November 13, 2001
"Progress is an
optional goal, not an unconditional commitment, and its tempo has nothing
sacred about it. A slower progress in the conquest of disease would not
threaten society, but would be threatened by the erosion of those moral values
whose loss, possibly caused by the too ruthless pursuit of scientific progress,
would make its most dazzling triumphs not worth having."
–Hans Jonas, bioethicist, 1969
The debate over animal experimentation for scientific advancement is serious and highly controversial. It brings our assumptions about the value of human life and scientific advancement into question. Analysis of this controversy does not purport any easy solutions: there are many points of view. However, it is apparent that the tones are shifting to entertain alternative methods. In allowing the interests of our own species to override the greater interests of members of other species, can we be equated with racists? Sexists?[1] To oppose the use of live animals in scientific experimentation do we not oppose all cruelty to animals, and should we not all be vegans? Should we not charge congress on all fronts for every connection between us and non-human animals? All of these questions will be touched on in this paper, but I will focus more directly on the vivisection controversy, for which I will borrow the Animal Liberation Front's definition: "Any use of animals in science or research that exploits or harms them." I will give a brief history institutionalized experimentation and challenge the antagonistic viewpoints presented about the efficacy of the use of live animals in research, and offer some budding alternatives.
II. History of Institutionalized
Experimentation
Experiments
involving animals for scientific interests began centuries ago, but became
institutionalized with Francois Magendie (1787-1855). Magendie was known as a hardworking and brutal physiologist.
Barbara Orlans describes some of his experiments in In the Name of Science:
Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation:
"Magendie isolated a
section of the dog intestine so that it was attached to the rest of the body
only by a single artery and vein. This of course was done without anesthesia.
Magendie injected various powerful poisons including prussic acid into the
intestinal segment and found that the animal was poisoned just as if the normal
connections had been intact. He obtained a similar result by injecting a leg
detached except for its crural artery and vein. In 1820 he showed that a poison
can be absorbed directly though the walls of a vein." (Orlans, 1993)
These animals' deaths must have been excruciating.
Magendie was said to have laughed in public demonstrations when the animals
cried out in pain (Orlans, 1993). His pupil and successor was no less daring in
his scientific endeavors. Claude Bernard (1813-1878) designed the famous curare
experiments. Curare causes paralysis of the entire body, and "surgery can
therefore be conducted with little trouble to the operator because no pain
responses are manifest. But curare does not deaden pain
perception…"(Orlans, 1993). Bernard administered curare to conscious
frogs, rabbits and dogs and proceeded to dissect their nerve and muscle
systems. The animals felt full measure of pain, but were unable to use their
reflexes in any way. When the nerve-controlled respiratory muscles became
paralyzed, the animals died of asphyxiation. Bernard's experiments with curare
resulted in new understanding of how nerve impulses can be blocked.
The
introduction of ether and antisepsis availability between 1847-1860 created a
less painful environment for the animals used in experimentation, but it wasn't
until 1876 that the first Cruelty to Animals Act was enacted in Britain.
Although the Act was not revised for 110 years, it held some noteworthy
provisions: Labs had to be registered which meant that no private
Magenidie-style labs were permitted any longer. All experiments were to be
carried out under terminal anesthetics, and lab inspectors were required to be
certified. There were also certification exceptions that could be purchased,
however, that would exempt any scientist from following these guidelines.
Legislation on the use of animals in experiments and animal rights in
general got off to a start in the 1960's, when a news article appearing in Time
Magazine depicting the gruesome treatment of lab animals stirred the U.S.
American public to write more letters to congress in one week than at any time
during the Vietnam war or the civil rights movement (Orlans, 1993). The Animal
Welfare Act (AWA) was a federal law instated in 1966 that governed the humane
care, handling, treatment, and transportation of animals used in laboratories.
It covered basic husbandry that was not strictly enforced, protected the public
from having their dogs and cats stolen for experimental purposes, ensured that
dogs, cats, non-human primates, rabbits, hamsters and guinea pigs received
humane treatment (there were no provisions for other creatures in this act),
and required animal dealers to attain a license.
