ANIMALS AND SOCIETY: AN INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN-ANIMAL STUDIESChapter 9: Animals and Science

Copyright Margo DeMello and Columbia University Press, 2012

Vivisection, or surgery conducted on living beings, has been practiced on both humans and non-human animals for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks practiced dissection and other techniques on both animals as well as on living and dead human beings (mostly prisoners and slaves).

Dissection of live humans was largely discontinued after the rise of Christianity in the Roman world, but the use of humans as test subjects in drug trials continued; in fact, it was common for doctors and inventors to test drugs on themselves and their families.

HISTORY OF VIVISECTION

150 AD. Galen begins systematic study of animal physiology, vivisection begins. What he learns is used in the practice of human medicine for the next 1000+ years.

Experimentation on animals became a standard part of medical research starting in the seventeenth century, with wild animals, farm animals, and domestic cats and dogs being used as subjects, with a number of important discoveries made based on such research.

Animal experimentation, combined with the dissection of dead humans, allowed for scientists to learn about how the human body works, as well as ultimately allowing for the development of most modern vaccines, medicines, and surgical procedures.

HISTORY OF VIVISECTION

The justification for using animals for this kind of work was the philosophical and theological attitude towards animals that said that animals either had no soul, no rationality, or no mind.

Descartes viewed animals as mechanical bodies with no soul or mind, and no ability to feel pain. Since anaesthesia was not developed until the mid-nineteenth century, animals were cut apart while fully conscious, and as we know now, were fully able to feel pain.

HISTORY OF VIVISECTION

While experimenting on live humans, even prisoners, was largely replaced by animal experimentation, it reappeared during World War II, when Nazi scientist Josef Mengele experimented on human subjects, mostly Jews, Russians and Gypsies housed at concentration camps, from 1941 through 1945, and when Japanese scientists experimented on Chinese prisoners of war from the 1930s into the 1940s.

During the 1940s, the United States Army in conjunction with the University of Chicago Department of Medicine infected four hundred prisoners from a Chicago prison with malaria to test new drugs on them, and both the US military and the CIA have conducted numerous experiments on soldiers, prisoners, and other test subjects, many without consent. Starting in 1932, doctors at Tuskegee Medical School ran a trial on patients without their consent in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

HISTORY OF VIVISECTION

After the end of World War II, once the Nazi atrocities came to light, the Nuremberg Code was developed, which established guidelines for human experiments, including the mandate for voluntary, informed consent for any test subjects, the absence of coercion, a lack of suff ering and minimal risk for subjects, and a clear scientifi c gain for both the subject and society in general. The Code also mandates that the study should be based on the results of previous animal experimentations; in other words, humans should not be the fi rst study subject.

For the most part, human experimentation today is limited almost entirely to clinical trials. In other words, after preclinical research has been conducted on animals, or in recent years, in vitro or computerized models, drugs, vaccines or medical devices are further tested in clinical trials, in which humans who have given their consent are exposed to the drug or device, in order to further prove that it is both safe and eff ective.

Without these clinical trials, no matter how much animal testing had been done, there is no way to realistically gauge either the safety or effi cacy of a drug or treatment.

HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION

Today, in the West, no drug or surgical technique or medical device can be used on humans until it has fi rst been tested on animals.

Animals act as models for human diseases, and also serve as spare parts for organ donations and for tissue and cell use. Animals are also used to teach medical techniques to medical students and veterinary students, and their bodies are dissected by science students.

Another major area in which animals are used is in product testing. Each year, thousands of new or updated household products are tested on animals to fi nd out if they can cause harm to humans. While legally, drugs cannot be sold unti l they have been tested on animals, this is not the case for household products and personal hygiene items l ike cosmetics. Safety testing of drugs or chemicals does not make the products safe—it simply notifi es the public that the product is unsafe.

Much of animal research is conducted in the fi elds of experimental and comparative psychology, where animals are models not for human anatomy, but for the human psyche. Animals are subjects in psychological research projects that cover such topics as depression, obesity, cigarette smoking, anxiety, social isolation, pain, bulimia, and hallucinations.

ANIMAL RESEARCH

Other than clinical trials, it is no longer seen as ethical to use humans

Animal organs and body systems similar to humans;

Animals susceptible to the same diseases that aff ect humans;

Some animals’ short life span allows animals to be studied throughout their entire life;

Animals’ environment easily controllable to keep experimental variables to a minimum;

WHY USE ANIMALS?

USDA– “any LIVE or DEAD dog, cat, nonhuman primate, guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, or any other warm-blooded animal which is being used or intended for use for research, teaching, experimentation, or exhibition purposes or as a pet.

This term EXCLUDES birds, rats and mice, and farm animals”

That means that all animals can be used in animal research, but since only some are called animals, they are the only animals counted or protected by US law

WHAT IS AN “ANIMAL”?

Every year, the USDA puts out an annual report detailing the number of facil ities the agency inspected (1088 in 2007), the number of reportable, or covered, animals at each facil ity, and how many animals were used in experiments involving no pain (approximately 392,000 in 2007), pain in which researchers used pain relief (approximately 557,000 in 2007), and pain for which “no drugs could be used for relief” (77,776 in 2007). Again, since these numbers do not include rats, mice, and birds (let alone amphibians, reptiles, and fi sh), who the USDA does not protect under the AWA, one can only guess at the numbers of these animals subjected to pain every year.

It is diffi cult to fi nd exactly how many animals are in American laboratories today, because research and testing facil ities don’t have to report the number of unprotected animals—i.e., mice, rats, birds, reptiles, or amphibians—even though they comprise 85 to 95 percent of the total animals in labs each year.

According to the USDA, inspected facilities used more than a mill ion reportable warm-blooded animals in research, testing, or experiments in 2007. By factoring in the estimated number of non-reportable animals, we can estimate that 20 mill ion or more animals altogether are used every year

ANIMALS USED FOR RESEARCH

Rodents are by far the most used group of animals in research because of their small size, quick reproductive cycles, and economic cheapness—prices start as low as $9 for a rat y. Genetically modified mice and rats are especially popular among scientists.

Rabbits are the most common reportable animal in laboratories, with approximately 236,000 used in US labs in 2007. They are popular because researchers can purchase them for as little as thirty dollars, they are easy to handle and because of their short gestation periods, their reproductive cycles can be easily tracked. Also, since their eyes are extremely sensitive and their tears don’t easily wash out toxins, researchers are able to conduct tests in which caustic substances can be left on their eyes for days.

ANIMALS USED FOR RESEARCH

After rabbits, guinea pigs (207,000 in 2007) and hamsters (172,000) are the next most common reportable animals in medical research.

Medical researchers use farm animals (110,000 in 2007) such as sheep and pigs for heart disease and heart and valve replacement procedures.

Dogs are used next often (72,000 in 2007) in research and testing because they are easy to handle, one drawback to being man’s best friend.

ANIMALS USED FOR RESEARCH

In 2007 American research facilities used about 70,000 nonhuman primates. The most commonly used primates are monkeys, specifi cally macaques.

The use of chimpanzees is particularly controversial due to their intelligence and emotional and social complexity, their close genetic relationship with humans, and the fact that they are an endangered species. While countries such as Britain and New Zealand prohibit the use of apes in experimentation, about 1,300 chimpanzees are currently in US labs.

Once common high school dissection subjects, about 23,000 cats were research subjects in 2007, almost entirely in neurological research and vision studies.

ANIMALS USED FOR RESEARCH

There is no real “Nuremberg Code” for animal research. Animals used in medical studies are covered under the Animal Welfare Act, signed in 1966.

The Animal Welfare Act governs the transportation, housing, feeding, and veterinary care of warm-blooded animals in laboratories, as well as animals bred and transported for the pet industry and for those who are in zoos or circuses.

Laboratories that use covered animals—in other words, animals who are not rodents, birds, or farm animals—fall under the jurisdiction of the USDA, which handles licensing, inspection, and all other compliance and enforcement measures.

The AWA also mandates that researchers provide pain medication and anesthesia for covered animals—“if the experiment allows.” Since the researcher makes the decision as to whether anesthesia or pain medication is scientifi cally necessary, there is l ittle mandate with respect to pain at all. 

