The Animal Manifesto (17 page)

The suffering of these sentient beings goes unnoticed because it is shrouded by the water in which they live, but it’s safe to say that it would not be tolerated if it happened on land in situations such as commercial meat production. What is simply unacceptable is that there isn’t any legislation that is concerned with this hidden problem. Because most fur animals trapped in aquatic sets struggle for more than three minutes before losing consciousness, biologists have argued that they did not meet basic trap standards and therefore can’t be considered humane. Camilla Fox concluded, “For an activity that
affects millions of wild animals each year, it is astounding that so little is known about the full impact of trapping on individual animals, wildlife populations and ecosystem health.”

In his book
The Great Compassion,
activist and Buddhist scholar Norm Phelps notes in a chapter titled “The Rosary of Death” that worldwide about 48 billion animals are killed annually for food and fabric, of whom 46 billion are chickens, ducks, turkeys, and geese. But what about the 115 million wild animals who are killed annually just for the pleasure of it? Sport hunting is the second leading form of animal killing in the United States, although it is decreasing. Still, there’s now evidence that hunting is having an effect on the size of animals who survive the nonselective onslaught of humans, and hunting and commercial fishing may hurt the long-term survival of some species. Over the course of a thirty-year study on Ram Mountain in Alberta, Canada, biologist Marco Festa-Bianchet Sherbrooke discovered that both male and female sheep were getting smaller and that the size of the horns of bighorn sheep declined by about 25 percent. Biologists argue that hunting has led to a form of “evolution in reverse.” Festa-Bianchet notes, “When you take them[larger and more fit individuals] systematically out of the population for several years, you end up leaving essentially a bunch of losers doing the breeding.” This threatens the viability of the species and actually leaves fewer of the prized “trophy animals” hunters want in the first place.

Of course, death is easy to quantify. When we are keeping rather than killing animals, judging what treatment qualifies as “cruel” can be less clear. However, take circuses: elephants spend between 72 to 96 percent of the time chained, big cats are confined to small cages upwards of 95 percent of the time, and horses are tethered up to 98 percent of the time. Would a
human performer put up with this? In February 2009, a suit was filed against Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus claiming that the circus abused their elephants and used fear to get them to cooperate and perform, which challenged the circus’s claim that the elephants were happy, healthy, and well cared for. In addition, a recent British study found that about 54 percent of elephants in U.K. zoos suffer from daytime behavioral problems. As we’ll explore more later, it’s now well documented that zoos can’t satisfy the social, emotional, or physical needs of elephants, and elephant exhibits are being phased out at some major U.S. zoos, despite the fact that they’re moneymakers. Zoos, according to renowned New York University philosopher and ethicist Dale Jamieson, remain “more or less random collections of animals kept under largely bad conditions.”

Indeed, what if zoos contained only those animals who could be well cared for in conditions reasonably close to their actual natural habitats? What animals would then be left, and what would zoo visitors really lose if this happened? Wouldn’t zoos without elephants and lions — and perhaps many other species — become lessons in compassion? Children and all visitors would learn that animals are not commodities to be controlled and exploited for human ends, but individuals with whom humans seek to connect and treat with dignity. Wouldn’t this turn zoos into places where everyone in them — animals and humans alike — was for the most part happier?

We’re only fooling ourselves whenever we claim that animals are adequately protected from pain and suffering. In the
United States, the minimum standard of care for animals in most settings — such as research, commercial sale and transportation, exhibition, and others — is established by the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), which is governed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. However, only about 1 percent of animals used in research in the United States are protected under the AWA. Or, put differently, around 99 percent of research animals have no legal protections. This is because the AWA has sometimes been amended in nonsensical ways to accommodate the “needs” of researchers. For example, in 2004, mice, rats, and birds bred for research were excluded from the AWA’s definition of “animal,” and farmed animals are not covered by federal legislation, yet these animals are the most frequently used and abused animals in research.

Despite the extremely limited number of animals the AWA covers, from 2002 to 2007, violations of the Animal Welfare Act in the United States increased more than 90 percent. In 2006 alone there were 2,107 known violations of the AWA, with the highest level of violations occurring in the areas of Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (which oversee research; 58 percent) and veterinary care (25 percent). It’s been estimated that about 75 percent of all laboratories violate the AWA at one time or another.

Karen Davis, president of United Poultry Concerns, notes:

Millions of birds suffer miserably each year in government, university, and private corporation laboratories, especially considering the huge numbers of chickens, turkeys, ducks, quails, and pigeons being used in agricultural research throughout the world, in addition to the increasing experimental use of adult chickens and chicken embryos to replace
mammalian species in basic and biomedical research. For example, Colgate-Palmolive sponsored the development of the CAM (Chorioallantoic Membrane) Test, an eye irritation test in which vivisection of fertilized chicken eggs is necessary to expose the egg’s interior membrane to the materials being tested. . . .

Slaughter experiments are also routinely performed on live chickens, turkeys, ducks, ostriches, and emus, in which these birds are subjected to varying levels of electric shock in order to test the effect of various voltages on their muscle tissue for the meat industry. For example, the Spring 2002 issue of the
Journal of Applied Poultry Research
has an article in which USDA researchers describe shocking 250 hens in a laboratory simulation of commercial slaughter conditions to show that “subjecting mature chickens to electrical stimulation will allow breast muscle deboning after 2 hours in the chiller with little or no additional holding time.”

Clearly, animal laws and their enforcement are both inadequate protections from arrogant, self-centered “research” like this. Even the prestigious journal
Nature,
which largely defends animal research, noted in 2009: “The federal government should conduct a thorough review of the regulations concerning animal research to eliminate gaps, ensure compliance and strengthen penalties. Ideally, the oversight powers would be consolidated within a single organization. But, in any case such measures might boost public confidence in animal research.”