The
movement pushed slowly forward through the sixties and seventies and hosts of
animal rights organizations and pro-animal research groups grew into the
eighties (see Appendix A for list of organizations). In 1985, though heavy
legislative pressures of the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and other
organizations, amendments to the AWA passed congress. The changes to the act
included the requirement of a three-membered inspection team, one individual
not connected to the research institute in any way. This individual is intended
to serve the needs and interests of the general public, but they do not need to
belong to any animal rights organization or hold opinions any different from
the researchers: they can be a family or collegial friend. According to the
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) other standards include
minimal requirements for the handling, care, housing, treatment,
transportation, feeding, watering, sanitation, ventilation, lighting, shelter,
veterinary care, and separation by species. The minimal space requirements
allow each animal room to make "normal postural and social adjustments with
adequate freedom of movement", which, according to PETA, becomes the
maximum space they are granted (PETA, 2000). The act also allows the
"withholding of anesthetics whenever 'scientifically necessary', which
means that if an experimenter say that anesthesia will interfere with the
result of the experiment, then the animal is not given any"(PETA, 2000).
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) regulate these
provisions.
Animal
Rights organizations such as the legislative-oriented AWI and the civil
disobedience oriented Animal Liberation Front (ALF) continue to push for more
strict regulations in the United States and elsewhere.
A survey
of 1500 United States adult citizens showed that 63% said that killing animals
for coats should be illegal, 58% said using animals for cosmetics should be
illegal, 85% said yes to killing animals for food[2],
58% said yes to using animals in medical research and that number increased to
78% if the research was the only way find a cure for AIDS. In Deborah Blum's The
Monkey Wars published in 1994, she purports that 15 000 chimpanzees are
kept in labs in the United States, that 40 000 monkeys and 15 million rats and
mice are used every year.
How do we
evaluate these statistics? On what did the adults in the survey base their
opinions? To address these questions we need to examine different perceptions
of the differences between human animals and other animals, pain--the criteria
on which governmental inspectors make some decisions, and then the basic
arguments taken on by both pro and anti-animal research groups.
Many of these discussions revolve around the superiority of
humans to other animal species. These perceptions are based on moral character
and self-consciousness. According to Orlans, there are other perspectives to
take into account in such a decision:
"…some animals have
capacities that far exceed those of humans. To mention but a few, dogs and several
other species have a better sense of smell and range of hearing than humans,
hawks and other birds can see better, mice can see ultraviolet light, bats have
an innate ability to use radar and to orient themselves by the sun's rays, bees
with their waggle dance can convey information about the direction, distance,
and desirability of a food source, and whales have the ability to communicate
with each other over hundreds of miles…" (Orlans, 1993)
How does one decide on the superiority of the senses then? Some
are of the opinion that just because one is alive doe not grant one a right to
life, and that we ought to treat animals humanely, but this does not require us
to treat them as humans or as the holders of rights. After all, does a lion
have right to eat a baby zebra? Does a baby zebra have a right not to be eaten?
Should we force the animals to become vegetarian too? These are extreme, and
valid, opinions. To decide if animals have rights or if they do not, we need to
decide on what basis we base human rights. The general consensus of pro animal
research groups is that animals have no free moral judgment, and therefore have
no rights. The holders of rights must have the capacity to comprehend the rules
of duty governing all including themselves, and besides, animals are of such a
kind that it is impossible for them, in principle, to give or withhold
voluntary consent or to make moral choices or any sort.
There are some problems with this logic. What of infants and
disabled humans that are not in a position to comprehend their rights and
corresponding responsibilities? It may appear, then, that we are not asking the
correct questions.
'The
question is not Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
–Jeremy Bentham
Who feels pain? It is firmly established that all warm-blooded
vertebrates, some if not all cold-blooded vertebrates, some cephalopods and
perhaps even arthropods[3]
detect a measure of pain. The United States government has used this
information to develop five categories, A to E, of invasiveness in animal
experiments, or a Pain Scale. Level A is the least invasive and level E uses
the most extreme techniques:
Level A involves no living material, life isolates or most invertebrate
species and includes experiments using tissue cultures from necropsy, eggs,
protozoa, and invertebrate species with simple nervous systems.
Level B causes little or no discomfort or stress and
involves invertebrates with complex nervous systems, injection of non-toxic
materials by intravenous, subcutaneous, oral etc, and acute non-survival
studies in which the animals are completely anesthetized and don’t' regain
consciousness.
Level C involves experiments that cause minor stress or
pain or short-duration pain. Examples of this include minor surgical procedures
under anesthesia and short periods of food and water deprivation. After a
C-level experiment is completed, the animals cannot show signs of anorexia,
increased vocalization, social withdrawal or isolation.
Level D included experiments resulting in significant but
unavoidable stress or pain to vertebrate animal species. Such experiments may
be major surgical procedures under anesthesia, production of radiation sickness
and maternal deprivation. After a D-level procedure is complete, the animals
involved may not signs of prolonged anorexia, systematic infections or abnormal
vocalizations.
