the 🇨🇭 Federal Council today recommended rejecting yet another popular initiative aiming to ban #AnimalExperimentation. 🐭🧪❌

In my view, these initiatives foster the wrong kind of discussion – a crude Pro vs Con. What we need is a debate about the How of moving forward.

A sociological perspective on the challenges of displacing animal research within academia: the contribution of Bourdieu The use of non-animal, new approach methodologies (NAMs) is increasing but there has been no associated decrease in animal use. Reasons may include th…

In this new paper, Pandora Pound draws on Bourdieu to analyze #AnimalResearch in terms of fields, habitus, and different kinds of capital. Worth a read!

@muriel-leuenberger.bsky.social

Screenshot of the wikipedia entry for "Olivia Benson (cat)" "Olivia Benson is a Scottish Fold cat owned by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. She was adopted in June 2014 and named after the Law & Order character. Olivia has since appeared in Swift's music videos for "Blank Space" (2014), "Me!" (2019), and "Karma" (2023), and the documentary film Miss Americana (2020). Olivia has starred in the brand commercials for Keds, Diet Coke, AT&T and DirecTV, and is the logo of Taylor Swift Productions, Swift's in-house visual media studio. Often appearing in Swift's Instagram posts, Olivia contributed to an increased popularity of Scottish Folds among the public. Comparethemarket.com estimated Olivia's net worth at US$97 million in 2018, making her the second-richest cat in the world, behind the late Grumpy Cat. Films like Deadpool 2 (2018) and Argylle (2024) featured references to Olivia."

I just found out that Taylor Swift's cat has her own wikipedia page.

Apparently she's the world's second-richest cat, worth an estimated US$97 million.

She's also a Scottish Fold, a breed so unhealthy it's banned in some countries, yet it's popular because people like TS promote it. 👎👎👎

Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Steve! 🥳

Screenshot of a LinkedIn post by Dr Silvina Pezzetta, reading: 🔥🐕 "In a burning building, would you rather save a dog or a war criminal? If you rather save the dog, you might be an innocentist" says Nico Müller in his thought provoking paper. After many years working on animal rights, finding this kind of papers gives me hope about new (and relevant) topics to inform animal ethics and animal rights research areas. If you find the opening question appealing, and you doubt about innocentism because it contradicts the principle of equal consideration of interest while being close but no the same to redistributive justice consideration of interest. You can download it or comment and I will send it to you (it is open access).

Not gonna lie, this ego boost came at just the right time. It's nice to see some people actually read what I write… and like it!

Here's that paper for free: doi.org/10.1007/s107...

Now I'll go respond to peer reviewers for another paper that were *not* so thrilled about my work. Wish me luck…

Yes! We get a bit of closure, but the protagonist doesn't.

Spoilers redacted: I also liked how the [–] lured all the [–] into the [–]. Very sinister, very compelling. Didn't see that coming at all. But it makes total sense that they'd take that opportunity!

The story is told in the first person, and that person is witty, to the point, and often vulgar. It's fun to occupy the narrator's mind.

Bonus points from me for the occasional animal rights subtext. Listen to what those dairy cows are saying…

Instead of animals simply entering human linguistic communities, we see humans venturing out and going more and more feral.

No spoilers, but the protagonist's overall development as she hits the road with a dingo, transforming into a two-person pack, is an impressive achievement of the imagination.

I thought this book had another, less intriguing premise – "what if animals started to talk like humans?"

But no, the author is a good Wittgensteinian: "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." The characters are fascinated by what animals "say," but a lot of it stays unintelligible.

An image of the book "The animals in that country" by Laura Jean McKay

Animals constantly give off information – what if there was a disease that forced humans to listen and understand?

People would love it, if this book has it right. And society might collapse. A really, really fun read! #BookSky #AnimalRights

The points are related: I argue that numbers matter depending on goals. You seem to advocate a particular normative view on what total numbers should matter, in context with what else, which presupposes a particular conception of what policy goals should be.

I actually wrote a peer-reviewed article on this issue too. But I'm sure you're aware.