In 2004, the journalist Friedrich Mülln filmed with a hidden camera what was happening in the largest primate research center in Europe, located in Münster (Germany) and owned by Covance, a multinational dedicated to the development of medicines and animal testing services. The images showed the monkeys being roughly carried, yelled at and danced by staff to thunderous pop music, as well as being isolated in tiny cages with no natural light or care. Primatologist Jane Goodall called his conditions horrendous : “A monkey alone in a cage, unable to do anything, will go mad from boredom and sadness.”
Is it legal to use animals in scientific research? Certainly, experimentation with them has been key in the progress of medicine . Louis Pasteur would not have been able to prove the controversial germ theory in 1881 if he had not inoculated 50 sheep with anthrax and vaccinated only half the flock. The isolation of insulin in dogs in 1922 revolutionized the treatment of diabetes, and 100,000 monkeys died in the development of the polio vaccine – 65 doses were obtained for each one slaughtered. More recently, the toxicity and efficacy of AIDS drugs have been tested in macaques, as have the mechanisms of transmission of the disease from infected pregnant mothers to fetuses, which have served to determine antiviral treatment for pregnant women. .
Now where is the limit? Do we accept “anything goes” with the excuse of scientific progress? In the 1970s, University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist Harry Harlow used baby rhesus macaques to cause clinical depression. For six weeks he would leave them in a vertical cage with slippery walls, dubbed by Harlow himself the “hole of despair,” since within days the poor macaquitos huddled quietly in a corner. Upon release, they showed social maladjustment and violent behavior; most never recovered.
Tests of this style were carried out profusely between 1940 and 1960, especially at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, in Atlanta (USA), one of the most important research centers in the world. The harshness of his deprivation studies is glaring. For example, newborn chimpanzees were kept in total darkness for three years, and others had their feet and hands covered to immobilize them for two years. Was it necessary so much cruelty to demonstrate something so obvious that if a social animal is deprived of companionship, pathological behaviors will appear?
In 2003 theCNNmade public theNeurosurgeon E. Sander Connolly’s Experiments, from Columbia University, which simulatedstrokes in baboons by removing their eyeballs, in order to clamp an artery in your brain. Then he applied a neuroprotective medicine to them and kept them alive for several days in a terrifying state. Connolly justified this barbarity, because “he could get relevant results.” It is the scientific version of “the end justifies the means.”
Another example is that of the Columbia University cardiologist and television showman.Mehmet Oz, defender of peculiar pseudo-medical practices such as so-called energy therapies, which defend the existence of a vital energy that animates living beings. On one occasion he kept a dog for 29 days with its chest open and subjected to radiofrequency ablation, which consists of the removal of part of the electrical conduction system of the heart – a technique used to treat arrhythmias. After suffering paralysis and severe pain in his hind legs and urination, he was euthanized, according to the record, the day after Oz noted that the dog was “lively, attentive and receptive.” The organization PETA (People for Ethics in the Treatment of Animals) talks on its website about the“Dogs tormented in the cruel experiments of Dr. Oz”.
Thetoxicological studiesThey are the ones that carry the most bugs. After the tragedy of 1937, when a sulfanilamide elixir made from diethylene glycol killed 105 people in the United States, the North American Congress passed laws that required safety tests on animals before the drugs could be put into circulation. In the 1960s, after the disaster of thethalidomide-a medicine to combat vomiting in pregnant women that caused deformities in fetuses-, the law was extended to testing pregnant females.
But what is unsustainable is that thecosmetic industryexperiment on animals and condemn them to die for our sheer narcissism. For this reason, on March 11, 2009, the European Union prohibited tests of this type for the manufacture of beauty items, aimed at determining the damage of their ingredients to the eyes and skin, and their global toxicity. Products normally undergo the Draize test, which is performed withrabbits. To these, the cosmetic is applied to a depilated area where adhesive tape is stuck, which is stretched with force several times until several layers of skin are removed. Then it is covered with a plastic and the effects are observed. They are also applied to the eyes for several days and damage to the eye tissue – iris inflammation, ulceration, bleeding, blindness – is recorded while the rabbit is immobilized in a cage with the head out and the eyelids open with clips. Many break their necks trying to escape.
