Medical experiments on research dogs could be phased out soon–a change that’s based as much on science as ethics. Pressure is coming from within the scientific community as well as from activists, following a string of scandals involving inhumane living conditions. It follows a similar phase-out in the last decade of the use of captive chimpanzees, which was driven by growing recognition of chimpanzee intelligence and the close evolutionary kinship between our species and theirs.
Two areas of science are precipitating change. Scientists are developing new types of human cell cultures and other alternatives that may mimic human disease at least as well as animals, while new research has revealed the depth of animal cognition and the richness of their emotional lives.
Scientists in government, universities, hospitals and private companies use thousands of dogs a year, often subjecting them to isolation, confinement in small, barren cages, and painful procedures. Some are force-fed high doses of pesticides, fungicides, or other hazardous chemicals.
A common argument in favor of animal research is historical: animals were used to develop insulin, organ transplantation and blood transfusions. That justification rests on an untestable assumption–that these discoveries could not have been made in other ways, even if progress would have been slower.
In an opinion column that ran earlier this year in The Washington Post, Jane Goodall and evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff detailed the ways dogs suffer from the research itself, as well as from the isolation, boredom and confinement that accompany being a lab dog. This is no longer just a projection of the way we’d feel under those circumstances. A growing body of research has shown that being caged and isolated causes stress in dogs. Similar studies have revealed stress and self-harm among caged research monkeys.
Bekoff and Goodall wrote that most research dogs are beagles, which are bred to be obedient and trusting. The scientists call this a
COLUMNIST: Experimenting on dogs is getting harder to defend