It is incumbent on all people who work with animals to take responsibility for their practices and always to use the
most humane and noninvasive techniques possible. Not only will this produce more reliable data but it will also set an example for future researchers, including young children, who might want to pursue a career in science. Not only is it incumbent on us to conduct humane research, and treat animals well in every setting, but we must own our actions. Far too many people, including practicing scientists, ignore the fact that each of us is individually responsible for our own choices. If we harm animals, even if we are just doing our job in a research lab, we still are the ones causing intentional suffering, pain, or death. Most people who work with animals on a daily basis come to care about and even love the animals, and they feel bad when the animals suffer and die. In particular, a 2008 story in the
New Scientist
looked at researchers who weep for the animals they must kill, and sometimes seek counseling and hold memorial services to cope with their grief.

The article quotes Gill Langley of the Dr. Hadwen Trust for Humane Research, who said, “Omitting any mention of the suffering caused to animals during experimental procedures, the technicians seemed to care only about the moment of euthanasia. What a bizarre reversal of priorities that animal technicians, who freely apply for and continue with their jobs, should seek emotional support for the remorse and grief they cause themselves by harming and killing animals, albeit in the name of science. Rather than wasting resources on commemorative services, more would be achieved by replacing animal research and testing methods with humane alternatives. That way, animals, human patients and technicians would all benefit.”

“Mice are lousy models for clinical studies.”

— Mark Davis, PhD,
Director of the Stanford Institute for Immunity

“Since President Richard Nixon declared the war on cancer in his famous State of the Union address of 1971, cancer has become the second-biggest killer of Americans. Two in every five of us will be diagnosed with cancer, and one of us will die from it. Millions of dogs, cats, monkeys, guinea pigs, rabbits and mice have lost their lives, and billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent, in the quest for a cure. Yet, despite decades of intense effort, age-adjusted mortality rates have slowly increased, and experts such as Dr. J. C. Bailar III, former chief administrator of the war on cancer, tell us that all these efforts focused largely on improving treatment must be judged a ‘qualified failure.’ How could this be so, when researchers tell us that animals are so similar to human beings that drugging, irradiating and dissecting them provides a valid model for a human cancer victim? Perhaps it is because, as the researchers also tell us, animals are in fact so different from humans that these things may be done without consent, kindness, painkillers or adequate medical care, as undercover investigations of laboratories repeatedly reveal. Perhaps those differences have something to do with the fact that adverse reactions to drugs deemed safe after passing animal tests are the fourth-leading killer of Americans, killing more people each year than all illegal drugs combined.”

— Veterinarian Andrew Knight

An increasing number of scientists are growing skeptical about the use of animal models in scientific research. But there are some hangers-on who ignore the warnings of their colleagues and use misleading moral arguments to justify their treatment
of animals. The U.S. National Institutes of Health, in conjunction with an animal research trade group, promotes a children’s coloring book called
The Lucky Puppy
that presents a false view of what animal experimentation entails, so much so that the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has called attention to the misleading messages that this book presents.
The Lucky Puppy
implies that researchers are trying to cure animals who are already sick, rather than purposely infecting them with diseases, and it ignores the fact that animals suffer and die in the process. The only thing such propaganda reveals is the dishonesty of the people who created it.

In a recent discussion of the use of animals to study human pain, psychologists and animal experimenters Stuart Derbyshire and Andrew Bagshaw wrote, “We believe that animals are sufficiently different from us that pursuing experimentation with animals to advance human interests is morally justified.” Clearly these researchers want it both ways — animals are different enough so that it’s moral to cause them pain but similar enough that we can learn about human pain by torturing them. Further confirming their self-serving logic, Derbyshire and Bagshaw note that we don’t do the same things to humans that we do to animals because it would be immoral on humans. Meanwhile, Roberto Caminiti, chair of the Programme of European Neuroscience Schools, argues that it will never be possible to replace animals in research, yet Caminiti conveniently avoids any discussion of the numerous non-animal alternatives that are available, many of which are currently being used successfully.

Bill Crum of the Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London counters Caminiti as follows: “To my mind, there is a moral inconsistency
attached to studies of higher brain function in non-human primates: namely, the stronger the evidence that non-human primates provide excellent experimental models of human cognition, the stronger the moral case against using them for invasive medical experiments. From this perspective, ‘replacement’ should be embraced as a future goal.”

Unfortunately, the use of animal models often creates false hopes for humans in need. While the human mortality rate has declined since 1900, it is estimated that only 1 to 3.5 percent of the decline stems from the results of animal research. If all of the current animal research going on today were equally “successful,” we must ask ourselves, will it be worth the death and suffering it causes so that humans can, on average, live a year or so longer?

Innumerable animals are used in biomedical research, but compelling data show that studies on animals — particularly mice and great apes such as chimpanzees — make little contribution to progress in treating diseases. In a recent review of the ability of animal models to predict human outcomes, a team of a medical doctor, a veterinarian, and a philosopher concluded: “When one empirically analyzes animal models using scientific tools they fall far short of being able to predict human responses. This is not surprising considering what we have learned from fields such[as] evolutionary and developmental biology, gene regulation and expression, epigenetics, complexity theory, and comparative genomics.” Concerning mice, another report summarized, “When it comes to adapting therapeutic interventions that seem to cure all kinds of infectious
disease, cancers and autoimmune conditions in mice for use in human beings, the record is not so good. The vast majority of clinical trials designed to test these interventions in people end in failure.”