Level E is the highest level and involves inflicting
severe pain near, at, or above the pain tolerance threshold of unanaesthetized,
conscious animals. Some examples of such experiments are the use of muscle
relaxants/paralytic drugs for surgical restraint alone without the use of
anesthetics, attempt to induce psychotic behavior and burn trauma.(Orlans,
1993)
Some
of these final examples are reminiscent of Claude Bernard's curare experiments.
This method of compartmentalizing pain has been helpful to some lab inspectors
and not to others, and in no way is it required in the evaluation of animal
experiments: it is simply a tool that many institutions choose to employ. The
major argument against instituting this ruler as a charter for universal
institutional use in the United States is that it does not take the competency
of the researcher into account. A researcher with impeccable technique and
ingenuity could carry out an experiment at a lower level on the scale than a
mediocre researcher, but the experimental procedural design would be the same.
A second problem with the scale is the undefined terms such as
"pain", "stress", and "discomfort". These terms
remain quite subjective and up to the scrutiny of the inspector or researcher,
regardless of what Webster may dictate.
Why do we do animal research? Is it out of habit? Because we
can? Because we need to? The strongest argument relates to biomedical research.
We conduct these experiments to add to scientific understanding of basic
biological functions, processes and behaviors and to improve human and animal
health by studying the natural history of disease pathophysiology and
prevention and by developing diagnostic and therapeutic methods.
Carl Cohen is professor
of philosophy at the University of Michigan and argues the Case for the Use
of Animals in Biomedical Research in Baird and Rosenbaum's compellation
entitled Animal Experimentation: The Moral Issues:
"The sum of the
benefits of their use is utterly beyond quantification. The elimination of
horrible disease, the increase of longevity, the avoidance of great pain, the
saving of lives, and the improvement of the quality of lives(for humans and for
animals) achieved through research using animals is so incalculably great that
the argument of [animal research critics], systematically pursued, establishes
not their conclusion but its reverse: to refrain from using animals in
biomedical research is, on utilitarian grounds, morally wrong….Every disease
eliminated, every vaccine developed, every method of pain relief devised, every
surgical procedure invented, every prosthetic device implanted—indeed virtually
every modern medical therapy is due, in part or in whole, to experimentation
using animals." Cohen, 1991
Besides
the fact that he is false in his hearty presumptions and we are not all on
utilitarian grounds, we, as a species, are intelligent enough to devise new
methods and learn from our mistakes. Cohen goes on to say that we should not
cut back on the number of animals used in research but in fact increase
the number so as to minimize the number of human subjects used in
experimentation. Even if the case could be proved that animals have been
involved in experiments that are now considered a vital component of our modern
medical conveniences, this does not propose that these animals were required in
such experiments, merely that were the only tool considered employable at the
time.
The Animal
Liberation Front argues against Cohen and his colleagues to push the public to
the opposite pole, and they present reputable factual evidence that contradicts
Cohen:
"The dramatic decline
in death rates for old killer diseases such as TB, pneumonia, typhoid, whooping
cough, and cholera came from improvements in housing, working conditions, in
the quantity and quality of food and water supplies and in hygiene.
Chemotherapy and immunization cannot logically be given much credit here, since
they only became available, chronologically, after most of the declines were
achieved." ALF, 2000
These
facts are noteworthy and impressive but would be more helpful if there were
comparable information given on how many declines in other diseases came after
the development of the treatments mentioned. The ALF goes on to discuss reasons
that use of animals in experimentation will not produce the desired results.
They argue that human medicine cannot be based on veterinary medicine as human
animals and other animals differ histologically, anatomically, genetically,
immunologically, and physiologically. They claim that animals and humans react
differently to substances: insulin causes birth defects in chickens, rabbits
and mice, morphine sedates humans but stimulates cats, doses of aspirin for
humans poison cats and does nothing for fever in horses, and we are fortunate
that guinea pigs were not used in the initial penicillin experiments as it
kills them. Their final point is that naturally occurring diseases and
artificially induced diseases often differ substantially, as the complexity of
environmental conditions surrounding the disease and its host play a
significant role in its development.
It would
be quite a lively discussion between Carl Cohen and The Animal Liberation
Front, but both would need to do a little more reading and recognition of
historical developments and their subsequent misinterpretations as they
manifest themselves as facts and proofs in our morally conscious human heads.
