Voracious Science & Vulnerable Animals: A Primate Scientist's Ethical Journey (Animal Lives) - Hardcover

Gluck, John P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022637565X ISBN 13: 9780226375656

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

The National Institute of Health recently announced its plan to retire the fifty remaining chimpanzees held in national research facilities and place them in sanctuaries. This significant decision comes after a lengthy process of examination and debate about the ethics of animal research. For decades, proponents of such research have argued that the discoveries and benefits for humans far outweigh the costs of the traumatic effects on the animals; but today, even the researchers themselves have come to question the practice. John P. Gluck has been one of the scientists at the forefront of the movement to end research on primates, and in Voracious Science and Vulnerable Animals he tells a vivid, heart-rending, personal story of how he became a vocal activist for animal protection.

Gluck begins by taking us inside the laboratory of Harry F. Harlow at the University of Wisconsin, where Gluck worked as a graduate student in the 1960s. Harlow’s primate lab became famous for his behavioral experiments in maternal deprivation and social isolation of rhesus macaques. Though trained as a behavioral scientist, Gluck finds himself unable to overlook the intense psychological and physical damage these experiments wrought on the macaques. Gluck’s sobering and moving account reveals how in this and other labs, including his own, he came to grapple with the uncomfortable justifications that many researchers were offering for their work. As his sense of conflict grows, we’re right alongside him, developing a deep empathy for the often smart and always vulnerable animals used for these experiments.

At a time of unprecedented recognition of the intellectual cognition and emotional intelligence of animals, Voracious Science and Vulnerable Animals is a powerful appeal for our respect and compassion for those creatures who have unwillingly dedicated their lives to science. Through the words of someone who has inflicted pain in the name of science and come to abhor it, it’s important to know what has led this far to progress and where further inroads in animal research ethics are needed.
 

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John P. Gluck is professor emeritus of psychology and a senior advisor to the president on animal research ethics and welfare at the University of New Mexico. He is also research professor of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University and  coauthor of The Human Use of Animals.
 

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Voracious Science & Vulnerable Animals

A Primate Scientist's Ethical Journey

By John P. Gluck

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2016 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-37565-6

Contents

Preface, 
Introduction, 
1 * Erosion, 
2 * Induction, 
3 * Practice, 
4 * Awareness, 
5 * Realignment, 
6 * Reconstruction, 
7 * Protection, 
8 * Reformation, 
Epilogue, 
Notes, 
Index, 
Photo Gallery, 

CHAPTER 1

Erosion

Be sure you do not let anything, not even your good kind heart, spoil your experiment.

MAX GOTTLIEB TO MARTIN ARROWSMITH IN SINCLAIR LEWIS'S NOVEL ARROWSMITH

Most people, I think, do not reach early adulthood with a frame of mind and set of values compatible with experimenting on animals. Growing up — especially in a household with pets — children learn to appreciate animals as beings with inner lives much like themselves simply by applying their naturally developing empathy and intuition. Any tendency for society, with its sometimes ruthless objectification of animals, to refute this working assumption is counterbalanced by the teaching of the general "do unto others" ethical framework and a maturing sense of compassion for those who suffer.

The typical college-age person is therefore likely to view with some concern and twinge of conscience the implantation of electrodes in rat brains, delivery of painful electrical shocks to monkeys, and administration of powerful drugs to dogs. For this reason, those attracted to a career involving research on animals must undergo an emotional and ethical retraining process every bit as important as their scientific training. They must learn to put aside identification with animal pain and suffering and replace it with a passion for advancing scientific knowledge. They must come to believe that they are joining the ranks of a special corps of truth-seekers and improvers of the human condition who may assume their work to be justified on its face, no matter the cost in animal lives.