In truth, it is absurd to use specimens of this species as a model to study eye damage in humans, since their physiology is totally different from ours. The only reason is that rabbits are cheap, with big eyes, and easy to handle. In 1986, three researchers from Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati compared in their research titledCutaneous and ocular toxicologyeye injuries caused by accidental exposure to 14 household products in 281 people with the results obtained in Draize tests. Result: the severity of the response of the rabbit’s eye to a poison does not serve to predict its effects on our eyeball.
Calculating the number of animals slaughtered is difficult. According to the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics , every year 100 million vertebrates are experimented with worldwide – 10 million in the EU. This figure does not include animals raised for research that are later discarded or those destined for the breeding of new specimens. Nor does it collect invertebrates because, except for some species of cephalopods, they are not subject to any law: you can kill as many flies as you want .
Within vertebrates,mammalsare the most used and, among them,the most controversial are non-human primates. Chimpanzees, for example, play guinea pigs throughout their lives. Some are as veteran as the female Wenka, born in a Florida laboratory on May 21, 1954 and ripped from her mother’s care for a year and a half vision study; later it was sold as a pet to a family. In 1957, when it became too big to have at home, it was returned to the Yerkes Center, which made continued use of it. It has given birth to six children. The eldest, the female Jama, has the dubious honor of being thefirst chimpanzeeborn withDown syndrome. During her maturity Wenka has participated in studies on alcohol, oral contraceptives, aging and cognition. Except for the few moments that allow her to go out to a cement patio, she has spent her almost 56 years of life in a cage.
There is currently amoratorium on chimpanzee husbandry, because in 1986 it was discovered that macaques were better models for the study of AIDS, among other diseases. But the publication of its complete genome in 2005 has regained interest in chimps and there are numerous calls to lift the ban.
However, there are many dissenting voices, such as the primatologist at the University of California, San Diego, Pascal Gagneux, who believes that “we should follow the same ethical guidelines that we use with disabled people to give consent”, and that our similarities with chimpanzees they go beyond 99% of the genome we share. Primatologists like Jane Goodall have revealed not only their intelligent behavior, capable of developing rudimentary technology, or their linguistic ability, but that they have a social and family life similar to ours. Goodall calls them individuals, and the chimps treat her as if she were a member of the clan.
At the other extreme is the neuroscientist Stuart Zola, director of the aforementioned Yerkes center: “I don’t think we should dodistinctions when treating any species humanely, be it rats or monkeys. Try as we might, chimpanzees are not human. “British psychologist Richard D. Ryder christened that viewpointspeciesism, a neologism “to describethe widespread discrimination that humans practice against other species“.
The principle of the three r’s that researchers must attend to was born from the concern that at the end of the 1950s was produced in society by the use of animals in scientific experiments. The three R’s refer to replacement, reduction, and refinement.
According to the principle, whenever possible alternative techniques will be used instead of animals if they provide the same level of information that would be obtained through living beings (replacement). Alternative techniques are audiovisual media, virtual reality techniques, in vitro methods, with microorganisms, computer simulations … The reduction refers to using the least possible number of animals to achieve the goal set. And refinement refers to the obligation to alleviate or reduce the possible pain or discomfort suffered by the animal.
Researchers therefore have to demonstrate that there is no other alternative to animal experimentation and report what they will do to use the fewest number of animals and to minimize their pain.
In 1991 the ECVAM (European Center for the validation of alternative methods) was created, the institution in the European Union in charge of validating alternative methods in order to reduce the number of animals used in experiments and to promote less painful procedures .
Speciesism has been criticized by animal rights advocates, led by Princeton University philosopher Peter Singer, who claims that it is morally wrong to regard sentient beings as objects or property. For Tom Regan, a philosopher at the University of North Carolina, all creatures have inherent rights, and we cannot assign them a lower moral value simply because they lack rationality. Zoologist Richard Dawkins connects speciesism with the theory of evolution: “Our legal and moral systems are closely tied to species. The abortion of a single human zygote can cause more outrage than the vivisection of several intelligent adult chimpanzees. The only reason why we can feel comfortable with this double standard is that the intermediate stages between man and chimpanzee are dead. “
The debate is eminently philosophical. Carl Cohen of the University of Michigan considers himself a speciesist: “Those who do not make the distinctions between species morally relevant are almost certainly going to misunderstand their true obligations.” The Finnish philosopher Camilla Kronqvist sympathizes with Singer, but does not accept his arguments: “To say that our morality rests on attending to someone’s pleasure and pain is also a rather crude description of what a moral being is.” The key is to define what is the relevant characteristic that makes a creature have rights. For those who believe that the answer is rationality, only humans fulfill the condition as the only beings capable of giving value to things.
