Communicative patterns and social networks between scientists and technicians in a culture of care: discussing morality across a hierarchy of occupational spaces.

Communication between scientists and animal technicians is considered important for creating a 'culture of care' in facilities that use animals in scientific research. For example, the Brown report, which investigated alleged failures of animal care at Imperial College London, noted the physical and social separation between animal technicians and scientists as a problem that delimited a culture of care. This paper seeks to better understand the communicative relationships between scientists and animal technicians in this context. We conducted a survey of scientists working in the UK who use animals in their research (n = 230), asking who they spoke with about various aspects related to using animals in research. We found that scientists communicated with technicians about operational issues, while they spoke with other scientists about experimental design as well as moral questions and concerns. We probe the meaning of these communicative relationships using narrative analysis of semi-structured, qualitative interviews conducted with consenting survey respondents (n = 14). Analytically, this paper seeks to bridge social network analysis with geographies of care through a shared concern with relations of power.

La comunicación entre científicos y técnicos en animales se considera importante para crear una 'cultura del cuidado' en las instalaciones que utilizan animales en la investigación científica. Por ejemplo, el informe Brown, que investigó supuestos fallos en el cuidado de los animales en el Imperial College de Londres, señaló la separación física y social entre técnicos animales y científicos como un problema que delimitaba una cultura del cuidado. Este artículo busca comprender mejor las relaciones comunicativas entre científicos y técnicos en animales en este contexto. Realizamos una encuesta a científicos que trabajan en el Reino Unido y que utilizan animales en su investigación (n = 230), y les preguntamos con quién hablaron sobre varios aspectos relacionados con el uso de animales en la investigación. Descubrimos que los científicos se comunicaban con los técnicos sobre cuestiones operativas, mientras hablaban con otros científicos sobre el diseño experimental, así como sobre cuestiones e inquietudes morales. Investigamos el significado de estas relaciones comunicativas mediante el análisis narrativo de entrevistas cualitativas semiestructuradas realizadas con encuestados que dieron su consentimiento (n = 14). Analíticamente, este artículo busca unir el análisis de las redes sociales con las geografías del cuidado a través de una preocupación compartida por las relaciones de poder.

Les sciences de l'animal de laboratoire représentent un aspect complexe et sujet à controverses dans les relations entre les humains et les animaux, parce que sa pratique implique la souffrance ou la mise à mort d'animaux, délibérément ou accidentellement. Par conséquent, la recherche sur les animaux a fait l'objet de fortes préoccupations et réglementations sur le plan éthique dans le Royaume-Uni, afin de réduire les épreuves et les douleurs subies par ces bêtes dont les corps vivants modèlent entre autres les maladies humaines. Cette communication s'appuie sur des recherches ethnographiques longitudinales et des entrevues détaillées entreprises avec des techniciens animaliers de laboratoire débutants dans des universités du Royaume-Uni entre 2013 et 2015, ainsi que des perspectives venant d'entretiens avec des acteurs principaux du bien-être animal. Dans notre analyse, nous étudions quatre dimensions essentielles des soins dans la recherche animale de laboratoire. (i) les compétences et les affinités spécifiques qui sont nécessaires ; (ii) l'importante d'expériences préalables en soins animaliers (iii) l'influence des cadres institutionnel et affectif et (iv) l'expérience nécessaire pour mettre fin à des vies animales. Nous suggérons que des notions de soins différentes se déroulent en parallèle, pas seulement les seuils de douleur autorisés à être infligés aux animaux de recherche suivant les protocoles de recherche, mais aussi la douleur des techniciens animaliers dans les processus de soins et de mise à mort des animaux. Pour conclure, nous nous prononçons en faveur d'une meilleure concertation dans la coexistence des soins et des souffrances à travers les débats au sein de la géographie sur les soins, le care et les relations entre les humains et les animaux.

Figuring the 'cynical scientist' in British animal science: the politics of invisibility.

This paper investigates the 'cynical scientist' as a figure in British animal science discourse that developed in relation to the nineteenth-century emergence of the 'sceptical scientist'. Here, efforts by scientists to demarcate their profession's territory led to religious backlash against an alleged 'divorce' of British science from Christian morality. Animal experimentation became embroiled in this controversy through antivivisectionists' conviction that animal research was symptomatic of scientific scepticism and Continental atheism's malign influence. Accusations of cynicism ultimately forced British scientists to accept legal regulation following the 1875 Royal Commission on Vivisection. British scientists were, however, able to utilise their political leverage and credibility as experts to favourably influence licensing and inspection. We suggest that efforts to silence public claims of scientific cynicism may have enabled 'cynical scientists' to remain invisible and that this was marked by privilege and power, not marginality. Nevertheless, we argue that regulation and reforms have also worked to internalise within British animal science the notion that scientific cynicism must be combatted through proper governance and internal discipline.

