Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving all!
Today was marked by a veritable flood of media attention on the continued UBC animal research debate. A diverse range of media groups including CBC News, the Vancouver Sun, and online sources presented opinions and stories on the ongoing request for UBC’s animal research data.
Why UBC has not responded with a clear and definite answer is beyond me. Science has benefited so much in the last 10 years thanks to the increase in and availability of open-source platforms. Indeed, many institutions are actively pursuing publication in open source media, due to the incredible increase in journal prices. So why the secrecy with animal experimentation?
It doesn’t help when some animal rights groups still present data from the 1950s and voraciously denounce “vivisection”. Which of course, is followed by scientists denouncing activists as “nutcases” or the like.
In reality, both sides need to move forward, if only for the betterment of animal welfare.
Yes, vivisection is bad. It describes a “live dissection”. But it doesn’t happen in modern research. When tissues are required that can’t be obtained by sampling, the animals are euthanized humanely and then necropsied (AFTER death) for their tissues. To continue to rail against the practice of “vivisection” does not help the cause of animal welfare. True, many groups will continue to use it because it evokes horrific images of cruelty – but do you want to change science for the better, or just inspire mistrust and promote ignorance? (Note: If examples of vivisection can indeed be found in modern research, please castrate the instigators, with my blessing. 😉
Yes, crazy car-bombing family-threatening activists are bad. But that doesn’t describe everyone. Most people just care about animal welfare. Sure there are nut jobs out there, but pick ANY cause and you will find that there are people who like to cause trouble who are drawn to “causes”. That doesn’t mean that the cause itself is bad.
Activists need to be shown that animals are, at the very least, being treated humanely and that animals are only used when absolutely necessary. They need to be able to understand modern scientific data and use examples from modern research to support their causes. I highly recommend some of the research which UBC’s Animal Welfare department has done. For example they have found that the most commonly used method of mouse euthanasia, CO2 asphixiation, may actually be more distressing to mice than originally thought. Disturbing, since it is so widely used.
Scientists need to better understand the ethical concerns raised by activists. They are valid concerns! It is disturbing that so few science majors take philosophy or ethics, because as we have seen in the past, science without morality is a dangerous thing.
I’ll be keeping an eye on the situation as it unfolds. Check back for updates!
AlbinoMouse 
You raise some really great points, but overlook the fact that many forward-looking scientists are turning their back on animal research so it’s not just improvement in the animals’ captive conditions we need to press for but to join in the global trend to conduct science differently. Vivisection means literally the cutting up of live animals and this includes the horrific cat research that has recently been uncovered as happening at UBC. So it is by no means a historical term. To turn our back completely on the intelligence of historical opponents to animal experimentation is to deny the deep-rooted understanding of the many experts who have called for abolition ever since Descartes declared that animals do not experience suffering.
My disagreement stems from the use of the term “vivisection” which is considered archaic in modern science.
It is true that invasion procedures are carried out on live or dead animals. I don’t deny that. My point is that no one doing current research would use the term vivisection, and in order to have effective dialogue, we must use the same terms, with the same meanings, so that we do not misunderstand each other.
For example, the cat research you refer to would more accurately be described as a surgical procedure. Whether or not the surgery was ethically done or not, is a different discussion. But to call it “vivisection” is offensive to a lot of researchers because of it’s association with past cruelties. My understanding of vivisection as it was done in the past, is that it describes dissection of an animal while it is alive. But this is different from a surgery, which is done under anesthesia and where the animal is expected to recover. So my disagreement is more of a linguistic one. It is the same as if you talked to an evolutionary biologist and tried to tell them that evolution occurred through use and disuse of traits, rather than using terms such as adaption and selection.
And it’s true – a lot of surgeries may not be necessary or may not further scientific knowledge. But it’s important, I think, to talk about them accurately, using terms whose meaning we can all agree on.
[…] specifically about animal research at UBC. Very interested read. Today’s blog story: Increased scurtiny, media attention on UBC research Also, CBC radio national (out of Toronto) just called. They will be doing a story […]
So the word “vivisection” is now one more stumbling block in the way to abolition. Getting embroiled in this kind of semantics is a way of getting around the awful reality of the animal lab, and the circumstance that so many people believe the laboratory propaganda that animal experiments are necessary, so lots of beating around the bush is required.
Animal models are not predictive for man, as their supporters claim, and are therefor a very dangerous practice rather than a progressive one, which is destroying human health and curing nothing, eg cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, birth defects, pharmaceutical poisoning, etc., all of which are of epidemic proportions today, with no cure in sight, in spite of all the billions of dollars, and the promises and the claims of success — and all that endless “study”.
So why won’t people believe this, even though a host of medical authorities have told us so, but prefer to admire those who torture animals on the despicable pretext of healing humanity? Amazing!!
The bizarre cruelties perpetrated have always been denied, so why would it be any different today. Keeping a cat immobilized in a stereo-taxic device for 6 months while poking around in its brain and spine is not the work of the healer but something quite different.
This statement shows us the dismal failure of animal studies, so-called:
“We have learned well how to treat cancer in mice and rats but we still can’t cure people.” – Professor Colin Garner, Accelerator MS Is a Powerful New Tool, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, Vol. 27, No. 15, 2007
Was the editor of the Medical Review of September, 1957 wrong when he wrote this? “The widespread animal experimentation is of no practical use whatever in furthering the art and science of medicine. It is certainly up to the well-instructed members of the medical profession to denounce it. As regards this journal at any rate, we shall continue to do so.”
To believe that the crimes which humanity is inflicting against the animals in the pseudo-scientific laboratories can go unpunished is not just a sign of obtuseness but of folly. The child who is born retarded or malformed or dies of cancer or leukemia because its mother was prescribed a harmful hormone or tranquilizer that had been proved harmless in long, drawn-out, cruel animal tests – this child pays for the crimes committed by others. But so have billions of animals had to pay in the cruelest way for the callousness not only of the vivisectors but of humanity at large, which bears at the very least the guilt of indifference – indifference to the infinite tortures other sentient beings have been subjected to; and many people bear the responsibility of having actively supported the inhuman methods that now fall back on them and their offspring. A great many innocent human beings must also pay for the continual violations of the moral law, simply because they are members of the human race, and that can’t be helped. The moral law, once it starts operating, lets the chips fall where they may, and all one can say is that those chips are very effective.