Animal Writings

Here are two anecdotes from friends of mine who have worked in medical research laboratories, mostly on NIH-funded projects, for years...

"Roger" had worked on studies with and without animals. He took pains to be gentle to the animals, even to insects and worms. Even those creatures have tasks they seem to want to accomplish, and perhaps even with their relatively primitive systems they have the ability to sense not only pain but well-being. After a period of ambivalence, he told his boss that he could no longer experiment on animals. Now he does only non-animal research, and is almost totally vegan.

"Laurie" has also worked in medical research for a long time, and indicated to her supervisors quite a while back that she will not do any research that harms animals. She became an ethical vegan mid-way into her scientific career. She contends that the only thing standing in the way of total non-animal research in medical labs is the will to make that conversion.

Not too long ago, in the company cafeteria, Laurie noticed that another employee consistently brought vegan lunches. She eventually asked him, "Are you vegetarian?" He said yes. They both agreed it was a healthy diet. Then they moved onto the environment. Yep, good environmental choice, too. Eventually one asked the other — in hushed tones and after looking around, it seems like — "Are you vegan?" They both said "yes." And they moved on to ethical bases for veganism, which they agreed on.

As Laurie explains, in their corporate culture there is still very much an institutionalized bias against caring about non-companion animals, lab animals in particular. After all, a big chunk of their government grant money is for harming and killing animals. One of the defense and distancing mechanisms people use to harm others is to resist caring about their victims or acknowledging their suffering and interests, and that often carries over into wanting others to not bring up those unpleasant realities either, and even stifling others' compassionate impulses toward the victims. Hence the hush-hush when the two employees tried to find out if the other was vegan.

Laurie thinks that there may be sufficient interest among her fellow lab employees in forming an informal vegan group. Granted, it's a large facility, but still that's pretty cool.

Maybe, slowly but surely, all the leafleting, protests, cupcake activism, letters to the editor, great new vegan products, and all sorts of other advocacy aimed at the abolition of animal exploitation and the promotion of peace to all sentient beings is permeating the thick walls of the vivisection lab. The old guard is still in force, as is the scandalously weak animal protection laws, lack of enforcement, enormous inertia to use animal models even when superior non-animal alternatives are available, and so forth. But on the other hand, perhaps conscientious scientists are starting to question self-protective rationalizations that perpetuate animal exploitation. Perhaps they're beginning to feel emboldened enough to state their objections to animal research. If that's the case, those fresh and welcome attitudes could be one of the driving forces behind a new era in medical research, in which disease and preventive health are studied holistically and ethically and with more predictive value and scientific relevance and rigor than ever.

Labels: animal experiments, medical research, veganism