Making the anaesthetised animal into a boundary object: an analysis of the 1875 Royal Commission on Vivisection.

This paper explores how, at the 1875 Royal Commission on Vivisection, the anaesthetised animal was construed as a boundary object around which "cooperation without consensus" (Star, in: Esterbrook (ed) Computer supported cooperative work: cooperation or conflict? Springer, London, 1993) could form, serving the interests of both scientists and animals. Advocates of anaesthesia presented it as benevolently intervening between the scientific agent and animal patient. Such articulations of 'ethical' vivisection through anaesthesia were then mandated in the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act, and thus have had significant downstream effects on the regulation of laboratory animals in Britain and beyond. Constructing this 'consensus' around the anaesthetised animal, however, required first excluding abolitionists and inhumane scientists, and secondly limiting the interests of experimental animals to the avoidance of pain through anaesthesia and euthanasia, thereby circumventing the issue of their possible interest in future life. This consensus also served to secure the interests of vivisecting scientists and to limit the influence of public opinion in the laboratory to administrative procedure and scheduled inspection. The focus on anaesthesia was connected with discussions of what supporting infrastructures were required to ensure proper ethical procedure was carried out by scientists. In contrast to the much studied polarisation in British society between pro- and antivivisectionists after 1876, we understand the 1875 Commission as a conflict amongst scientists themselves, while also being an intra-class conflict amongst the ruling class (French in Antivivisection and medical science in Victorian society, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1975).

Cultures of care? Animals and science in Britain.

It is becoming increasingly common to hear life scientists say that high quality life science research relies upon high quality laboratory animal care. However, the idea that animal care is a crucial part of scientific knowledge production is at odds with previous social science and historical scholarship regarding laboratory animals. How are we to understand this discrepancy? To begin to address this question, this paper seeks to disentangle the values of scientists in identifying animal care as important to the production of high quality scientific research. To do this, we conducted a survey of scientists working in the United Kingdom who use animals in their research. The survey found that being British is associated with thinking that animal care is a crucial part of conducting high quality science. To understand this finding, we draw upon the concept of 'civic epistemologies' (Jasanoff 2005; Prainsack 2006) and argue that 'animals' and 'care' in Britain may converge in taken-for-granted assumptions about what constitutes good scientific knowledge. These ideas travel through things like state regulations or the editorial policies of science journals, but do not necessarily carry the embodied civic epistemology of 'animals' and 'science' from which such modes of regulating laboratory animal welfare comes.

Entanglements in Health and Well-being: Working with Model Organisms in Biomedicine and Bioscience.

Drawing on collaborative ethnographic fieldwork, this article explores how human health becomes entangled with that of model organisms in day-to-day biomedical science. Social science scholarship on modeling has explored either how specific models impact and shape our knowledge of human disease or how animal technicians and scientists affect laboratory animals. This article extends this relational approach by asking how embodied and institutional care practices for model organisms affect the health and well-being of animal technicians and scientists. We focus on two interspecies bodily experiences: pathogenic exchange and stress. We then explore enrichment as a strategy for producing health and well-being across species. We suggest that relations of care form a crucial part of biomedical knowledge production. Not only does care figure in the shaping of model organisms; care for technicians and scientists also plays a role in bioscientific knowledge production. We conclude by proposing an interspecies approach to occupational health.

Developing a Collaborative Agenda for Humanities and Social Scientific Research on Laboratory Animal Science and Welfare.