Therights defendersAnimals counterattack with the so-called principle of marginal cases: if rationality and responsibility for actions are the reason for being part of the moral community, why do we include in it those humans who lack these characteristics, such as babies or children. certain mentally handicapped? We grant rights to these fringe cases simply because they belong to our species.
The Dominicans Benedict Ashley and Albert Moraczewski, scholars of the moral aspects of science and biomedicine, reply that a fetus or a disabled person has rights because they necessarily originate from human beings and as they develop they will become people and not something else . Philosopher Tibor Marchan, from Auburn University, Alabama, reasons in this line: even if a chair has a broken leg, it does not stop being a chair. Marginal cases, because they are human, still have rights. In other words, moral worth is defined by belonging to a group, not by what a particular individual is. For animal advocates, it is obvious that if it is immoral to judge the value of an individual based on his race, it is just as immoral to do so based on his species. Animal liberation movements seek to abolish protection laws, as they are based on the sense of property.
A chimpanzee is a sentient being with its own rights and not an object or property, says Singer. It is here where the controversial Great Ape Project promoted by this philosopher takes place. It wants the UN to accept that chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans are included in a community of equals with us; and that it extends to these species the protection of three basic interests: the right to life, individual liberty and the prohibition of torture. The Spanish government has been the first to approve a proposal in this regard.
Clear that some exaggerate in the defense of the fauna. As in the Walt Disney films, animals are humanized, an activist like Mark Hawthorne wrote in these terms: “One day a cow entered the garden and began to graze. I had never been so close to one, it was so sensitive. I could see his intelligence and desire to live. ” These feelings emerge especially when it comes to species that recall the appearance – and the look – of the human baby. Is the callBambi effect, que induce Warm thoughts toward creatures with hair and feathers – never slimy or scaly ones.. We protest the death of a lamb, but not the death of a toad. This bias is evident in Tom Regan, who always refers to baby seals, dogs, cats … Thus, speciesism fought by animal liberation movements becomes aclassism, since all his references focus on the taxonomic class of mammals, leaving birds somewhere in between. They say nothing or little about reptiles, amphibians and all invertebrates.
Spiders or flies have no rights? These are reserved for sensitive animals that experience damage, as Singer and others say. Invertebrates don’t suffer pain? There is little research on this. In a 1980 article, British entomologist Vincent Wigglesworth provided examples of critters that did not respond to stimuli that would certainly cause pain in humans. However, according to a team of entomologists from the University of Queensland, in Australia, these tests do not show that they do not suffer but that, if there is a sense of harm, it does not have any adaptive influence on behavior, such as protecting a injured area until recovery: “It is not possible to provide a conclusive answer to the problem of pain in lower animals,” they say. Recent experiments seem to suggest that beings like the larvae of the fly Drosophila melanogaster are not insensitive. In 2003 W. Daniel Tracey, of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, proved that if a needle heated to more than 42ºC is approached, the larva will roll away from the heat. That same year, researchers from the California Institute of Technology identified the gene that cancels pain in a mutant Drosophila, since the dipteran did not respond to harmful stimuli.
We must be prudent in assigning these creatures the same value that we vertebrates place on the sensation of harm or in concluding that they do not feel pain just because they do not react to it as we do. No insect stops eating or reproducing in case of abdominal wounds; in fact, they continue with their normal activity even if they have lost a limb. “It is presumptuous to assume that what is true for us must be true for other species,” say New Zealand entomologists RP McFarlane and RP Griffi. We would have to rethink “the widespread belief that an insect is too small and its central nervous system so different that it is unable to have conscious thought, plan actions or feel .” Maybe we should accept that they are different and wait for more data? And if sensitive animals have rights, should insecticides be banned?
