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book review

Biomedical research and animal welfarea delicate balance

2001 Nature Publishing Group http://neurosci.nature.com

The scalpel and the butterfly: the war between animal research and animal protection
by Deborah Rudacille
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2000. $25.00 hardcover, pp 320 ISBN 0-37-425420-6

The lives of animals

by J. M. Coetzee
Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2000. $19.95 hardcover, pp 120 ISBN 0-69-100443-9

Imagine if you will the following experiment. Two monkeys, an actor and a receiver, are placed in adjacent rooms. The actor can see the receiver through a one-way mirror. Every time the actor presses a button to receive food, a painful shock is delivered to the receiver monkey. Will the actor stop pressing the button when he sees another monkey in pain? What if the actor were starving? If the actor does stop pressing, will he extend his sympathy to an unfamiliar monkey, or even to another species? Why should he? A parallel can be drawn between the monkey actors dilemma and the dilemma presented to us as members of a civilized society: what are the costs and benefits of hurting another living being and how far should we extend our sympathies? There are no easy answers to these questions, and battle lines have been drawn between those of us who believe that knowledge and the minimization of human suffering is worth the cost and those that believe humans are barbarians for having such beliefs. Deborah Rudacilles book, The Scalpel and the Butterfly, deftly explores the history and sociology of both sides of the battle. Rudacille, a former researcher and writer at the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, opens her book with a look at how nineteenth centuAsif A. Ghazanfar is in the Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. e-mail: aghazanf@wjh.harvard.edu

ry literaturespecifically, Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and H.G. Wells The Island of Dr. Moreaureflected societys sentiments toward biological experimentation. The conclusion drawn from these stories, a conclusion that still holds today if one takes even a cursory look at the media (for example, Jurassic Park), is that many in our society feel that knowledge is acquired at a great cost, the cost of ones soul, as Rudacille puts it. The scientists loss of soul is reflected in the use of living beings for their experiments and the treatment of the human body as an object with which to tinker. The book covers the origins of the antivivisectionist movement in Europe, the organization and tensions within modern animal rights groups like PETA, the evolution of animal welfare policy in Europe and the United States, and closes with a discussion of the implications of our latest breakthroughs in biotechnology. Rudacille is most engaging when she explores the sociology of animal rights movements. For example, she points out that women established the first antivivisectionist societies in both England and America, and that most members were also women. Some historians and sociologists have suggested that this gender bias is due in part to the fact that womens feelings of powerlessness and anger over their subordinate societal status may have been sublimated into empathy and identification with experimental animals. Today, membership in animal advocacy groups is approximately 10 million, and these groups have a total income of $50 million.

Also alarming is the latest and fast-growing animal activist type. In a recent study by two sociologists, three types of animal rights activists were defined: welfarists, pragmatists and fundamentalists. The former are the traditionalists of the movement and seek to minimize suffering, whereas the fundamentalists are crusaders acting on explicit, uncompromising moral beliefs. They demand the immediate abolition of all exploitation of animals (including using them for food) and are willing to do almost anything for their cause. This is the new breed of animal activist, according to Rudacille and others. This new breed of activists equates scientists species-ism with racism. Often in the animal rights literature, a parallel is drawn between the Nazi genocide of Jews and other racially impure people and biomedical research, where scientists are perpetrators of a holocaust on animals (for popular accounts see Peter Singers Animal Liberation, Steve Wises Rattling the Cage or J.M. Coetzees The Lives of Animals, see below). Ironically, Adolph Hitler himself was an antivivisectionist and a vegetarian, often referring to beef broth as corpse tea and sausages as cadavers. Rudacille describes how Hitler and the rest of the Nazi propagandists vehemently opposed the use of animals in experimentation. They wanted to establish a new science of health, one that focused on the whole person, not just diseased parts, and a return to natural living with respectful interactions with animals. This new vision of science and living had a strong antiSemitic element. Jewish medicine was considered mechanistic and reductionist, and vivisection, like kosher slaughter, was seen as an example of Jewish cruelty to animals. Thus, according to Nazi physicians, the Jews were suppressing natural German healing practices and turning humankind away from what was natural. Rudacille spends an equivalent amount of time focusing on the sociology of biomedical researchers, particularly on our irrational resistance to changes in animal welfare policy. Even in the face of the most egregious acts of unnecessary cruelty to animals, we remain obstinate and selfrighteous. In the nineteenth century when guidelines were first established to require the use of anesthesia during surgical procedures on animals, many scientists seemed to do their utmost to ignore the recommendations. In the 1950s, when horrific housing and transport conditions for primates (imagine 20 rhesus monkeys in a crate as small as a two-drawer filing cabinet!) were reported by the moderate
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book review

Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), the National Society for Medical Research (NSMR) responded by accusing them of being closet antivivisectionists. The NSMR went on to push for legislature that would prevent any inspection of laboratory facilities by outside groups. In the 1960s, goaded by the reports from AWI on the terrible conditions in laboratories, the NIH commissioned their own internal investigation. When this study found the same results as reported by AWI, the NIH hierarchy quelled it. While exploring the history of antivivisectionists and researchers, Rudacille simultaneously makes an excellent case for a moderate viewpointone that incorporates concern for the welfare of experimental animals and recognizes their necessity for biomedical research. Her argument is largely founded on the findings and recommendations of W.M.S. Russell, a zoologist, and Rex Burch, a microbiologist. They formulated the Three Rs concept (replacement, reduction and refinement) that now serves as a kind of ground zero between moderate animal protectionists and scientists. Russell and Burch emphasized that good science and animal welfare are compatible goalsgood science depends on careful attention to the animals well being. Furthermore, Russell has argued that an animals ethology should be used as a guide to provide the most appropriate physical and social conditions (for example, housing monkeys in pairs or groups). Treating laboratory animals well and with their species-typical behaviors in mind will result in healthier subjects, which will lead to more reliable results and a reduction of the number of subjects needed for a study. There were, however, a few minor disappointments in the book. Whereas Rudacille provides descriptions of some of the experimental procedures that so outraged activists, she rarely offers an explanation for why or how a particular research program could benefit (or is benefiting) society at large (for example, cochlear implants, cancer research, etc.). Without an awareness of those goals, many experiments do indeed sound unnecessarily gruesome. On a more technical note, whereas the book is arranged chronologically, the chapters do not flow into one another. They jump from topic to topic, from the use of dogs in research to Nazi antivivisectionists to the development of the polio vaccine. Nevertheless, each chapter is in itself eminently readable and thoroughly engaging. In the end, The Scalpel and the Butterfly provides a nice account
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of the history of the conflict between scientists and animal rights activists. Rudacille gives us an unblinking look at the cultural origins of and personalities on both sides, and an engaging sense of where our future together is heading. The Lives of Animals by J.M. Coetzee is a very different book. It is different not only from Rudacilles contribution, but different from most animal welfare/rights books in general. It is not written by a philosopher or a scientist or a journalist, but by a world-famous South African novelist. It does not try to conceal its agenda or pretend to present a balanced perspective on the issue of animal welfare. It is not focused on the use of animals in biomedical research, but on the use of animals, period. The book is a passionate philosophical essay, which takes the form of a novella. Its thesis is that we should extend without reservations our sympathy to all animals. Before you dismiss this book as being too off-the-wall, consider the fact that the book concludes with essays/commentaries written by prominent academics in the fields of philosophy, history, literature and primatology. Also, consider that the authors views on animal welfare figure prominently in many of his novels, including his 1999 Booker prize-winning novel, Disgrace. Thus, his views influence a very large public and are taken seriously in academic circles. The book is based on Coetzees 1997 Tanner lecture series sponsored by the Princeton University Center for Human Values. In these lectures, he presented his audience with a novella about a famous novelist who is invited to speak about literature at a prestigious fictional college, but this fictitious novelist uses the opportunity to lecture her audience on the importancethe moral necessityof animal rights. The dialogue in the book is built around a lecture and a seminar, a dinner party, and a public debate on animal liberation. The other characters include professors of the college, the novelists son (on faculty at the college) and his wife, a rationalist philosopher. Using these pieces, Coetzee (and well assume Coetzee and his fictional novelist are identical) constructs an interesting story and presents his no-holds-barred view on how poorly humans treat animals. Coetzee does not hesitate to draw parallels between the capture and use of animals with the capture and use of humans. He argues that in our effort to learn about a phenomenon, we very likely learn nothing and most definitely hurt that which we wish to learn about. He describes the case

of Srinivasa Ramanujan, born in India in 1887, who was captured and taken to England because of his amazing mathematical abilities. Self-taught and widely regarded as the greatest intuitive mathematician, Ramanujan was unable to adjust to the climate, diet and the academic regime of his new surroundings; he sickened and died at age thirty-three. Coetzee then presents the case of Sultan, one of the chimpanzees captured from the wilds of Africa, transported to Europe, and used as a subject in the experiments published in Wolfgang Khlers, The Mentality of Apes. In one famous experiment, Khler tested the apes problem-solving abilities by hanging bananas out of reach and providing wooden crates to see whether or not the chimpanzees would stack the crates in order to climb and reach the bananas. Coetzee describes this experiment from the perspective of Sultan. Sultan is alone and hungry, wondering why the food that used to arrive regularly has now stopped coming. Later, Sultan watches the man, who used to feed him, hang bananas high above the ground and drag three wooden crates into the pen. Sultan thinks, Why is he starving me? What have I done? Why does he think it will be easier for me to reach the bananas hanging high up from a wire? Finally, Sultan thinks the right thought: How does one use the crates to reach the bananas? and proceeds to stack the crates. With every variation of the experiment, Sultan is starved until the pangs of hunger are so intense, so overriding, that he is forced to think the right thought. Coetzee is very aware that he will be accused of anthropomorphizing, but the point he is trying to make is deeper than the idea that animals may have thoughts like man. His point is that Sultan (like other experimental animals) is not at all interested in the experiment and it is only the experimenters persistence that forces him to concentrate on it. In Coetzees view, the only question that most certainly occupies the thoughts of every animal trapped in laboratories or zoos is, Where is home, and how do I get there? Like many animal welfare advocates, Coetzee claims that the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis are akin to those we are currently perpetrating on animals. He means this in the most literal sense. He argues that we (humanity in general) are carrying on in an enterprise of cruelty that is even beyond what Nazis were capable of, because our enterprise is self-regeneratingwe continue to bring animals ceaselessly into the world for the sole purpose of using and then killing them. Further-

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 2001 Nature Publishing Group http://neurosci.nature.com

book review

2001 Nature Publishing Group http://neurosci.nature.com

more, Coetzee suggests that people not directly involved in the use of animals are like those people living around Nazi concentration camps claiming they did not know what was going on. They did not know for certain, did not want to know, and simply could not afford to know for their own sake. We are quick to judge such bystanders. In a similar vein, according to Coetzee, we may not come into direct contact with laboratories or factory farms, but we know they are all around us and we know a little about them. As such, the only innocent beings are those trapped inside. These are passionate claims, sometimes bordering on the offensive and irrational. Coetzee acknowledges this and addresses counter-arguments, through the dialogue between various characters in his novella. Unfortunately, the short, story-telling format of the book does not allow him to really flesh out arguments, and Coetzee often sounds curt and dismissive of important points against his views. Extreme views aside, there is a general message that resonates throughout this novella, and one that I found quite compelling. It is that we often assess our relationships with animals based on whether they have human-like

mental states, like rationality or self-consciousness, and if they dont, then we feel justified in using them as objects. Using the concentration camp analogy again, Coetzee suggests that we fault the Nazis because we can imagine ourselves in place of the victims and find it horrifying. Coetzee would like us to be able to imagine ourselves as the animals we use, to imagine what it would be like to be a rat or a monkey or a cow. The emphasis is on the feelings (such as pain and suffering) that we are likely to share with animals, not on the differences in cognitive abilities. This, in my opinion, acts as a far better guideline for how we treat animals than attempts to distinguish animals according to their mental capabilities (for example, Rattling the Cage, by Steven Wise). It is not easy to simply dismiss his arguments as hysterical, although it would be convenient. I found the book deeply disturbing. At the beginning of this review, I asked the reader to consider a hypothetical experiment in which one monkey needed to hurt another monkey in order to get food. Experiments nearly identical to it were conducted in the 1960s (see Wild Minds by Marc Hauser for a review).

Remarkably, these experiments showed that rhesus monkeys would starve themselves for days before they would hurt another rhesus monkey, no matter what the relationship between the two monkeys was beforehand. The strength of this sympathy was greater when the actor had been a receiver of shocks in a previous session, when he presumably could better imagine being the receiver. Rhesus monkeys did not, however, extend their sympathy to another species (a rabbit). In light of the books reviews above, several questions regarding these experiments come to mind. At a practical level, would such experiments be unethical by todays standards even though we learned something important about how monkeys view each other and another species? On a philosophical level, what do these experiments on a closely-related species tell us about our own nature, and how far we could or should extend our sympathies? Neither of the two books provides a definitive answer to these questions, but The Scalpel and the Butterfly gives us a perspective on our current state and history, and The Lives of Animals offers a passionate and compelling look at one side of the debate.

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