Afterword: Evidence over Interests

Abstract

After years of science education, teaching experience, and research practice, which focused on the use of non-human primates as potential models of human psychological disorders, a young student in my primate behavior class amiably, but insistently, suggested my preparation was incomplete. She asked me to read Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation, which had been published two years earlier, in 1975. I had been lecturing in class about the effects of early experience on the rhesus monkey’s (Macaca mulatta) social and intellectual development, and my descriptions of the invasive research interventions and behavioral consequences encouraged her to make the book suggestion. I said I would try to find the time, but that I was busy. She handed me a fresh new copy of the book saying, “This is for you.” She made it clear that she was not loaning me her copy but wanted the book to be part of my professional library. Over the following weeks while describing this event to colleagues, many also involved in animal research, I asked them if they had read Professor Singer’s book. While some had heard of it, no one had actually read it. “Why should I do that?” was a common tone of the comments. After all, our experimental standards were quite clear and seemed self-evidently valid. That is, if any interesting and, therefore, valuable research question could not be tested in humans for ethical reasons, then it could be evaluated in animal models. Progress required risk, and progress was urgently needed. This powerful drive to know and understand nature, so as to improve the welfare of human beings, was what the bioethicist Paul Ramsey (1976) called, the research imperative, to emphasize its motivational dominance. In response to the student’s questioning looks as we saw one another in class, and out of respect for her serious intention, I did finally read Animal Liberation. The chapter titled, Tools for research or what the public doesn’t know it is paying for, quickly trapped my attention. Three of the assertions of the chapter were: (1) The raw descriptions of the experimental manipulations done to animals revealed a shocking emotional callousness on the part of investigators; (2) The extent of the harms, which the animals were required to absorb, seemed excessive in comparison with the many obvious or even trivial facts discovered; (3) It was estimated that after all the experimental effort and