Animal Ethos. Lesley A. Sharp
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however, I regularly encountered lab personnel who sometimes rescue animals from culling in ways that demonstrate forms of animal exceptionalism. At times in full view of a supervisor, a lab employee might spare a creature destined for culling and take this favorite animal home as a house pet; another might stage a back-door meeting with animal activists to find new homes for animals destined for euthanasia. In turn, the remains of favorite deceased animals might be retrieved from disposal and lovingly preserved and displayed as memorials to honor them. These unorthodox practices provide evidence both of alternative understandings of the charismatic qualities assigned to various creatures and of how the moral responses that prompt them facilitate possible human redemption.
In chapter 5, “The Animal Commons,” I consider other forms of animal rescue that emerged from data associated with researchers’ practices. Whereas animal technicians might save animals from culling or preserve their remains in memorial form, researchers demonstrate occasional attempts to share animals, especially in contexts marked by scarcity. I consider such specialized efforts to be moral actions that foster an emergent “animal commons” reminiscent of, say, the open-sourcing of data in other quarters of science.
In the book’s conclusion, “The Other Animal,” I revisit the boundaries that have circumscribed my research. As noted earlier in this introduction, Animal Ethos is concerned exclusively with contexts that employ mammals, a decision driven by the assumption that they are most likely to inspire affective—and, therefore, moral—responses in human lab personnel. I consider the affective power of “the other animal,” employing zebrafish as an analytical foil. Throughout this book I demonstrate the dialectical relationship between welfare and care; in the conclusion, I strive to move along another elusive boundary of interspecies empathy, asking in the end why, how, or even whether a dog, monkey, or ferret inspires stronger affective responses than does, say, a school of fish. As with welfare and care, attentiveness to empathy can unmask otherwise obscured, everyday practices that might deepen our understanding of morality as a significant social dimension of science.
PART I
Intimacy
1. The Sentimental Structure of Laboratory Life
Experimental scientists inhabit a world bereft of both a lexicon of affect and venues for expressing emotions for laboratory animals. In contrast, among animal technicians and lab veterinarians, “compassion fatigue” (Kelly 2015; Scotney, Mclaughlin, and Keates 2015)—especially in response to animal “sacrifice” or euthanasia—has garnered attention, and terms such as “grief,” “loss,” and “anger” alongside “pain” and “distress” figure prominently in associated literature, workshops, and symposia that target lab animal caretakers.1 When I ask lab researchers about the emotional burdens associated with lab animal suffering, without fail they reference the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), their in-house ethics boards (known as institutional animal care and use committees or IACUCs), and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) requirements, alongside disciplinary bioethical codes of conduct, to underscore that proper experimental design and animal management prevent acts of undue harm (and, thus, by association, their own emotional distress). Such responses are not unique to animal research: they echo those that typify physicians’ responses to the subject of patient “suffering” in clinical settings (Sharp 2009a). Actions that cause excessive or unwarranted harm are deemed unethical.
This black-boxing of suffering does not preclude affection and concern for lab animals, however. As I learned during my previous research on artificial heart design, experimental bioengineers rarely regard the research calves and sheep with whom they work as mere work objects. Rather, many develop strong emotional attachments to creatures they recall fondly decades later, their personal histories as scientists entwined with those of long-deceased research animals (Sharp 2013). More recently, while working in a range of other laboratory domains, I regularly encounter affective responses to myriad species ranging from zebrafish and mollusks to rodents and monkeys. In essence, laboratories are affective menageries.
Throughout this chapter I navigate the complexities of interspecies intimacy in experimental science, focusing on the muted presence of affective registers as evidenced in researchers’ actions and thoughts regarding animals. (In subsequent chapters I consider the sentiments of animal technicians and veterinarians.) Early in their careers researchers become well versed in standards of animal “welfare” and “enrichment” while simultaneously mastering emotional detachment when working with a range of species. Their personal actions and private concerns nevertheless reveal that research animals engender strong emotional responses. Procedures and protocols that require injuring, culling, or killing animals are especially significant in shaping what I reference as the sentimental structure of experimental science.
In my efforts to discern affect and sentimental structure in laboratories, I ask: How do the moral practices associated with animal welfare extend beyond the boundaries of mandated and standardized ethical codes of conduct? How are various species imagined? That is, how might animal categories, certain species, or hierarchies of value and preference shape responses among scientists? How does one master detachment, and what are its consequences? How do encounters with at least some animals perhaps foster a sense of kindredness across the species divide? As I demonstrate, wider public sentiments for certain kinds of animals have had a profound effect in shaping animal welfare legislation. These ongoing reforms are dialectically entangled with laboratory practices, a process that informs—and transforms—scientists’ personal responses to animals they understand as falling under their care.
Harm and Animal Value
Human-animal intimacy is a variegated domain of quotidian laboratory life. In an effort to bring order to this complex realm, I pause here to map out the overall logic of my analysis. To begin—although the term itself is rarely, if ever, spoken—the notion of “harm” is an inescapable aspect of laboratory research, where standardized protocols might involve depriving animals of sleep, water, nourishment, bedding, room to move, and companionship. In addition, death is widely accepted as the inevitable outcome of many experimental procedures. Researchers and their staff are regularly involved in culling and killing animals through selective breeding; in response to illness, injury, or failure to thrive; and as a precursor to necropsy at the conclusion of an animal’s experimental involvement. Many procedures bear the very real potential for causing physical injury or emotional distress to animals by way of, for example, injections, incisions, surgeries, handling procedures, restraints, housing practices, aural stimuli, and weaning protocols. Even very basic procedures associated with numbering systems—including ear notching, toe clipping, and tattooing—harm or mar animals’ bodies. In response, ethical lab science requires extensive training in and a keen awareness of how best to prevent, dampen, or respond to pain, fear, and suffering in animals, where enrichment strategies are key.2 As all researchers know, animal welfare is central to ethical experimentation. When put into practice, it defines the core of moral science too.
Public awareness of (and sometimes outrage over) this peculiar conflict—that quality research often necessitates harming animals—has proved pivotal in shaping lab animal welfare reforms in the United States, especially since the 1960s. Various iconic species—most notably non-human primates (NHPs) and dogs—dominate widely publicized efforts for legislative and regulatory reform. My aim here is not to provide a comprehensive social history of lab animal activism, welfare initiatives, and associated legislative outcomes (but see Jasper and Nelkin 1991, 1992; Lederer 1992; Ritvo 1987, 125–66). Instead, I am intrigued by how public sentiments for certain kinds of animals, as evidenced in the discourse of welfare reforms, loop back (Hacking 1995) and transform researchers’ own professional practices and, more significantly, their personal moral frameworks.
The widespread use of animals as experimental subjects is based on a “model” approach in which animals stand in as human proxies. Within this framework, decisions to work with particular species demonstrate a standardization of animal preferences, where researchers’ choices are informed by scientific principles that shape understandings of which animal model provides the best match for solving a particular experimental problem. Standard parameters include, for instance, body mass or overall size, life span, reproductive capacity, anatomy, mutations achieved through selective breeding and