Animal research: Why it's unnecessary and inhumane

[Guest guest]

I just appreciated this thoughtful and well-argued piece written by a

research himself and its emphasis on the necessity of public protest to

expose the greed, the lies and the painful perversity behind the

systemic use of animals in research.

 

Animal research: Why it's unnecessary and inhumane

 

By Lawrence A. Hansen

April 7, 2005

Animal

rights activists have to live with the reality that American public

opinion strongly supports the use of animals in research, as long as

the animals do not suffer unnecessarily. The good news for animal

advocates is the qualifying clause "do not suffer unnecessarily," which

means most people do care whether or not the research needs to be going

on in the first place, and they are concerned about the animal's

suffering.

For most

people, necessary research is directed to finding cures for human

diseases. But much of the most ethically disquieting animal research

has no direct applicability to human disease. For example, in order to

study the neural control of eye movements, rhesus monkeys at the

University of California San Francisco for the last 20 years have

undergone coil implantations in both eyes, multiple craniotomies for

in-depth electrode placement, head immobilization surgeries where

screws, bolts and plates are directly attached to the skull and water

deprivation so that they will visually track moving objects.

Most

of us can't even bear to look at a picture of these monkeys with their

electrode-implanted brains and bolted heads struggling to perform their

eye exercises in a desperate effort to get water. Disingenuous

rationalization for inflicting such suffering invariably points the

possibility that someday somehow the results will lead to a cure for

Alzheimer's disease, or some other human affliction.

Advocates

for animal research like to emphasize that most experiments involve

rats or mice, and that, for example at the University of California San

Diego, less of 1 percent of animals used in teaching or research are

monkeys, dogs or cats. But monkey research is big business at San

Diego's Salk Institute for Biological Research, where it goes on out of

sight and away from public scrutiny. And sat UCSD it took a major

public protest, newspaper articles and editorial and years of internal

dissent to get the medical school to stop killing dogs in its freshman

physiology and pharmacology courses. Those dogs endured lifetimes of

caged confinement prior to their vivisection and death, and none of

this suffering had anything to do with research. They were all being

killed for mere teaching demonstrations.

To

its eternal credit, the UCSD Faculty Council and School of Medicine

reviewed the dog lab issue in 2003, after considerable adverse

publicity. Recognizing that 95 percent of U.S. medical schools taught

freshman pharmacology without killing any animals, let alone dogs, and

82 percent of physiology courses were similarly cruelty-free, both

groups recommended that dog labs not be included as part of the core

curriculum, and accordingly that recommendation was honored, effective

in 2003.

The pharmacology

department still offers a separate elective dog-vivisection and

euthanasia lab so students determined to kill dogs won't miss the

opportunity, but happily only seven out of 125 medical students made

that lethal choice this year, and while it is sad to report that five

dogs were killed, that's a far cry from the 50 to 60 that had

previously been routinely destroyed.

Some

minimal safeguards for research animals exist, at least in theory,

since the federal Animal Welfare Act mandates that Institutional Animal

Care and Use Committees must approve all use of animals in research and

teaching. Animal researchers themselves sometimes grudgingly admit that

such oversight has ended some animal abuse, and that the days of

throwing conscious dogs down elevator shafts to study trauma are

thankfully over.

But the regulatory

deck is stacked against the animals, since membership of these

committees is comprised overwhelmingly of animal research scientists

themselves, and a committee of guardian foxes may not have the best

interest of the chickens in a henhouse at heart. These committees'

theoretical emphasis on humane research is itself something of an

oxymoron, since the word humane means to treat with kindness, mercy or

consideration, and if humane treatment were a priority, the monkeys,

dogs, cats, etc. would not be experimented on in the first place.

The

Animal Welfare Act and other legislation controlling animal use in

research and teaching endorse replacement, reduction and refinement.

Implicit in this endorsement is the sentiment that it would be better

if we could avoid animal use altogether. But to a man with a hammer,

every problem looks like a nail, and scientists trained to use animals

are unlikely to seek alternatives.

That's

why it took the broader prospective of hundreds of protesting

physicians and the faculty council, etc., to eliminate routine dog

vivisection at UCSD over the protests of non-physician animal research

oriented basic scientists. Similarly, monkey vivisectors will not

surrender their drills, electrodes, bolts and screws until the public,

who, after all, pays for the experiments, tells them to stop.

It's

the obligation of those who care deeply about these animals to

watch-dog the researchers and let the public know that what might be

necessary for an individual scientist's prestige and career may be

insufficient justification for intense animal suffering.

The

public should know that research in the name of science leaves behind

tortured and broken bodies. When they talk about inflicting harm on

animals as a necessary evil in research, the evil is real enough and

the research had better be necessary.

Hansen is a professor of neurosciences and pathology at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine.