CRITICISMS OF ANIMAL RESEARCH --
These criticisms were derived from a variety of sources. They are included to give you a sense of the arguments posed against the use of animal research. Some of the statistics cited may be from older data, and others may misrepresent the actual facts. Nevertheless these issues reflect some of what may be distributed by opponents of animal research.
FREQUENCY: In the field of psychology the number of experiments is very large and many of these are of a disturbing sort. For example the papers published dealing with experiments on the brains of living animals (including cutting, coagulating, vacuum removal of brain tissue, electrical and chemical stimulation) reported in the international journal, Psychological Abstracts, now number about 700 in one year. As very few of these papers report on the use of less than ten animals and as it is known (in the UK) that only about one experiment in four is published it can be seen that the number of psychological experiments involving living brain operation is now very many each year.- - - Ryder
CONCERN FOR ANIMALS AS A SPECIES: It is as arbitrary to restrict the principle of equal consideration of interests to our own species as it would be to restrict it to our own race. The only justifiable stopping place for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are included within the circle of altruism. This means that all beings with the capacity to feel pleasure or pain should be included; we can improve their welfare by increasing their pleasures and diminishing their pains . . .The idea of equal consideration for animals strikes many as bizarre, but perhaps no more bizarre than the idea of equal consideration for Blacks seemed three hundred years ago. - - - Peter Singer
CONCERN ABOUT ALL LIFE: A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life which he is able to succour, and when he goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that life deserves sympathy as valuable in itself, nor how far it is capable of feeling. To him life itself is sacred. - - -Albert Schweitzer
PROCUREMENT: Of the 372,229 dogs used for biomedical research in the U.S. in l969, 220,546 were supplied by dealers, l03,028 came from pounds, 4,932 were donated by their owners . . .The rest, 43,723 were specifically bred for research, either by dealers or by the research institutions. - - -Pratt
LIVING CONDITIONS: The "healthy" (disease-free animal) in a spotlessly sterile cage may have a scientifically formulated and approved diet and a controlled indoor environment (light, heat, humidity, and so on), but unless it is a wholly preadapted laboratory "race," it may, like millions of cats, dogs, and primates, suffer physically and psychologically. Such suffering is not only inhumane but an uncontrolled variable which may totally invalidate the conclusions drawn from many studies. - - - Michael Fox
Sometimes captured from the great arboreal freedom of their jungle homes, monkeys are closely confined in cages only three or four feet square. Usually they receive no variety of diet but only approved proprietary pellets. They may see no other living creatures except a white-coated technician on a brief daily visit. Very often the animal-room is without windows, being artificially ventilated by a machine which produces a constant unvarying drone. In order to facilitate cleaning, the animals live on wire-mesh. They can never sit or lie down on a flat, soft or yielding surface. Little wonder that by the time they are needed for the knife or the needle they are so crazed or inert that they are no longer representative examples of animal life. - - - Ryder
Animal care facilities in small colleges are still relatively in the Dark Ages. Most do not require students working with animals to complete a basic course in laboratory animal care (including postoperative care), nor is veterinary treatment for sick animals always provided . . . It should be emphasized that in many, if not most, colleges, the students take care of their own animals. Students may be inexperienced, untrained, and indifferent and are generally unaware of the Animal Welfare Act. At one college a large rat colony was virtually wiped out twice by student care-takers not providing them with water during the summer. - - - *Fox
DISPOSAL: In the majority of accounts there is no report of what happened to the animals after the experimental procedures were completed. Some papers use the word "sacrificed" sanctimoniously, others optimistically say "killed painlessly" -- but just how painless is it to receive three or four blows on the head on the edge of a workbench, or an injection into the heart? - - - Ryder
VALUE: Most experiments are not worth doing and the data obtained are not worth publishing. - - - Harry Harlow
CRUELTY: Hans Ruesch's "Slaughter of the Innocent" (l978) and Dallas Pratt's "Painful Experiments on Animals (l976) document in vivid detail numerous experiments conducted on animals. Among psychological studies frequently mentioned are those on the "executive" monkey, pain-elicited aggression, electric shock as punishment, separating infant monkeys from their mothers, effects of surgical mutilation on sexual behavior, and countless others.
ALTERNATIVES: It is argued that most (if not all) research could be conducted in other ways such as through the use of cell cultures, mathematical models, computer-assisted models, radionuclide models. (Examples from Pratt)
GENERAL: Not all Ph.D.'s, or M.D.'s or high school teachers are able to recognize where and when a given animal experiment is inhumane or unethical -- in other words:(a) when an experiment is a needless repetition of research already well documented (a common flaw of high school and college science projects)(b) when the degree of physical or psychological suffering of the animal overrides any possible value derived from a study, either as a learning experience (for the student) or as a contribution to scientific knowledge.(c) when a more humane alternative is available, or when an organism of lower sentience (or tissue or egg embryo preparation) may be used as a replacement.(d) when the experiment is poorly designed with inadequate hypotheses, controls, and statistical validation,(e) when the researcher is performing "basic" research which cannot be justified for the betterment of society or of the animals themselves,(f) when the experiment is conducted purely for profit motives, not for the ultimate benefit of society, as in the development and testing of new, nonessential commercial products. - - - Fox
PLEASE NOTE -- THE ARGUMENTS ABOVE ARE THOSE PRESENTED BY OPPONENTS OF ANIMAL RESEARCH. BEFORE ACCEPTING THEM AT FACE VALUE , THE READER SHOULD REVIEW COUNTER ARGUMENTS PRESENTED BY SUPPORTERS OF ANIMAL RESEARCH.
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