Author: WebAdmin

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The farm animal welfare movement of 1960s England propelled/promoted scientists to evaluate animals’ welfare on farms, in homes, in zoos, and in laboratories. I call for us to shift our framework; animal welfare is more than just preventing pain and distress but also includes giving animals the best possible lives they can have. A dog running on the beach chasing a tennis ball is my gold standard of what we should aim for. I describe how welfare scientists combine a battery of physical and behavioral tests to develop the most reliable knowledge of what animals want,
need, loathe, or learn to tolerate. Animal welfare scientists and behavior experts can lead the way to better care of animals in labs, if we empower them. Their agenda will cost money for better animal housing and staffing to meet animals’ needs. They face barriers when vets prioritize physical health and hygiene over animals’ mental health, and when scientists believe—often erroneously—that enriched environments lead to too much variability in the animals, ruining their experiments. On the contrary, I show some of the many ways in which better animal welfare makes animals better research subjects that produce greater or more accurate medical progress, a win-win we should embrace.

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I tell the story of how an animal protection crusade built on a carefully drawn image of an animal—in this case fluffy, innocent rabbits—rippled out to help many other animal species. In a brilliant public pressure campaign, the activist Henry Spira asked, “How many rabbits does Revlon blind for beauty’s sake?” Soon, Revlon, other cosmetics companies, and chemical manufacturers were contributing to a fund to spur research into nonanimal safety tests for beauty products, industrial chemicals, and medicines. The search for nonanimal testing now benefits lab rodents, dogs, and even horseshoe crabs, and with more accurate tests, people too. Basic research scientists may still rely on animals for new discoveries in coming years, but technical and legal advances will soon shutter product safety testing labs.

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This is the first of four “species chapters” that show how different kinds of animals (dogs, rabbits, primates, and mice) have shaped the laws and protections we have developed for animals in labs. Some protections cross over to other kinds of animals; others are just for the animal that inspired them. More than any other animal, since the 1800s, dogs have been the poster animal for activists’ efforts to limit scientists’ animal experiments. Dogs’ identity as our friends, allies, and dependents led us to focus on how labs acquire their animals, whether snatching them up on the streets, commandeering them from animal shelters, or breeding them en masse on commercial dog farms. Dogs’ popular image as playful athletes always on the go put them at the vanguard for calls for more exercise for caged animals. Dogs’ role as family members has put them front and center in state-by-state efforts to go beyond our outdated federal laws to require labs to find homes for animals after their research tour of duty has ended.

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I show how difficult it is to answer the most important question about laboratory animals: just how useful and necessary are animal experiments? I watched marmoset monkeys suffer and die in experiments that simulated human Multiple Sclerosis, and well after I’d thought the experiments were dead ends, the United States licensed an MS treatment based on the marmosets who had suffered in our laboratories. Animal activists and research defenders each have their lists of animal testing bombs and bombshells; neither list convinces me to shutter all the labs or to approve every scientist’s application to launch an animal experiment. The necessity of animal testing changes daily, as scientists develop new nonanimal alternatives and we build a database for scoring case-by-case how animal and nonanimal tests succeed in predicting human medical outcomes. I conclude that animal experiments are still necessary for medical progress, despite reat advances in developing nonanimal tests. But not every experiment deserves the privilege of
using lab animals. We need to find better ways to weed out experiments in advance that hold
insufficient promise to justify animal suffering they would cause.

Behind the scenes, I recount experiments I encountered when I was new to laboratory animal work. Scientists infected woodchucks with hepatitis virus and then forced them to drink alcohol-laced smoothies. I show readers what an animal experiment is, and why we have so many different kinds of animals as models of human health. Woodchucks were third in line for Hepatitis B research, largely replacing children and chimpanzees until mice then replaced them.

Mice now continue to be the main workhorse in animal research, dying by the tens of millions each year. In explaining how scientists construct experiments, I highlight their fear of variability and lack of control over their experimental animals, explaining why scientists frequently resist refinements that could make their animals’ lives better. And yet, when scientists aim for happier, healthier lab animals, the animals often become more reliable subjects for their research.

A Burmese python eats her lunch of live rats, while I watch, cheering her on, and heedless of the small rodents’ suffering. In this chapter, I introduce myself, starting my life in animal work as a teenager at the zoo in Boston to my career as a veterinarian for animals in medical research labs.

I recount my own evolution in learning to think and do something about laboratory animal welfare. I include previews of the coming chapters, and explain how I know what I know, as well as how the secretiveness and lack of transparency in my field set limits on what I’m able to tell readers. Between the polarized camps of animal rights activists and research defense lobbyists, I introduce the societal consensus ethic that underlies our laws and practices: harming animals for human benefit can be ethical, but requires strong justification. I conclude that I am now convinced that we still need animals in labs if we want continued the next cancer cure or a vaccine for the next pandemic, but we have a long way to go to give animals the care we owe them given the sacrifices we demand of them.