Earthlings: Ethics, Animals, and Numb Scientists

That the world is black and white is an unfortunate view. People can have compassion for animals, and still be good scientists, it certainly doesn't have to be one or the other. Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" brought the unethical treatment of animals to the public's eye, and although the book is obviously one-sided, the resulting changes in ethics protocols for medical research were astounding. In fact, the only good way to do research on animals is with compassion.

I am a scientist, but I am also an animal lover. I puppy-wash at my local shelter, and I try to buy free-range chicken. I worked in an animal-research facility at a university for 4 years, where I saw all manner of animals prodded and probed for all manner of reasons. My job: make them as comfortable as possible. That job didn't exist 15 years ago. I don't like watching animals suffer, but I like that someone with compassion was taking care of them, instead of someone void of emotions.

The extreme side is necessary to help shift the ignorant toward actions motivated by information. I will not save the world today by loving animals, but I can certainly make better decisions that might save an animal or two.

So, you watch a propaganda film by ARAs that emphasizes the worst behavior towards animals, probably culled from decades of footage, that is probably no longer relevant to current practices, and then say that we can learn something from this?

I disagree. One, I have a great deal of compassion for animals, own pets, and treat my animal subjects kindly. I don't think I've ever inflicted "suffering" on an animal in the course of my research. Unfortunately, my subjects have to die, but they do so humanely.

One thing that would benefit these discussions enormously - which I think is obvious seeing the positive and negative responses to my post from sciblings - is to actually see how research is done. I guarantee it will look nothing like the movie you saw if it was indeed all screaming and gore and the posts which have been wishy-washy on this issue seems to come from researchers who have not worked with animal subjects. Animals in research institutions are protected at multiple levels from abuse, from veterinarians who monitor every animal every single day, to IACUCs who evaluate animal protocols, to scientists like me who don't like animals to suffer. One of the problems with the ARA movement is the continual misrepresentation of the current process and standards to suggest abuse is widespread.

We are not "numb" to suffering. We may be numb to blood and guts - dissection becomes rote - but not numb to suffering. Finally, your moral equivalence argument at the end is frankly disgusting. I can go without being equated to a terrorist thanks.

Speaking of denialism...

Mark, perhaps you are not exactly up-to-date on the latest literature. I assure you that animal cruelty is happening on an equal, if not greater, scale than it was decades ago. Just take a look at a few of Jeremy Jackson's book recommendations (Fast Food Nation or The Omnivore's Dilemma) for current analyses of factory farms. Books are, unfortunately, some of the only insights we receive because photographs and video footage is so hard to acquire from an industry that wants to hide exactly how it earns its profit margins.

As for being disgusted by my last paragraph, I am equally disgusted with people who are in denial about the way animals are treated for their food, clothing, entertainment, and yes, occassionally, science (read Roger Fouts' Next of Kin for more insight into the use of chimpanzees for science). And while standards have improved drastically in the U.S. in regards to animal testing (my sister has conveyed a few of these milestones, being a biomedical engineer and carrying out a number of experiments with microscopic medical instruments on pigs herself), the global nature of all commodities, including research, means we must be wary of into how many corners these standards can be carried.

Again, erring on the side of compassion is not a liability. Sticking one's head in the sand and saying "what happens in my lab or other labs in my university/state/nation is alright" while denying the amount of animal cruelty in all sorts of other industries and nations around the globe is a worrying mistake.

Why do I have to apologize for factory farming? And what happens in other countries? I was writing about research use of animals in this country, the false portrayal of what happens in our labs by ARAs, and an attack on a scientist in my country at a public research institution.

You watch some nonsense propaganda film, then suggest we're numb, or lack compassion. Actually doing this work I know this to be false.

Why should I have to defend factory farming, or the practices that are out of my control in order to do animal research? Why do I have to defend those things when even our very enlightened practices are under attack? It's a total red herring.

There's a difference between compassion and rank emotionalism.

Finally, as far as your "you're the denialist" BS attack, try reading what our argument is. The extent to which we attack ARAs are for their methods, and the misrepresentation of the value of animals for research. I've said, in almost every single thread on the topic, that I don't object to people who don't want to use animals or see it as unethical. What I do object to is ARAs who suggest animals are not valuable for research, that attack scientists, and suggest we sit around torturing creatures for fun.

I think we all have to apologize for factory farming and what happens in other countries because we ultimately consume these products.

I pointed to your thread at Denialism merely as an indication that emotion (aside from the clear anger at animal rights) seemed to be lacking and that this trend was certainly not unique to your blog/readers but to the scientific community as a whole. We have been told that emotion should not be something that enters into a discussion on research and certainly not written about in any fashion. I was merely commenting that more compassion (and objection to cruelty) out in the world, by scientists or otherwise, is beneficial.

