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Essay by Dennison Smith |
While I appreciate the Review's attempt to present both sides of the controversy about the use of animals in the Neuroscience 211 laboratory, as one of the 211 instructors, I find inappropriate the language the Review and its editors use to portray the laboratory's procedures and the Review's characterization of the moral and ethical issues involved.
Two relevant examples from last week's Review illustrate my concern. Henighan in the opening sentence in her lead article states: "Members of Oberlin Animal Rights (OAR) began a three-week protest of a Neuroscience 211 vivisection lab Thursday." My objection to Henighan's statement is that Neuroscience 211 is NOT a "vivisection lab", rather it is a neuroscience lab in which students are exposed to a RANGE of experimental procedures in neuroscience that are widely used by scientists in the field. The procedures the students use are commonly introduced in an experimental context and are employed to illustrate fundamental principles and to help students learn about experimental design and data analysis. While it varies from semester to semester, we typically include only one lab in which students perform stereotaxic surgery on rats to allow them to either lesion, record or stimulate the brain. All surgery is conducted according to Federal guidelines that are designed to minimize pain and infection. We include stereotaxic surgery as part of the lab because experimental approaches using this technique are among the most common practices in neuroscience and because there is NO substitute approach available. It is important to note that surgical procedures are only a small part of the lab. Some experiments use biochemical procedures, others involve the microscopic examination of tissue, while others involve the examination of cells growing in cell culture. Two of the labs employ computer simulations of the nervous system and its function. Given the variety of approaches, it would be misleading to characterize the lab as a biochemistry lab, simply because we use a biochemical technique in one of our labs, just as it would be inaccurate to call it a computer lab because we use computers. In the same sense, calling the lab a "vivisection" lab, simply because we conduct one or two experiments that involve animal surgery, is a misrepresentation.
I also object to the article's exclusive use of the word "vivisection" to characterize the SURGERY that is done in the lab. The term vivisection is a pejorative term adopted by animal rights groups to characterize experimental surgery on animals. I don't believe that it is appropriate for the Review to mindlessly adopt the animal rights movement's vocabulary to describe a process that is better and more commonly characterized by a more neutral and accurate term, surgery. On the other hand, I guess I should be thankful the Review chose not to use the term "torture" which is the other loaded term that animal rights groups employ to describe what we do in lab.
The second example comes from the Review's editorial in which the editor writes: "Each small branch of the vivisection controversy stems from a much broader ideological question: Should science advance at the expense of our morals and ethics ?" I found this to be an odd, biased, and anti-scientific way to characterize the "controversy". The question implies that the work done in neuroscience with animals is immoral and unethical, but somehow the work might be justified because the end justifies the means? I want to state categorically that I not only believe that the work is justified, but that it would be immoral to fail to do the research. Neuroscience must not abandon the use of animal subjects in research because to do so would be to abandon the best available opportunity to discover cures to disorders such as stroke, brain cancer, and Alzheimer's disease. Moreover, it would be immoral for us to fail to discover as much as we can about brain function because of the potential benefits such knowledge can provide both in terms of improving the quality of life and in providing a deeper understanding of our humanness.
My point is that the Review, its writers, and editors should attempt to be as even-handed as possible in writing about these issues, and in particular, it should avoid using the loaded vocabulary of the animal rights movement. Perhaps most important, they as well as the rest of the Oberlin community should try to become better informed.
Dennison Smith is a Professor of Neuroscience
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