Antivivisectionism

ANTIVIVISECTIONISM

Vivisection and Experimental Medicine

Virtually all advances in physiology and endocrinology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were based on vivisection—the experimental use of living animals to observe physiological processes under laboratory conditions. The most successful forms of vivisection began with the French physiologist Claude Bernard, who discovered the liver's glycogenic function by severing a rabbit's cerebellar peduncle nerve and noting the abnormally high levels of sugar (glycosuria) that resulted. In endocrinology at the turn of the century, the chemical actions of the ductless glands were studied by extirpating the gland and observing the resultant metabolic changes in the animal subjects. The procedure led in 1901 to the isolation of adrenaline (epinephrine) by Japanese American chemist Jokichi Takamine and Johns Hopkins Medical School chemistpharmacologist John Jacob Abel.

Organized Opposition to Vivisection

The rise of the movement to curtail the experimental use of animals paralleled the successes of vivisection and advances in physiology, pathology, and bacteriology in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. In England an Antivivisection Act was passed by Parliament in 1876. In 1883 the American Antivivisection Society was founded in Philadelphia. Such societies joined with state chapters of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to lobby legislatures. A major battle was launched in Boston, an important center of medical research in 1896, when a bill was introduced in the state legislature to restrict experimentation on animals in medical schools. Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard led the charge on the medical side by saying that someone ought to speak on behalf of "the people whose children die by the thousands in the warm weeks of summer.… It is for them that the scientific biologists are at work." The hearings convinced the antivivisectionists that they were combating an entrenched intellectual elite, while the medical community, which had organized a Committee on Experimental Biology in 1903 to promote their cause, was afraid that new methods of treating human subjects was the real target.

Laboratory Conditions

The agitation was strong enough to stimulate medical schools to investigate the nature of animal research and evaluate the conditions under which laboratory animals were kept. Walter B. Cannon of Harvard Medical School wrote to experimentalists throughout the country to find out how animals were cared for and whether medical schools had done anything to educate the public concerning the need for vivisection. Percy Dawson of Johns Hopkins replied that although conditions in American laboratories were generally good and physiologists strove to avoid inflicting pain, nevertheless "it is probable that although animals are usually well treated in the operating room, their quarters are often very miserable and the care of the animals before they reach the operating table much worse than should be." Dawson concluded that some control over these animals should be instituted.

The AMA Gets Involved

In 1908 the American Medical Association, mindful that the problem was a national one, formed a special defense committee to support research and explain to the public the need to use animals. Named chairman, Cannon held that antivivisectionists were ignorant both of medical research and of the actual laboratory conditions and procedures against which they were complaining. He continued to gather information and, at the same time, to write a model code of laboratory rules. By 1910 Cannon's rules had been adopted in laboratories at thirty-seven medical schools and research institutes, including the largest ones.

Cannon versus James. In

May 1909 William James, philosopher, former physiologist, and one of the most influential American academics, published a letter in the New York Post arguing that scientists could not be counted on to police themselves and attacking as irresponsible the notion that scientists had the right to engage in animal experimentation without any public accountability. James had long expressed distaste for animal experimentation. Cannon rejoined that James had "confused a protest by medical men against special legislation directed at them and an assumption commonly made that they object to any control of their work." Cannon thought that no special legislation aimed at research scientists was required because general laws against cruelty to animals were already on the books.

Significance of the Debate

The antivivisection debate of the first decade of the twentieth century stands out because it seemed to threaten the unprecedented advances in medical science made in the previous quarter century. The biomedicai leadership regarded the antivivisection movement with horror because experiments with live animals accounted for most of the physiological knowledge of the digestive, cardiovascular, and nervous systems. Without animal research it was feared that progress would be slowed. Such a concern was prudent, for looking ahead a decade or two, the research that led to the discovery of insulin and its effective treatment of diabetes could not have been accomplished without vivisection. On the other hand, antivivisectionism can also be seen as a movement in favor of the public promotion and awareness of standards of medical ethics and their extension into the laboratory. In that sense the antivivisection debate presaged public debates over genetic research and bioengineering.

Source:

Saul Benison, A. Clifford Barger, and Elin L. Wolfe, Walter B. Cannon: The Life and Times of a Young Scientist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987).