A little while back, I posted and discussed some of the results from a Pew survey on scientists, taken by both scientists and the general public. Most readers probably missed it, but buried at the bottom of the page is an exchange of several comments between me and someone who might charitably be labeled an animal rights sympathizer. I’ve been chewing on that exchange for a few days, and now I have a pretty long post to make on the subject. First off, I detest her rhetoric; labeling all scientists as Nazis or terrorists is not an effective way to begin a dialogue. But what I probably hate worse than that is a complete unwillingness to answer difficult questions in the broad spectrum of living things used by scientists.
Let’s begin by stipulating that to a scientist, “using animals” in research means that ultimately you will kill them yourself. It isn’t always true, but it usually is, and will make the following discussion simpler. On the spectrum of using living things in research, at one end we have using humans in research. Not gonna happen. On the other end of the spectrum we have using E. coli bacteria. You might roll your eyes, but you shouldn’t. Bacteria are – by a landslide – the most commonly used organism in all of biological research. And we kill them by the billions at a time. I’ve never encountered someone who has a problem with this. Moving on up from there are S. cerevisiae, aka yeast. They are also living organisms, and as eukaryotes, they are much, much more closely related to humans than are the prokaryotic bacteria. Nevertheless, no one is protesting for the rights of yeast cells, as they probably shouldn’t. But neither E. coli nor yeast cells are animals. What happens once we move into the realm of animals?
First up among the animals are the nematode worms. C. elegans are a model system used to study development. The most common sex has 959 somatic cells, of which several hundred are neurons. And still, I don’t think anyone is protesting this, are they? Next up are the flies. Whereas C. elegans are a relatively new model system, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has been used by biologists for much longer, and to this day is still considered the model organism gold standard for genetic studies. It’s starting to get a little harder, right? Unlike the previous organisms, flies have heads, eyes, limbs, and abdomens, just like we do (of course, they also have attenae and wings). And at a certain level, I am sure that this matters. The more an animal resembles humans, the harder it is to kill them, right? But still, they are so small, they have no bones (but instead possess an exoskeleton) and they do not possess a closed circulatory system. This means they have no heart and veins. Does this make it ok to kill dozens of flies or hundreds of larvae at a time? Because they are animals, and it happens every day in hundreds if not thousands of labs across the country.
For what it’s worth, this is where I draw my line, as far as what I am willing to do myself. My current research uses only bacteria and yeast, and that will not change for the duration of my graduate career. I am more of a biochemist and structural biologist, and we typically work with living things at a minimum. This is not just a convenience for my conscious, but one of several reasons (all of varying importance) that I chose this particular field. I once used fruit fly larvae in a project during high school, but am pretty sure I won’t be moving back in that direction, probably ever again.
Next up are the Xenopus, or frogs. They are an extremely common and useful model system for the study of development. I know less about them, but they are higher up the animal kingdom than flies, so they were next in line.
And finally, in a department like mine, mice is the end of the game; it’s as far up the animal kingdom as we go. Mice are mammals, and are therefore much closer to humans than any of the previous animals. Also unlike most of the previous animals, there is no doubt that they can feel pain. I once watched a friend kill mice in her lab. She was a neurobiologist, and was studying changes in their hippocampi, so she would slice off their heads with a pair of surgical scissors and then dissect the heads and brains to get the particular tissue she studied. It grossed me out. A lot. But I made myself watch it. Make no mistake, despite not being able or willing to do this myself, I still strongly support this type of research. Virtually every medical benefit we use today came into use because, during the long pathway from basic science to medical testing to patient care, animals were used at some point. Scientists are sometimes guilty of not considering the consequences of their research on animals, but I’d say that many who oppose animal research are also guilty of not considering the human impact of limiting scientific progress by not using animals at all. I made myself watch those mice get their heads cut off to remind myself that everything has its cost. And just so you know, every university like mine has some office in place to comply with federal regulations when it comes to animal research. The purpose of their rules is to limit suffering as much as possible. Which is a good thing, of course. But at a certain level, you have to acknowledge that these are animals that are raised in captivity for their entire lives, and will die premature deaths at the hands of a scientist. There’s simply no getting around that.
As you get into the more applied medicine, of course, it goes further, including research on primates. I know much less about the systems in place to keep suffering to a minimum for medical research labs, but imagine they don’t differ tremendously from those in place here.
But like I said earlier, I drew my line as far as what I can do myself. As far as what I am ok with others doing, it includes essentially all animal research, provided that it fully complies with strict ethical guidelines. Those are my lines. Where do you draw yours? And if you oppose animal research, to which animals does that apply?
