Category: Hidden Lives of Lab Animals

Draft Summary: not for publication or quotation.

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.