Improving laboratory animal science and welfare requires both new scientific research and insights from research in the humanities and social sciences. Whilst scientific research provides evidence to replace, reduce and refine procedures involving laboratory animals (the '3Rs'), work in the humanities and social sciences can help understand the social, economic and cultural processes that enhance or impede humane ways of knowing and working with laboratory animals. However, communication across these disciplinary perspectives is currently limited, and they design research programmes, generate results, engage users, and seek to influence policy in different ways. To facilitate dialogue and future research at this interface, we convened an interdisciplinary group of 45 life scientists, social scientists, humanities scholars, non-governmental organisations and policy-makers to generate a collaborative research agenda. This drew on methods employed by other agenda-setting exercises in science policy, using a collaborative and deliberative approach for the identification of research priorities. Participants were recruited from across the community, invited to submit research questions and vote on their priorities. They then met at an interactive workshop in the UK, discussed all 136 questions submitted, and collectively defined the 30 most important issues for the group. The output is a collaborative future agenda for research in the humanities and social sciences on laboratory animal science and welfare. The questions indicate a demand for new research in the humanities and social sciences to inform emerging discussions and priorities on the governance and practice of laboratory animal research, including on issues around: international harmonisation, openness and public engagement, 'cultures of care', harm-benefit analysis and the future of the 3Rs. The process outlined below underlines the value of interdisciplinary exchange for improving communication across different research cultures and identifies ways of enhancing the effectiveness of future research at the interface between the humanities, social sciences, science and science policy.

Older Motherhood and the Changing Life Course in the Era of Assisted Reproductive Technologies.

Midlife, once a focus of particular interest to gerontologists because of its implications for later life, has recently received little attention. But as new reproductive technologies have expanded in the United States, motherhood is occurring at older ages. While older motherhood is not a new social practice, what is unique is that an increasing number of women are becoming pregnant through technological means, often for the first time, at the end of their reproductive cycle. These women can be understood as part of a new middle age, engaging in new life course possibilities that respond to changing social, cultural, physical, and economic realities, and potentially extending much later in the life course. Drawing on interviews with 79 couples, we utilize symbolic interactionist conceptualizations of identity and stigma to consider how women negotiate the shifting social identities associated with older motherhood. We conclude that older motherhood will be one phenomenon contributing to an enduring change in views of what constitutes old age, and that it will be seen as occurring much later in the life course.

Rethinking the biological clock: eleventh-hour moms, miracle moms and meanings of age-related infertility.

Over the past generation, aging and female reproduction have been lodged within the gendered and gendering debates regarding women's involvement in the workforce and demographic shifts toward delayed parenting that culminate in discourses on the "biological clock". Technological solutions to the biological clock, specifically in vitro fertilization, have led to clinical attempts to assess "ovarian reserve", or qualitative and quantitative changes in the ovary that correlate with aging and with successful infertility treatment. Rupturing the longstanding historical connections between menstruation and female reproductive capacity by specifically focusing on the aging of a woman's eggs, the clinical designation of "diminished ovarian reserve" has come to imply that a woman has "old eggs". This is associated in practitioners' and patients' minds with the eclipse of a woman's reproductive potential and with hidden harbingers of menopause. In an ethnographic interview study of 79 couples in the US who conceived after using donor oocytes, we found that women voiced two different narratives that described their experience and attitudes when confronted with an apparent age-related decline in their fertility. The "eleventh-hour mom" narrative was voiced by women who initially tried to become pregnant with their own eggs and turned to donated oocytes as a second-choice option, whereas the "miracle mom" narrative was expressed by women who were generally older, some of whom had entered infertility treatment hoping to conceive with their own eggs, but some who knew from the outset that it was not going to be possible. Through their narratives women not only embodied and made meaningful "diminished ovarian reserve" in varying ways that connect with cultural, social, structural/organizational, symbolic and physical aspects of aging, they reproduced the socio-biological project of the biological clock, but rooted this social project in the metaphor of "old eggs" rather than menopause.

Parents' conceptualization of their frozen embryos complicates the disposition decision.

OBJECTIVE: To ascertain what couples think about their embryos and how they approach making a decision about disposition in light of the fact that the disposition of unused frozen embryos has significant implications for medical research and embryo donation. DESIGN: Ethnographic qualitative interview study. SETTING: Academic research environment. PATIENT(S): Fifty-eight couples who had conceived using a donor oocyte and had at least one frozen embryo in storage. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Tape-recorded interviews with 58 wives and 37 husbands were transcribed and analyzed for emergent themes. RESULT(S): With an average of 7.1 embryos per couple, after an average of 4.2 years of storage, 72% of couples with frozen embryos had not reached a disposition decision. Most couples had not anticipated or appreciated the consequences of having surplus embryos. Parents variously conceptualized frozen embryos as biologic tissue, living entities, "virtual" children having interests that must be considered and protected, siblings of their living children, genetic or psychological "insurance policies," and symbolic reminders of their past infertility. CONCLUSION(S): The disposition decision is not only a significant and frequently unresolved issue for couples with stored frozen embryos, but their deeply personal conceptualizations of their embryos contributes to their ambivalence, uncertainty, and difficulty in reaching a decision.