I’ve made my opposition to animal research clear many times. And given that my posts on the subject have tended to alienate the very sort of people I am eager to win over to the cause of justice for our fellow creatures, I’m keeping this one short.
This morning’s paper featured this story.
Scientists have confirmed what poets have long known: Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Working with mouse-like rodents called prairie voles, scientists have found that close monogamous relationships alter the chemistry of the brain, fostering the release of a compound that builds loyalty but also plays a role in depression during times of separation.
The scientists found that after four days away from their mates, male voles experienced changes in the emotional center of their brains, causing them to become unresponsive and lethargic. When given a drug that blocked the changes, however, lonely voles emerged from their funk.
I am not a perverse sentimentalist who weeps more for lonely voles than for starving children in Somalia. But I teared up this morning thinking about the sheer wastefulness and the utter absence of empathy that is shot through this experiment. Any ethologist (someone who studies animal behavior without interfering in their lives) could have told you that many pair-bonded species grieve and mope when separated from a mate. Natural death of old age or predation offers plenty of examples; to allow two voles to bond and then deliberately separate them for the purpose of killing one so that his brain chemistry can be studied — this is jaw-droppingly, heartbreakingly immoral. So often, animal suffering is justified in the name of providing “life-saving” treatment for humans. But there is no pressing urgency that can justify the emotional torture of what the study reveals are intelligent creatures. Humans, as the article points out, rarely experience death as a result of being separated from a partner. They do suffer, as voles suffer.
After separating nine male voles from their partners, Young and colleagues from Emory and the University of Regensburg in Germany tested the animals’ ability to cope with stress.
When placed in a pool of water, the voles passively floated instead of trying to swim. In a second test, the animals failed to struggle when suspended by their tails.
The animals displayed “depressive behaviors,” Young said. “They become more passive, more likely to give up.”
When researchers killed the voles and looked inside their brains, they found elevated levels of CRF, which is known to have a role in depression.
Bold emphasis mine.
Cutting off funding for this sort of animal experimentation is critical. While threatening the lives of researchers and their family is unacceptable and inconsistent with justice-centered values, doing everything possible to expose monstrosities like this — often funded with tax-payer dollars — is vital.
Our need to understand the world is real. But real understanding, real knowledge, and real science must be built on a foundation of respect for life and wonder for creation. Goya remarked el sueno de la razon produce monstruos : the sleep of reason breeds monsters.
And as my paper tells me this morning, some of those monsters work for Emory and Regensburg universities.
I suppose it’s not entirely accurate to say that I was happy to read this entry, because I had the same reaction to the experiments as you. But it was good to read your eloquent articulation of such a sad situation. To induce suffering and watch suffering indeed cuts one to the core.
Professor Schwyzer, long-time reader and first-time commenter. This ruined my morning. Wow, wow, wow. The things humans can do to other living creatures. You’re correct, the only word is monstrous. I haven’t been able to think about those voles, aching for their mates, headed for torture and death to prove what? That mammals are sad when they’re separated from loved ones?
I can see why this stuff made you reconsider being a pacficist.
I guarantee it’s not “just” so they can find out the brain chemistry for no purpose beyond that. I am friends with scientists who study brain chemistry in rodents, and I suppose an outsider would say they are “just” studying the effect of aggression on the brain or alcohol on the brain. But the research done on animals like this has far-reaching effects. If you’ve ever taken an anti-depressant, I assure you it was developed after similar research that was “just” to measure the effects of various stimuli on rodent brains. There’s very promising research in using the way that alcohol affects the memory to treat PTSD, for one thing. Sure would be terrible for soldiers and rape victims who are crippled by PTSD to be told that no one can even research helping them because it’s cruel to rats. Reading about the vole separation thing, I suspect that they found information that, down the line, could be used to treat people who are suffering massive grief-related depression.
Scientists, as a rule, don’t enjoy having to kill rodents in their research. Biologists are often animal people, which is why they got into biology. The focus that animal rights people put on animal testing annoys me, because the target is selected in no small part because the people who do it are a minority and their ways are hard for outsiders to understand, making it easier to legislate against them. The real travesty in this world is the amount of meat that Americans eat that compels CAFOs. A handful of sad, then dead, rodents isn’t as troublesome to me as the thousands of animals that have lived miserable existences void of any joy and then are slaughtered to make sure that Americans get meat 3 times a day if they want it.
Amanda, you know I love you, but your first paragraph is pure “the ends justify the means.” And I don’t think that’s right — the alternatives to animal research are being developed, and if they are not ready yet, then it is better that we wait on the research. Good ends ultimately must be radically congruent with good means. I do not mean to compare your friends to Nazis (and I know plenty of research scientists myself), but the defense of the scientists at Nuremberg was, of course, that the horrible experiments they did had legitimate value. (It turned out that when it came to typhus, the Nazis got some stuff right. Doesn’t make it okay.) So invoke Godwin’s Law if you like, but I’m not willing to place animal lives ahead of human ones for the “chance” at promising research.
I say this as the son of a man who died of cancer, died far too young, died as I stroked him gently in his bed, died weighing less than eighty pounds. I would not sacrifice the life of a single vole or monkey or rat so that my father could have lived. And I loved that man with all my heart — but I know, in the final analysis, that all living and sentient, pain and joy-feeling creatures are equally valuable.
Again, I come from the perspective that rights reside not in humanness but in sentience. The evidence from the vole experiment is that these small rodents are sentient, and thus as deserving of life as any human person.
As for your remarks about meat: amen, sister, amen!
Hugo,
It saddens me that you can be simultaneously in favor of abortion rights and animal rights. How come you can’t work up the same sympathy towards an unborn baby as you can towards a vole?
There is very little ground in Christian tradition for an animal rights perspective. The Book of Acts specifically says that all animals are lawful for Christians (horsemeat may be an exception as it was banned by one of, I believe, the 13th century Popes.) St. Francis loved animals but he also accepted the Christian truth that animals are ontologically inferior to us, as we are ontologically inferior to the angels. Abortion, on the other hand, is categorically forbidden by scripture, sacred tradition and natural reason.
As for this study, of course it troubles me. Earlier this summer I was collecting insects for a survey and it pained me a little as I had to drop them in preservative and watch them drown. Nevertheless, my study is going to contribute to a better understanding of agricultural and grassland systems that could help feed people someday. And the vole researchers have learned something about vole nature that could help us better understand, and treasure, the gifts of Christian love and friendship. When it comes right down to it, voles are not people, and it is legitimate to do things to them that we would not do to people.
Hector –
Wait – abortion is categorically forbidden by scripture, sacred tradition and natural reason? Would that be the same scripture, sacred tradition and natural reason that kept men in ecclesial power to the exclusion of women? That ignored the equality of homosexuals?
Sorry, my cynicism aside, I would like to know the scriptural basis. Forming you in your mother’s womb and thou shalt not kill still depend on your understanding of a fetus. My own leanings tend to be pro-life – I am pro-choice in the cases of abortion, anti-death penalty in all cases, and a pacifist. I think including animal rights in such pro-life terms is, in fact, very Christian. After all, Adam was charged with the stewardship of all creation in Genesis, not the despotic domination of it.
Now, having said that, I admit I’m a carnivore – I eat meat, eggs, dairy – and I do so with a clear conscience. The voles? I don’t know. I appreciate being given different perspectives on animal rights, though, and the various opinions people have.