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ILAR Journal V41(2) 2000
Humane Endpoints for Animals Used in Biomedical Research and Testing

Responsible Conduct with Animals in Research
Edited by Lynette A. Hart
ISBN 0-1%510511-7; 0-19-510512-5, Oxford University Press, Cary, North Carolina
(Telephone: 800-445-9714, Fax: 919-677-1303), 1998, 192 pp., $27.50 paperbound

Lynette A. Hart's collection of essays is another publication in Oxford's expanding series of books dealing with bioethics. The publication includes an introduction and four parts. Part I includes three essays on "Changing Research Practices Regarding Animal Care and Use: Institutional and Personal Perspective"; Part 11 contains four essays related to "Current Concerns on the Responsible Conduct of Research Decision Making"; Part III presents two essays on assessing "Animal Well-being: Asking the Animal"; and Part IV comprises two essays related to "Effects on Humans of Research Involving Animals." Contributors include, in addition to Lynette Hart, 14 well-known scholars in the field of animal research.

Anyone interested in research involving animal subjects will find reading and digesting this volume well worth the time and effort. The essays are well written, thoughtful, and thought provoking. The issues provide a broad--if not comprehensive--smorgasbord of concerns that characterize the present state of animal science and the corresponding ethical concerns of scholars in the field. Although I found the four-part organization of the work somewhat confusing and arbitrary, the lack of overall organizational coherence does not detract from the high quality of the individual essays, or their relevance to the science and ethics of our time.

Ms. Hart introduces the work by presenting an overview of organizations and policies that provide leadership in raising, and policy approaches for addressing, ethical aspects of animal research. She provides her personal assessment of the quality and effectiveness of interventions in the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, the European Community, Australia and New Zealand, and Japan. Because her assessments are brief and anecdotal, I did not find them very helpful; however, the description of the policies and, in many cases, the leading associations in various parts of the globe provide a useful starting point for anyone interested in pursuing these matters in greater depth.

Space does not permit even a cursory review of each essay. Each reader will find some of the essays more relevant to his or her interests than others. I predict that each reader who samples the entire work will return again and again to a few articles that have special appeal. Probably no two readers will identify the same group of articles as the ones of
greatest value. What follows are a few words about several of the essays that I found particularly interesting.

John P. Gluck has provided a thoughtful personal history of the changes in his attitude toward animals from childhood to the present time. After describing his personal odyssey, he makes some generalized contentions that human relationships with animals involve a fundamental ambivalence toward animals that includes awe and fear, respect, and contempt. One's desire to describe, explain, predict, and control nature becomes pitted against the largely unknown interests of animal entities unable to engage in shared consent. He expresses his conviction that scientific training and socialization tend to crush or hide ambivalent feelings and attitudes that must be recovered by honest engagement with one's deepest self and with individual animals and their interests.

Authors of several contributions call for improved ethological information about a wide range of animal species. John G. Vandenbergh suggests that we begin with improved data relating to the natural behavior of species kept in captivity so that laboratory housing can be designed to take advantage of the animals' ability to adapt to their environment. Additional information must be gathered regarding animal responses to specific management issues such as toys, perches, puzzles, and alternate forms of housing for caged animals. Most important, Vandenbergh calls for a theoretical framework for behavioral studies focused on improved animal husbandry. His analysis is nicely complemented by an essay entitled "Ethological Research Techniques and Methods,'' by Melinda A. Novak, Meredith J. West, Kathryn A. Bayne, and Stephen Suomi.

Without a doubt, the most unusual essay in this collection is "Snake Stories," by Gordon M. Burghardt. Burghardt moves adeptly from a startling sculpture of an Aztec god--a snake with a head at each end--to insightful observations about a two-headed snake, named IM in his laboratory (I stands for intuition and M, for mind). The two-headed black snake is seen as a fascinating subject of ongoing study as well as a symbol for many of the dichotomous issues in science such as nature versus nurture, genetic versus environmental, innate versus acquired. He urges readers to analyze their private experience according to the four aims of Tinbergen's four aims of ethology. He urges employment of critical anthropomorphism to explore phenomenological similarities and differences across species.

Andrew N. Rowan presents a series of challenging findings and observations about our understanding--and our lack of understanding---of animal pain, suffering, and anxiety and their relationship to animal well-being. Simply providing for animals' needs may not be sufficient to provide for the best interests of the animals. Challenges of foraging for food, animal play (with all its ambiguity), and other types of social enrichment may contribute as much or more to the well-being of animals as cleanliness, diet, and temperature control. Rowan, like most of the other authors in this work, calls for more research to answer ethological questions.

Arnold Arluke and Julian Groves provide a sociological summation of views presented by "animal activists" of various stripes, on the one hand, and "proresearch scientists," on the other. They draw few conclusions, although I was left with the impression that they believe neither side of the debate has, thus far, produced anything like a convincing case.
Clearly they expect the debate to continue into a new generation of protagonists.

Each essay of Responsible Conduct concludes with a summary section. Initially I hoped that this review could follow the pattern set in the book and end with a summary. However, I am incapable of summarizing the breadth and the depth of the essays---only a few of which I have even mentioned--found in this collection. Instead, I challenge you to read the work for yourself and to create--if you can--your own summary.

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