Such was the case for me. I grew up with deep emotional attachments to family pets, believed without question that animals had internal lives that mattered to them and were capable of feeling joy, sadness, fear, disappointment, and pain, and was revolted by cruelty to animals. By the end of high school, I had a well-developed sensitivity to suffering and a good sense of compassion. I also had an abiding interest in reducing the human suffering that I saw in the world, and when this interest found its vehicle in experimental psychology, I took a path that brought my career ambitions into conflict with my natural inclination to abhor the deliberate harming of animals. By the time I had finished my undergraduate education and started graduate school, my professors — and the overall research context into which I threw myself — had exorcised my sentimental concern for animals' welfare and constructed for me a new belief system in which there was really no such thing as the animals' perspective.

My father John was, not surprisingly, very influential in modeling how I should comport myself and treat others. A New York City firefighter and part-time longshoreman during most of my youth, he projected a quiet strength and protectiveness. When he returned from a full day of work, his clothing had a distinctive smell, a combination of smoke and bananas, which became for me the perfume of security. While there were many hints of a rough-and-tumble life at the firehouse and on the docks, he was a gentle man at home. He loved children — and not only those in his own family. When he and I attended local athletic events together, he would often engage the small children who sat near us, talking and laughing and giving them pennies. He also loved dogs. Although his expression of affection for the animals was muted, all of the dogs we lived with while I was growing up waited at the door for his return from work and then rested near him wherever he sat.

When Dad's schedule allowed him to be home on the weekends, he and I spent countless hours playing catch with whatever ball was in season and running around an undulating cinder track in a WPA-constructed park called Victory Field. There we watched local baseball, softball, and semi-pro football games until we were quite familiar with many of the players. Not much was said between us during those times; rather, they were dominated by the relaxed feeling of being together without a particular goal that needed to be accomplished. I knew my father wanted me to develop into a strong person with streetwise sense, as insurance against the risks he knew were out there waiting. If there was a demand that came from him, that was it.

My mother Dorothy was a cautious person, skeptical about the goodness of the world. Like my father she was experienced with the ins and outs of city life and actively counseled defensive vigilance. Significantly for me, however, she spoke her mind with confidence and strength, and she both valued and exemplified independence. She expressed affection more directly than my father, but firmly believed that love had its limits when it came to her personal and family relationships — except, that is, in the case of the family dogs. For them she was forgiving and effusively kind. She refused to buy commercial dog food, preferring to cook the dogs' meals of meat, rice, and vegetables. My mother had been encouraged by her parents to pursue higher education, but for her own reasons she left an academically oriented high school in New York (Julia Richmond) for a course in secretarial skills. She ended up working — contentedly, I think — as a secretary to the principal of an elementary school in Queens. She prided herself for her meticulous memory and organizational skill and believed she would have made a good doctor. I think she was right. Though she would have been happy for her children to have solid jobs in any respectable venue, she encouraged academic interests like her own mother had done for her.

My family occupied a comfortable two-room basement apartment in the house owned by my grandparents. My parents and sister slept in two of the three upstairs bedrooms, and I had the foldout sofa bed to myself in the living room of our apartment. While I did not have my own room, the arrangement did provide me the privacy to stay up and watch the Late Show and listen to the Symphony Sid jazz radio show late into the weekend nights. Most nights I could also invite the family dog to share the bed with me, in violation of my mother's rules. The dog and I were typically awakened in the morning by the sound of footsteps on the stairs from the upper floor, giving the dog plenty of time to jump to the floor and take up a more acceptable location.

In the immediate neighborhood where I grew up were three very large cemeteries. The cemeteries provided places for my friends and me to hang out in the late afternoon and evening, away from the prying eyes of neighbors and police patrol cars. Many of the grave sites had gray cast-iron furniture, the original purpose of which was to facilitate long visits by the friends and family of the deceased. We used the tables and chairs to just sit around, play cards by flashlight, talk, and, as teenagers, drink beer together. We meant no disrespect when we shared our drinks with the deceased by toasting them and pouring a little on the grave. It was a way to thank them for the use of the furniture and the much-valued...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 022637565X
• ISBN 13: 9780226375656
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 313
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: The University of Chicago Press; https://press.uchicago.edu/index.html; ; 5801 S. Ellis Avenue; Chicago; IL; 60637; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar