There seems to be a lot being conflated in there. Is all animal testing horrible cruelty? Is even much of it horrible cruelty? In my experience very much not - and I do research on animals. (And I haven't only worked on slugs. I've worked on rats, I've been peripherally involved on work in ferrets*... oh, and I've worked on yeast, but somehow no one ever cares about the yeast.)
The rats in my icon, as it happens, were ones in use in one of the labs I rotated in, and sat next to me desk. And yes, we killed them.
Do you make a distinction between animal testing of consumer products and medical research? Do you value some kinds of research more than others? Do you understand the procedures in place one must go through in order to use animals at all, and to make sure that they are humanely treated?
We have it easy - invertebrates don't count as real animals, and, to quote a dear friend of mine who worked on cockroaches "You could make a slug cannon and nobody would care." And of course, she could say that killing lots of cockroaches was one of the benefits of her work, and few people would disagree. In fact, though, at least in our lab we tend to be quite fond of our slugs, and concerned for their welfare. And we kill them. I wonder if this seems contradictory to many people in part because so many people live lives very sheltered from death of almost any kind.
There is already a lot of pressure on people not to use animals in their research, or to use the simplest animals upon which the research can be done. (Hence, our slugs.) Most people think pretty seriously about the ethics. (I don't think I've met a single scientist who takes the issue lightly.) Many plan their careers around not doing animal research. And animals are expensive - much more expensive than most people think, especially since the regulations around having facilities in which to house them are pretty involved as well, and you have to pay for that too. And the paperwork and regulations are pretty daunting - I mean, it's major work if you're working in rat. Or zebrafish. Working in monkeys is almost beyond belief. (And monkeys are hugely expensive, and people will do just about anything to avoid killing or permanently damaging their monkeys. Partly because of the expense and paperwork, partly because they usually work with their monkeys for *years*. Generally monkeys will be with labs far longer than any grad students.)
So there's a huge amount of pressure to avoid animal research if you can. And to keep things as simple as possible, use as few animals as possible, and so on. Any time someone thinks of a way to do a kind of experiment without an animal, or without killing an animal, everyone jumps on it. And yet, for a lot of things, no one has figured out how to avoid animal experiments, and in many cases terminal experiments.
...and it's time to sit.
* Work directly on infant respiratory disorders, particularly SIDS, as it happens.
Yes, you make an excellent point that almost all animal testing is much less painful for the animals than the extreme cases. However, in a policy paper, the debate is where to set the legal limits.
It's a really good question whether medical research and consumer products should be held to different standards, but if you do hold them to different standards, I worry that it effectively sets the cost of animal suffering and death somewhere between the value of new human medicines and the value of new human cosmetics. That seems reasonable enough, but just how far are we going to push our assertion that we can all agree on what human ends do and don't justify animal suffering, and that the answers will be obvious and unambiguous to all of us? What about testing new surgical techniques on animals, when we have adequate existing techniques but are hoping to improve them, perhaps to make them slightly more effective for the patients, but perhaps just to make the tools cheaper and the surgery quicker and easier? What about lifestyle drugs like anti-impotence or anti-baldness or anti-fat medicines-- are they so much more important than hair dyes? What about pure research, to unlock the secrets of biology and cognition, which is very desirable to me and most other geeks, but doesn't necessarily alleviate any concrete human suffering?
Considering all that, I'd say that I personally wouldn't be that interested in trying to draw lines between consumer products and research, or between types of research, although if someone else suggested a plan that does distinguish between them, in a really smart and well-grounded way, I'd read it with interest and maybe endorse it.
(At the risk of entirely derailing the discussion, I'll say that this is also why I think it's a lot more defensible to argue that life begins at birth or at fertilization than to argue that it begins somewhere in between. I think that the slope's just too slippery there.)
As for the procedures in place to do humane animal testing in the US at the moment, they neither allow everything nor ban everything, which means they're exactly the kind of sensible, practical compromise that I'm arguing isn't very useful or interesting for people studying the underlying ethical or philosophical questions here and seeking any sort of deeper truth or larger principles. Also, although the policies are enormously important for universities, they can be circumvented by consumer products companies, military researchers, and other very determined and well funded groups by jurisdiction shopping between various nations.
I suspect you're exactly right that the contradiction between raising the slugs and killing them is much sharper for people distant from or new to the thought of death, and much more easily embraced by people who have cared for generations of animals and seen them come and go. But killing any animal does produce suffering that could probably have been avoided, even and perhaps especially if you're entirely responsible for choosing that animal's parents, bringing them together, and raising the animal from birth, including its food, water, cleaning, and in the case of larger mammals, medical care.
