Animal experimentation has been a part of biomedical and behavioral research for several millennia; experiments with animals were conducted in Greece over 2,000 years ago. Many advances in medicine and in the understanding of how organisms function have been the direct result of animal experimentation.
Concern over the welfare of laboratory animals is also not new, as reflected in the activities of various animal welfare and antivivisectionist groups dating back to the nineteenth century. This concern has led to laws and regulations governing the use of animals in research and to various guides and statements of principle designed to ensure humane treatment and use of laboratory animals.
Use of Animals in Research
Some of the earliest recorded studies involving animals were performed by Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who revealed anatomical differences among animals by dissecting them (Rowan, 1984). The Greek physician Galen (A.D. 129-199) maintained that experimentation led to scientific progress and is said to have been the first to conduct demonstrations with live animals–specifically pigs-a practice later extended to other species and termed “vivisection” (Loew, 1982). However, it was not until the sixteenth century that many experiments on animals began to be recorded. In 1628, William Harvey published his work on the heart and the movement of blood in animals (French, 1975). In the 18OOs, when France became one of the leading centers of experimental biology and medicine-marked by the work of such scientists as Francis Magendie in experimental physiology, Claude Bernard in experimental medicine, and Louis Pasteur in microbiology and immunology-investigators regularly used animals in biomedical research (McGrew, 1985).
Research in biology progressed at an increasing pace starting around 1850, with many of the advances resulting from experiments involving animals. Helmholtz studied the physical and chemical activities associated with the nerve impulse; Virchow developed the science of cellular pathology, which led the way to a more rational understanding of disease processes; Pasteur began the studies that led to immunization for anthrax and inoculation for rabies; and Koch started a long series of studies that would firmly establish the germ theory of disease.
Lister performed the first antiseptic surgery in 1878, and Metchnikoff discovered the antibacterial activities of white blood cells in 1884. The first hormone was extracted in 1902. Ehrlich developed a chemical treatment for syphilis in 1909, and laboratory tissue culture began in 1910. By 1912, nutritional deficiencies were sufficiently well understood to allow scientists to coin the word “vitamin.” In 1920, Banting and Best isolated insulin, which led to therapy for diabetes mellitus. Mter 1920, the results of science-based biological research and their medical applications followed so rapidly and in such numbers that they cannot be catalogued here.
Concerns over Animal Use
The first widespread opposition to the use of animals in research was expressed in the nineteenth century. Even before this, however, concern had arisen about the treatment of farm animals. The first piece of legislation to forbid cruelty to animals was adopted by the General Court of Massachusetts in 1641 and stated that “No man shall exercise any tyranny or cruelty towards any brute creatures which are usually kept for man’s use” (Stone, 1977). In England, Martin’s Act was enacted in 1822 to provide protection for farm animals. In 1824, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) was founded to ensure that this act was observed. In 1865, Henry Bergh brought the SPCA idea to America (Thrner, 1980).
He was motivated not by the use of animals in research but by the ill-treatment of horses that he observed in czarist Russia.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, concerns for the welfare of farm animals expanded to include animals used in scientific research. The antivivisectionist movement in England, which sought to abolish the use of animals in research, became engaged in large-scale public agitation in 1870, coincident with the development of experimental physiology and the rapid growth of biomedical research. In 1876, a royal commission appointed to investigate vivisection issued a report that led to enactment of the Cruelty to Animals Act. The act did not abolish all animal experimentation, as desired by the antivivisection movement. Rather, it required experimenters to be licensed by the government for experiments that were expected to cause pain in vertebrates.
As animal experimentation increased in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century, animal sympathizers in this country also became alarmed. The first American antivivisectionist society was founded in Philadelphia in 1883, followed by the formation of similar societies in New York in 1892 and Boston in 1895. Like their predecessors in England, these groups sought to abolish the use of animals in biomedical research, but they were far less prominent or influential than the major animal-protection societies, such as the American SPCA, the Massachusetts SPCA, and the American Humane Association (Turner, 1980).
Unsuccessful in its efforts toward the end of the nineteenth century to abolish the use of laboratory animals (Cohen and Loew, 1984), the antivivisectionist movement declined in the early twentieth century. However, the animal welfare movement remained active, and in the 195Os and 1960s its increasing strength led to federal regulation of animal experimentation. The Animal Welfare Act was passed in 1966 and amended in 1970, 1976, and 1985. Similar laws have been enacted in other countries to regulate the treatment of laboratory animals (Hampson, 1985).
Concern over the welfare of animals used in research has made itself felt in other ways. In 1963, the Animal Care Panel drafted a document that is now known as the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (National Research Council, 1985a). As discussed in Chapter 5, the Guide is meant to assist institutions in caring for and using laboratory animals in ways judged to be professionally and humanely appropriate. Many professional societies and public and private research institutions have also issued guidelines and statements on the humane use of animals; for example, the American Physiological Society, the Society for Neuroscience, and the American Psychological Association.