Because the AWA does not cover mice, birds, and rats, labs that only use those animals are not accountable to any government agency at all.

PROTECTION FOR LAB ANIMALS

In 1965, Pepper, a pet Dalmation owned by a New York family went missing. The owner recognized his dog in a news photograph of a group of dogs being transported for eventual resale to biomedical research institutions.The dog owner was refused entry to the holding facility by the dealer Appeals by his congressman were also refused; the dog was killed as part of an experiment by a NYC hospital Unhappy, the congressman introduced a bill to regulate the trade of dogs. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate simultaneously. Both bills had only marginal support and might have died in committee except for a supporting event…

THE BIRTH OF THE ANIMAL WELFARE ACT

Many animals in laboratories spend their entire lives in isolation in metal cages, without toys, soft beds, or the barest of comforts. The AWA does mandate environmental enrichment for primates and dogs, but not for other animals.

stereotypic behaviors like rocking, pacing, staring, fur-chewing, or self-mutilation are common in the typical barren laboratory cage, and represent boredom, unhappiness, and psychological stress.

Environmental enrichment refers to ways that animals in laboratories or other environments can have some of their behavioral needs met while living in a laboratory cage.

Examples of environmental enrichment for primates include housing monkeys and apes either in pairs or in groups; training primates to cooperate during certain procedures like blood drawing to limit the use of restraint methods; providing “foraging devices” that let animals to fi nd their own food; providing perches, swings, and shelves for climbing and swinging, as well as a variety of toys; and even, in a few cases, letting them watch television.

ENVIRONMENTAL ENRICHMENT

The use of animals in biomedical research relies on two related, and contradictory, ideas: animals are physiologically, mentally, and emotionally similar to humans, meaning that the tests wil l result in meaningful results which can be extrapolated from one species to the next.

On the other hand, because they are not human, animals cannot reason, they cannot remember and anticipate pain, and they certainly don’t enjoy the same legal and moral standing that humans do. This is a step up from the Cartesian model of animal consciousness that viewed animals as unconscious, unfeeling machines, but the underlying meaning is the same: since animals are not humans, they don’t feel the same, they can’t register pain or loneliness or fear, and they don’t warrant the same protections.

How can animals be both similar enough to humans to use for product and drug testing, and diff erent enough so that they are subjected to treatments that could never be done on humans?

 

ANIMALS AS STAND-INS FOR HUMANS

Historical ly, scientists and polit icians have thought that diff erent types of people feel pain diff erently: women were once thought to be most sensit ive to pain, as were whites and the wealthy

The poor and minorit ies, men, immigrants and alcoholics were al l thought to be less sensit ive to pain and in the 19 t h century did not “need” anesthesia

“The savage does not feel pain as we do; nor, as we examine the descending scale of l i fe, do animals seem to have the acuteness of pain-sense at which we have arrived” (Si las Weir Mitchell , 19 t h century doctor

Only since 1970’s amendments to the Animal Welfare Act has anesthesia been mandated for most, but not al l , experiments in the US

The use of anesthesia during surgery is now more common than ever thanks to the fact that operating on struggling, un-anaesthetized animals is diffi cult and most scientifi c journals wil l no longer publish articles based on surgery done on un-anaesthetized animals

But if anesthesia could impede the results even a l itt le bit, it won’t be used, especial ly on mice and rats

Pain ki l lers are much more rarely used on any animal, both because it adds another variable to the experiment, and because the researchers don’t think about the animals being in pain

PAIN

De-animalizing the animal: Not animals: Research models Animals in labs don’t have names, they have numbers. They don’t act, choose, or play a role in what happens to

them, they are acted upon. Animals are de-individualized—simply members of groups of

faceless, replaceable, nameless animals “sacrifi ced” each year. Scientists must suppress emotion and empathy; women

especially are taught to use “Objective detachment”. “Part of the learning process is to acquire the social skills of appearing not to be aff ected by emotions.”

Scientifi c writing eliminates or reduces ambiguity, unease: distancing words, passive voice, lack of agency, lack of messiness. Individual—living, feeling—animal is absent referent in scientifi c writing.