I didn't know the monkeys outlast the grad students-- that's fascinating! I was generally aware of the expense and hassle of the regs, but didn't realize they extended in such detail to zebrafish and rats. I've never worked with animals, in a research setting or otherwise, so you certainly have vastly more experience here than I do.
The rats in my icon, as it happens, were ones in use in one of the labs I rotated in, and sat next to me desk. And yes, we killed them.
Do you make a distinction between animal testing of consumer products and medical research? Do you value some kinds of research more than others? Do you understand the procedures in place one must go through in order to use animals at all, and to make sure that they are humanely treated?
We have it easy - invertebrates don't count as real animals, and, to quote a dear friend of mine who worked on cockroaches "You could make a slug cannon and nobody would care." And of course, she could say that killing lots of cockroaches was one of the benefits of her work, and few people would disagree. In fact, though, at least in our lab we tend to be quite fond of our slugs, and concerned for their welfare. And we kill them. I wonder if this seems contradictory to many people in part because so many people live lives very sheltered from death of almost any kind.
There is already a lot of pressure on people not to use animals in their research, or to use the simplest animals upon which the research can be done. (Hence, our slugs.) Most people think pretty seriously about the ethics. (I don't think I've met a single scientist who takes the issue lightly.) Many plan their careers around not doing animal research. And animals are expensive - much more expensive than most people think, especially since the regulations around having facilities in which to house them are pretty involved as well, and you have to pay for that too. And the paperwork and regulations are pretty daunting - I mean, it's major work if you're working in rat. Or zebrafish. Working in monkeys is almost beyond belief. (And monkeys are hugely expensive, and people will do just about anything to avoid killing or permanently damaging their monkeys. Partly because of the expense and paperwork, partly because they usually work with their monkeys for *years*. Generally monkeys will be with labs far longer than any grad students.)
So there's a huge amount of pressure to avoid animal research if you can. And to keep things as simple as possible, use as few animals as possible, and so on. Any time someone thinks of a way to do a kind of experiment without an animal, or without killing an animal, everyone jumps on it. And yet, for a lot of things, no one has figured out how to avoid animal experiments, and in many cases terminal experiments.
...and it's time to sit.
* Work directly on infant respiratory disorders, particularly SIDS, as it happens.
Reply
It's a really good question whether medical research and consumer products should be held to different standards, but if you do hold them to different standards, I worry that it effectively sets the cost of animal suffering and death somewhere between the value of new human medicines and the value of new human cosmetics. That seems reasonable enough, but just how far are we going to push our assertion that we can all agree on what human ends do and don't justify animal suffering, and that the answers will be obvious and unambiguous to all of us? What about testing new surgical techniques on animals, when we have adequate existing techniques but are hoping to improve them, perhaps to make them slightly more effective for the patients, but perhaps just to make the tools cheaper and the surgery quicker and easier? What about lifestyle drugs like anti-impotence or anti-baldness or anti-fat medicines-- are they so much more important than hair dyes? What about pure research, to unlock the secrets of biology and cognition, which is very desirable to me and most other geeks, but doesn't necessarily alleviate any concrete human suffering?
Considering all that, I'd say that I personally wouldn't be that interested in trying to draw lines between consumer products and research, or between types of research, although if someone else suggested a plan that does distinguish between them, in a really smart and well-grounded way, I'd read it with interest and maybe endorse it.
(At the risk of entirely derailing the discussion, I'll say that this is also why I think it's a lot more defensible to argue that life begins at birth or at fertilization than to argue that it begins somewhere in between. I think that the slope's just too slippery there.)
As for the procedures in place to do humane animal testing in the US at the moment, they neither allow everything nor ban everything, which means they're exactly the kind of sensible, practical compromise that I'm arguing isn't very useful or interesting for people studying the underlying ethical or philosophical questions here and seeking any sort of deeper truth or larger principles. Also, although the policies are enormously important for universities, they can be circumvented by consumer products companies, military researchers, and other very determined and well funded groups by jurisdiction shopping between various nations.
I suspect you're exactly right that the contradiction between raising the slugs and killing them is much sharper for people distant from or new to the thought of death, and much more easily embraced by people who have cared for generations of animals and seen them come and go. But killing any animal does produce suffering that could probably have been avoided, even and perhaps especially if you're entirely responsible for choosing that animal's parents, bringing them together, and raising the animal from birth, including its food, water, cleaning, and in the case of larger mammals, medical care.
I didn't know the monkeys outlast the grad students-- that's fascinating! I was generally aware of the expense and hassle of the regs, but didn't realize they extended in such detail to zebrafish and rats. I've never worked with animals, in a research setting or otherwise, so you certainly have vastly more experience here than I do.
Reply
Leave a comment