Thank you so much for this blog entry. I, too, was disheartened by the comments on Denialism. It's good to know that some in the field of science do care about animals.

MarkH, unless you actively fight against factory farming (even by peacefully choosing not to eat meat), then you don't need to apologize for it. But if you sit back and do nothing and continue to eat a meat-based diet, then you are condoning it.

Tracy,
Thank you for commenting. I must say that I believe most people in the field of science do care about animals (indeed, most of the people I work with, do research in support of conserving habitat and fishing less), including all of those at the Denialism discussion. I believe most scientists have been programmed that science should be dispassionate, and thus, as scientists, so are they. Scientists should be able to express sentiment (my friend who worked on earthworms, for instance, felt horrible about her experiments, but this emotion was never discussed in any permanent medium) but, moreover, I believe that the scientific realm must acknowledge that the rest of the world does not operate using such rational, dispassionate analysis.

Also, your last lines reminded me of that old adage: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

Mark H. In labelling the film Earthlings as propaganda, I can better understand why you can so easily dismiss the alleged widespread acts of cruel exploitation of animals in our world. As a scientist with a trained and perhaps even innate sense of curiosity to seek the truth, I am assuming you have a deep knowledgeof this subject that would entitle you to judge this film with such a bold dismissal. So why is this film Earthings a distorted portrayal of human cruelty towards animals and why does it merit being labelled propaganda?
.

Also Mark H.
Do you think a person free to consume anything of their choice should shoulder any responsibility for their choices?

Earthlings was one of the most traumatic things I've ever had to sit through; a number of people in the viewing room I was in were crying aloud. The film has a way of cutting to the ethical chase, clearing the cobwebs of vague rationalizations or lazy considerations about animals.

I agree with MarkH that there is much good that has been
implemented in animal use protocols in science. He should also see that, even with IUCAC committes and such, animals do suffer to some degree in science, and in some percentage of cases to a degree that is ethically troubling to many reasonable people. For that reason I find I cannot consider the ethics of animal experimention an entirely "closed case". It is a work in progress, and while it is in progress, it remains ethically and emotionally troubling for me.

But Ms. Jacquet's point is, as I understand it, more general than just animals-as-research-subjects. It is about the issue of compassion for the suffering of animals. On this I share her feelings, and was deeply disturbed by the film.

I can also strongly recommend the book Dominion by Matthew Scully about these same issues.

Oh boy, my comment was quoted but I won't take back what I said since my logic is undeniable. Aside from unsettling, I wanna know the specifics of why am I wrong, then I might consider changing my viewpoint. While this is not done, won't take my comments back.

As I'm reasonable guy, though, I'll take time to explain myself: first and foremost, I work with animals, in specific, Wistar rats. What we do in laboratory is to extract one of their superior molars, seal the alveolus with collagen, collagen plus carbon nanotubes in different concentrations and let them rest for a few days, depending on the group, to later be sacrificed. Yes, we do anesthetize them while we extract and we aren't particularly amused at doing all of this. As I said in my post at Denialism, to work on animals are a pain in the ass, but it doesn't mean we just hate them per se, we don't inflict suffering beyond the necessary and we ought to follow all the bioethical rules in order to have our papers published, which are pretty strict. We don't have fun poking them, nor inflicting suffering or anything like that, we just want to get over with testing in them and letting them rest all happy in their cages. We even give special food in order to help them eat with two teeth less. My fellow researchers and I really do care over our rats, however we still need our experiment done, doing it causing little suffering as possible is our goal.

Second, we are not guilty for anyone else doing barbarities with other animals. We do our part, with little mess as possible, they do their part, with big mess, some smart-ass see the latter and testifies all "animal experiments and such" as utmost evil and everyone doing them ought to be punished severely. Great, you have a radical and this radical punch the great public in the groin by doing some irresponsible and nasty coverage pointing only the superbad with one-sided arguments based only on emotion and nothing on reason. It appeals only to empathy, something a big percentage of the human population have to some degree, and in that way you can shortcut the "argument" down the brain, avoiding critical thinking. Not fair, not fair at all. The irony you can do the reverse, do a movie equally as shocking about people's many incurable and terrible diseases that could be solved with animal testing of medicaments and medicinal techniques. It would make people equally propense to follow my "radical idea" that anything is justifiable to save human race. It's intellectually dishonest.