There are alternatives to using animals in scientific research, testing, and education that have already proved to be of great value. Computer simulations and mathematical models are used in viral disease studies and biological systems simulations. These methods are very efficient and have already cut down on the number of animals used in testing for a variety of cosmetic products and have proved comparable to live dissections in educational settings, but have not yet been used extensively in medical research. In vitro and in vivo experiments are also highly effective and recommended up to a certain point in given experiments, at which point the research needs to be conducted and observed inter-organally(in a live animal). Human cells, tissue cultures and organs are used extensively in medical research. Material can be easily collected from umbilical chords, blood, corneas, fetal brain tissues and placentas. All of these methods are being used in medical research in the present at some level and could cut back tremendously on the number of animals "used" for science, if that is the ultimate goal.
Is
progress our ultimate goal? What does progress mean to us as a species? History
tells us many things about the use of animals in scientific experiments: we
have come a long way, and judgments about the humaneness of the work have to be
considered within the context of the state of knowledge at the time. Our
personal experiences with animals, domestic and wild, will ultimately influence
our decisions about whether or not to use animals in the laboratory—or will at
least govern our comfort levels with such practices. Our connections to or
experiences with terminal illnesses will influence our choices. Outspoken
individuals and organizations such as Carl Cohen, the American Medical
Association, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the actions of the
Animal Liberation Front will continue to present conflicting stories about the
necessary or unnecessary harm that animals encounter in private and public
laboratories. It is both a community and personal decision, and the paradigm
appears to be shifting slowly away from the use of animals in medical and
scientific research. No one I know likes controversy to be locked in committees
and cyclical spin-doctored rhetoric, but unless we harbor secret eschatological
fears, I see no special hurry, and encourage the alternatives.
(Singer, 1976)
1. Pro-Animal Research Groups:
NABR:
National Association for Biomedical Research, 1979
AMA:
American Medical Association, provided funding for a variety of pro-animal
research groups
iiFAR:
association for the "incurably ill For Animal Research, backed by AMA
AWI
Animal Welfare Institute, 1952
Humane
Society of the United States, 1954
ASPCA-
involved in selling animals to labs in 50's
American
Humane Association-later 50's
United
Action for Animals-later 50's
Friends
of Animals
"incurably
ill Because of Animal Research"-response to iiFAR
"Our duties towards
animals are merely indirect duties toward humanity."
- Immanuel Kant
"Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research." –George Bernard Shaw
"Vivisection is he
blackest of all the black crimes that humankind is at present committing
against God and this fine creation."
–Mohandas(Mahatma)
Gandhi
"…if people admit that
they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the
benefit of the many there will be no limit to their cruelty."
-Leo Tolstoy
"Non-violence leads to
the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming
all other living beings, we are still savages."
-Thomas Edison, inventor
Books:
Baird, Robert M. and Stuart E. Rosenbaum. Animal
Experimentation : The Moral Issues. Prometheus Books: Buffalo, NY. 1991.
Blum, Deborah. The Monkey Wars. Oxford
University Press: New York, NY. 1994.
Orlans, Barbara F. In The Name of Science: Issues
in Responsible Animal Experimentation. Oxford University Press, New York,
NY. 1993.
Regan, Tom and Peter Singer(ed.). Animal Rights and
Human Obligations. Prentice-Hall Inc. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1976.
Web Resources:
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
http://www. peta.com
visited: October 23, 2001
Animal Liberation Front
http://www.animalliberationfront.com
visited: October 23, 2001
[1] This is not to say that we should have bovine governmental representatives from Texas and Wisconsin, but we do need to be honest about the hierarchies in our society.(Why are there no African-American-lesbian women in congress?). The point is, we live in a society run by upper middle class homophobic white men that, by their own devices and cultural/media brainwashing, have developed an inherently discriminatory system in which the rest of us function. The more we know about other species the more we can speak for them. Get your nose into the mud, smell the salamanders: they tell us that our essential Indiana wetlands are dying. They deserve our respect. Furthermore, I have no doubt that they would indeed decline an offer of "representative" of Texas, Wisconsin, or any other state.
[2] This is not to say that only 15% of the U.S. population is vegetarian, as there are many vegetarians who condone the killing of animals for food under certain conditions(good treatment, major food source in region etc) an simply choose not to eat meat. I interpret this statistic to mean that 15% of the U.S. population believes that humans should never kill animals for food under any circumstances.
[3] The idea of insects feeling pain has been argued for by some entomologists who suggest that the physical responses of many insects to extreme heat and toxin levels presents an obvious case for such notions. One need only to hold a blue flame close to a tiger beetle or ant and observe the reaction.