The lab rat was reduced to a controllable, manipulable, and measurable part-process, a data-point, a variable in an experiment. This form of being sharply contrasts with the earlier view of the black rat, dating from the Middle Ages, as the symbol of pestilence and dirt and as the personifi cation of evil.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE LAB ANIMAL

The Anti-Vivisection Movement originated in the nineteenth century in England, and was made up of feminists who were involved in the suff ragist movement in England (and later America), religious leaders (especially Quakers) who were opposed to vivisection on moral grounds, and humanists who saw in vivisection a crime against God’s creatures.

Neither women nor animals had rights at that time, and many feminists could not help but see the parallels between the treatment of women, who were in those days strapped down during childbirth and forced hysterectomies, and animals.

The National Anti-Vivisection Society, the world’s fi rst such organization, was founded by a woman, Frances Power Cobbe, in 1875, and in 1898, she founded a second group, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection

Because of the activities of Cobbe and other anti-vivisectionists, England passed the world’s fi rst animal protection law, the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876, which governed the use of animals in vivisection.

THE HISTORY OF THE ANTI-VIVISECTION MOVEMENT

The Brown Dog aff air was a political controversy about vivisection that raged in Edwardian England from 1903 until 1910.

The controversy was triggered by allegations that, in February 1903, a doctor had performed illegal dissection before an audience of medical students on a brown terrier dog— adequately anaesthetized, according to Bayliss, conscious and struggling, according to the activists.

Anti-vivisectionists commissioned a bronze statue of the dog as a memorial, unveiled in Battersea in 1906, but medical students were angered by its provocative plaque— "Men and women of England, how long shall these things be?"— leading to frequent vandalism of the memorial and eventually an armed battle between medical students and their supporters and the anti-vivisectionists and trade unionists.

THE BROWN DOG RIOTS

Tired of the controversy, Battersea Council removed the statue in 1910 under cover of darkness, after which it was destroyed, despite a 20,000-strong petition in its favor. A new statue of the brown dog was commissioned by anti-vivisection groups over 70 years later, and was erected in Battersea Park in 1985 .

The riots saw socialists, trade unionists, Marxists, Liberals, and suff ragettes descend on Battersea to fi ght the medical students, even though the suff ragettes, identifi ed with the elites, were not a group toward whom organized male workers felt any warmth.

THE BROWN DOG RIOTS

Coral Lansbury writes that the causes of feminism and women's suff rage became closely linked with the anti-vivisection movement. Three of the four vice-presidents of the Battersea General Hospital that refused to allow vivisection were women.

The vivisected dog muzzled and strapped to the operating board was similar to the image of suff ragettes on hunger strike restrained and force-fed in Brixton Prison; women strapped into the gynecologist's chair, forced to have their ovaries and uteruses removed as a cure for “hysteria” or strapped down for childbirth.

 

THE BROWN DOG RIOTS

The anti-vivisection movement moved to America with the opening of the fi rst animal laboratories in the 1860s and 1870s, and the subsequent formation of the American Anti-Vivisection Society in Philadelphia in 1883. Like the National Anti-Vivisection Society, the AAVS was founded by women who were also involved in other types of social reform like the women’s movement for suff rage, the child protection movement, and temperance. Many of these women had also been active in the anti-slavery movement in the mid-nineteenth century. While England’s anti-vivisection movement resulted in the Cruelty to Animals Act in 1876, it would not be until almost a century later that the United States passed its own piece of parallel legislation: the Animal Welfare Act. Unfortunately for animal welfare advocates, neither act goes far enough in protecting animals used in research.

