(USA) Some Personal Costs of Animal Experimentation

[Guest guest]

http://www.med.harvard.edu/publications/Focus/Sep1_2000/forum.html

 

September 1, 2000

Harvard Medical School Focus

 

Some Personal Costs of Animal Experimentation

By Alex Carter

 

" Have you ever killed an animal before? " I apologetically asked the new

technician in our lab. I figured she would eventually have to as caretaker

of our laboratory's mouse colony. As an adolescent I swore that I would not

kill an animal except for food or survival. Now my thesis in brain

development has necessitated my killing mouse after mouse. No, I won't say

how many.

 

Experimental Guilt

 

I'd spent much of the first week selling our technician on our exciting

experiments, enthusiastically telling her all about caring for our mouse

colony. All except for the killing. I avoided that. Whenever I engaged in a

procedure I thought she might find interesting I'd call her over to watch.

But not if I was about to sacrifice an animal for an experiment or as part

of regular colony " maintenance. " Then I'd self-consciously stand with my

back to her, blocking her line of sight.

 

The killing is my least favorite part of what I do but not because it's

hard. The act of inflicting death is so final, it should be hard, as hard

the hundredth time as the first. In fact, it has gotten disturbingly easy.

That's the problem.

 

Silent Partners

 

My medical school colleagues talk about their patients. The patient helps

them develop their physical exam techniques, sharpen their diagnostic

acumen, polish their bedside manner. The patient is their partner. In

scientific research that depends on animals, those animals are our

partners. But my graduate school colleagues hardly ever speak of them

although, without them, there are no data to plot, no papers to publish.

 

When I get the occasional e-mail warning that PETA (People for the Ethical

Treatment of Animals) has been acting up in the region again, I'm shocked

into remembering that we experiment on living beings and not objects.

 

The research community's silence on animal experimentation can give the

impression that all questions concerning the validity and ethics of the

practice have been resolved once and for all. Quite the contrary.

Polarization over animal experimentation has created deep and sometimes

violent rifts between the scientific community and general public. In

addition, this silence creates the sense that it is unprofessional for you

to have ethical concerns about animal experimentation if you're going to be

a scientist; but if you must insist on having those concerns at least have

the good manners to keep them to yourself.

 

By Humans, For Humans, On Humans

 

The path of animal experimentation is littered with the corpses of

questions we must each confront. Is it ethical to engage in an activity

that will lead to a creature's suffering or death? If so, then does it

matter how many die? Or how? Is your answer different for a fruit fly than

for a primate? A researcher may spend a few days with myriad anonymous

fruit flies or worms, a few months with dozens of unnamed mice or rats, or

years with just a few primates they come to know as individuals with names

and personalities. What happens when the time comes in the experimental

protocol for sacrificing these animals?

 

A Boston animal rights attorney, Steven Wise, has proposed that great apes

should be granted the rights of people based on their intellectual and

emotional capacities. Clearly the fruit fly has less of what we call a

mind. But is the relative degree of intelligence or consciousness all that

matters?

 

I sometimes defend our animal experimentation and appease my conscience by

saying: " It's OK. Our animals are well treated, our experimental protocols

are approved by federal and internal committees, and we use animals only

when necessary. " And on days when I feel myself going soft, I resort to the

utilitarian argument most common among scientists: " Animal research

ultimately benefits human-kind. "

Unfortunately, this can lead to an end-justifies-the-means mentality, which

is just a step away from promoting science at all costs.

 

A new, interesting tack taken by opponents of animal experimentation,

including a number of physicians, has been to suggest that the animal model

does not have its touted predictive value because animals can differ

significantly from humans in the details of their physiology, biochemistry,

and genetics. They argue instead that only human clinical investigation can

lead to progress in the understanding and treatment of human illness.

Finally, for the sake of ethical consistency and responsibility, since

these experiments are carried out by humans, and since humans benefit,

should they also be done on humans?

 

Coping and Changing

 

How do I justify animal experimentation in the face of my unease? How can I

show a proportional respect for the animals from which I now take so much?

The only answer I've found is by limiting the amount of suffering. I take

refuge in producing no more animals than are needed and in our anesthetics,

sharp surgical instruments, carefully reviewed protocols, and clinical

euphemisms like perfuse, euthanize, and sacrifice that enable us to avoid

saying " kill. "

 

Animal experimentation is an established practice that has all the momentum

of the scientific establishment behind it. It's understandable that young

scientists who might be opposed to it are swept away in the current of the

culture. The current is so strong that methods that could reduce the need

for animals are not considered practical. I hope this will eventually

change as we develop better computer simulations combined with molecular

biology techniques to allow us one day to grow all kinds of tissues and

cells in the lab and maybe even whole organs for testing. Advances in human

genetics may make human experimentation safer, thereby reducing the need

for animals. However, technology tends not to resolve one moral dilemma

without creating two new ones.

 

As for the new technician in our lab, I could teach her techniques to limit

the animals' " discomfort " —and the anesthetizing methods of euphemism and

detachment to limit her own. But for now I tell her to just put the animals

we need to kill aside. I'll " take care of them " later.

 

—Alex Carter, a seventh-year MD–PhD student in the neuroscience program. He

is one of two HMS students to have been recently named winners of the

2000–2001 Award for Medical Journalism by the National Medical Association.

More information on the award will appear in the Bulletin section of an

upcoming Focus.