However, that doesn't invalidate the awful practices some people are doing over the world. Face it, the same way most people have empathy, there are always some who doesn't, be it by genetical "problems" or by psycho-social issues, and these people are very likely to inflict pain on others, maybe specificaly to animals. The other source of animal grief is unscrupulous people who can afford these kind of animal treatment in order to get cash. Others simply ought to do it to sustain their families. It's a complex problem, and we need to deal it complexly. While it affect us in our emotional level to see some animals (did anyone ever fell sorry for a crunched roach?) or people in suffering, we need to take it like grown-up boys. Improve fiscalization and boycotting institutions who treat their animal subjects badly, put industry under heavy regulation for animal research and raise public awareness over the problem, without, of course, doing radical and blind to reason arguments. This will help us to satiate our emotional needs by ending animal handling bad practices.

Finally, better treatment of our animal subjects doesn't mean we are opening our spot as dominant species. Like I said, we are animals and we will always behave like animals, therefore other animals will be preyed by us, will be used to our entertainment, to our researches and for many other stuff. We are a predatorial species, it's in our genes, it's what we do, violence was needed to survive in the times we lived in caves, it eliminated our competitors, it made us reach where we are today, in the other hand our empathy and social relations skills allowed us to form somewhat cohesive societies and increase our chances of survival. We are a utterly sucessful species, however we are still torn apart our contraditorial psychological characteristics, in specific, violence/peace-loving behaviour: in one side, we are prone to violence, in the other, we just love peace. These emotional states feeds our intelectual self-struggle and gives birth to many aparently reasonable arguments for both sides of the question in many different spheres and situations. It's the price of having a subtler brain.

So, in the great scheme of things, suffering really doesn't matter, however it matters for us, as to tickle our sense of empathy. To appease it we ought to crack on those who treat animals real bad, give people who survive on their suffering alternatives and give psychological treatment to those who can't pass a day without throwing a dog into the microwave. All of that without taking radical and irrational measures like banning all the medical research on animals or anything crazy like that. These radical advocates are just nitwit denialists who can't see where the problem is and need to treated like that: denialists.

Thanks for commenting, Gabe. "My logic is undeniable. Aside from unsettling, I wanna know the specifics of why am I wrong." I used your comment (and I could have used many others) to illustrate what I saw at the Denialism blog as a calculated approach to animal welfare. I don't know that you're wrong. I just know that you're comment was cold.

You say this entry contributes to "one-sided arguments based only on emotion and nothing on reason" but I believe the Denialism thread had only reason and nothing on emotion, which, like it or not, is still a large variable in how the rest of society, including animal rights advocates, makes decisions. I also believe many scientists also have feelings about their test animals but are not allowed to express them (because science is mean to be dispassionate and because it might be perceived as admission of guilt).

I really like your suggestions to: "Improve fiscalization and boycotting institutions who treat their animal subjects badly, put industry under heavy regulation for animal research and raise public awareness over the problem, without, of course, doing radical and blind to reason arguments." I like your idea of a film to show the good side of animal testing, too. But I don't think this will solve the problem of animal welfare in our ultra-globalized economy without major alterations to some of the big trade agreements (such as WTO), which disallow us to express our social priorities at an international level. But the economists' argument is one of efficiency rationalization, not emotions or ethics...

"denialism"? great, another ism to label people with who do not think within the bounds of political correctness. you people are thought nazi's.

FACT is, so much of this footage is OLD, and FROM OTHER COUNTRIES. there is nothing we can do to right a wrong in another country, or practices that took place 30 years ago.

the fact that "speciesism" is compared with some other isms that were also created by the PC thought nazi's--sexism and racism, is a HUGE red flag that it is propaganda. the fact that it appeals to emotions only and not to logic is another red flag. also, this movie doesn't show the very ethical practices of small farmers, nor does it mention that the govt is responsible for the demise of the small farmer (and that is why we have commercial farming which is bad on many levels).

eliminating pets and animals as a food source is really just a way for creating the demand for a govt entity to ban farming altogether and have total control of the food supply (lab grown meat).

unfortunately this works on liberals because they feel the need to be martyrs--so much so, that they would sell their own children into slavery to make sure chickens (a very stupid animal) have human rights.

you people are crazy. i suggest that since we are such a burden on creatures large and small, that if you really mean what you say--take yourself out of the population. somehow, somewhere you are supporting enslavement or exploitation simply by living in a modern world--so really to adhere to your own righteous opinions--you should commit suicide.

"I do not endorse violence or destruction of any kind."

This would be a little more believable if it was't said right after a paragraph worth of apologism directed at the violent AR nuts. At least, I can't think of any other reason why you would disengenously choose to be offended more by the labelling of violent criminals as "vile" people than by the violent extremism they perpetuate.

In any case, you're tragically misinformed. You should really consult other sources sometime, information that wasn't entirely manufactured by people with an obvious vegan and political agenda.