THE HISTORY OF THE ANTI-VIVISECTION MOVEMENT

• The AWA mandates that researchers fi rst search for alternatives, and search the literature to find out if similar studies have already been done

• The AWA also mandates the use of IAACUCs; some of these will demand justification for using animals; others will not; some will discourage the use of painful experiments; others will not

• The AWA also encourages the “3 R’s”o Replacemento Refinemento Reduction

ALTERNATIVES TO ANIMALS IN RESEARCH

• Replacing animals with in vitro modelso cell cultureso tissue cultureso computer models

• Replacing a “higher,” more sentient animal with a lower less sentient animalo Instead of a monkey use a rat

• Refi nement: Use of less invasive procedureso Blood collection from vein instead of cardiac puncture

• Reduction in number of animals used• Reduction in number of procedures performed on

one animal

3 R’S

The Alternatives Research and Development Foundation provides grants to scientists developing alternatives.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing works to develop alternatives in research and testing through collaborating with scientists, animal welfare groups, and the biomedical industry.

The Institute for In Vitro Sciences is a nonprofi t organization providing in vitro research and testing services, as well as training for other scientists in the use of alternative methods.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences established the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods to develop and validate non-animal testing methods.

Today, hundreds of companies no longer use animal tests, which are often cheaper than animal methods.

ALTERNATIVES TO ANIMAL RESEARCH AND TESTING

Clinical research and observation: testing drugs and therapies in a controlled experiment on consenting human populations which must take place after animal testing and before a drug is released to the public anyway.

Microdosing involves giving human volunteers very small doses of drugs in order to test safety and effi cacy.

In epidemiological studies, entire populations are examined in order to study health trends, and they can, for example, link diseases like lung cancer to smoking.

Genetic research can reveal which genes can lead to hereditary health problems.

Post-market surveillance involves tracking drug side eff ects after the drug has been cleared by the FDA and is available to the general public.

Computer and mathematical models can simulate physiological processes and provide a way to chart the action of a toxin in cells and its eff ects on the whole body.

ALTERNATIVES TO ANIMAL RESEARCH AND TESTING

In vitro research uses cell and tissue cultures in a test-tube or a petri dish, and one of its uses is drug development.

EpiDerm (an in vitro human skin model) and EpiOcular (an in vitro human corneal model) are being used to replace animal toxicity tests like the Draize tests;

Artifi cial tissues such as Corrositex are another excellent and inexpensive way of conducting toxicity tests.

Mattek Corporation, the makers of EpiDerm and EpiOcular, have also released other models derived from human cells that mimic the human trachea, the inner cheek, and even the vagina.

Human autopsies and noninvasive imaging technologies like CAT scans and MRIs allow the human body to be explored, and the use of human stem cells and tissues is useful in developing vaccines

ALTERNATIVES TO ANIMAL RESEARCH AND TESTING

Animal researchers have made important discoveries through the use of animals, although anti-vivisectionists point out that many of these same discoveries could have been made without the use of animals.

There are also numerous examples in which animals were very poor models for human health or anatomy, leading in some cases to tragic results where drugs (such as thalidomide, and more recently, Vioxx) caused severe health problems in humans, even after extensive animal testing.

Chimpanzees, as close as they are to humans genetically (they share more than 98 percent of our genes), are not even perfect human models. HIV and Hepatitis don’t manifest itself in chimpanzees the way it does in humans, for example. And transplanting animal organs into human bodies has so far not worked well.

THE BATTLE OVER ANIMAL RESEARCH

Part of why vivisection is still a life and death issue for so many is the way the biomedical industry has typically framed the debate. Those who promote the use of animals in science pose the issue as a question of sacrificing animals to save humans, or, as industry groups put it “Your child or the rat.”

If the choice really were between, as the argument goes, my child or the rat, everyone would want to see their children saved, and they would sacrifice a few animals to achieve that end.

But is that really the most accurate way to see the debate, and is that really the question that best sums it up? Can the use of alternatives be encouraged so that both human and animal can be saved?

Philosopher Katherine Perlo writes: “You would not be accused of ‘letting your child die’ because you had refrained from killing another child to obtain an organ transplant.”

THE BATTLE OVER ANIMAL RESEARCH

A majority of Americans support the general use of animals in biomedical research, but support erodes as the invasiveness of procedures and pain/distress increase, and when primates and companion animals are involved.

A majority believe that the government should regulate animal research and that research animals do not receive good care.

Public support hinges on expectations that research and husbandry staff will treat animals with respect and dignity, and that institutions will follow the regulations.

PUBLIC SUPPORT OF RESEARCH