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).

The European politics of animal experimentation: From Victorian Britain to 'Stop Vivisection'.

This paper identifies a common political struggle behind debates on the validity and permissibility of animal experimentation, through an analysis of two recent European case studies: the Italian implementation of the European Directive 2010/63/EC regulating the use of animals in science, and the recent European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) 'Stop Vivisection'. Drawing from a historical parallel with Victorian antivivisectionism, we highlight important threads in our case studies that mark the often neglected specificities of debates on animal experimentation. From the representation of the sadistic scientist in the XIX century, to his/her claimed capture by vested interests and evasion of public scrutiny in the contemporary cases, we show that animals are not simply the focus of the debate, but also a privileged locus at which much broader issues are being raised about science, its authority, accountability and potential misalignment with public interest. By highlighting this common socio-political conflict underlying public controversies around animal experimentation, our work prompts the exploration of modes of authority and argumentation that, in establishing the usefulness of animals in science, avoid reenacting the traditional divide between epistemic and political fora.

The Magnus-Rademaker Scientific Film Collection: Ethical Issues on Animal Experimentation (1908-1940).

The Magnus-Rademaker scientific film collection (1908-1940) deals with the physiology of body posture by the equilibrium of reflex musculature contractions for which experimental studies were carried out with animals (e.g., labyrinthectomies, cerebellectomies, and brain stem sections) as well as observations done on patients. The films were made for demonstrations at congresses as well as educational objectives and film stills were published in their books. The purpose of the present study is to position these films and their makers within the contemporary discourse on ethical issues and animal rights in the Netherlands and the earlier international debates. Following an introduction on animal rights and antivivisection movements, we describe what Magnus and Rademaker thought about these issues. Their publications did not provide much information in this respect, probably reflecting their adherence to implicit ethical codes that did not need explicit mentioning in publications. Newspaper articles, however, revealed interesting information. Unnecessary suffering of an animal never found mercy in Magnus' opinion. The use of cinematography was expanded to the reduction of animal experimentation in student education, at least in the case of Rademaker, who in the 1930s was involved in a governmental committee for the regulation of vivisection and cooperated with the antivivisection movement. This resulted not only in a propaganda film for the movement but also in films that demonstrate physiological experiments for students with the purpose to avert repetition and to improve the teaching of experiments. We were able to identify the pertinent films in the Magnus-Rademaker film collection. The production of vivisection films with this purpose appears to have been common, as is shown in news messages in European medical journals of the period.

Medical science and the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876: A re-examination of anti-vivisectionism in provincial Britain.

The Cruelty to Animals Act 1876 was an important but ambiguous piece of legislation. For researchers it stymied British science, yet ensured that vivisection could continue under certain restrictions. For anti-vivisection protestors it was positive proof of the influence of their campaigns, yet overly deferent to Britain's scientific elite. In previous accounts of the Act and the rise of anti-vivisectionism, scientific medicine central to these debates has been treated as monolithic rather than a heterogeneous mix of approaches; and this has gone hand-in-hand with the marginalizing of provincial practices, as scholarship has focused largely on the 'Golden Triangle' of London, Oxford and Cambridge. We look instead at provincial research: brain studies from Wakefield and anthrax investigations in Bradford. The former case elucidates a key role for specific medical science in informing the anti-vivisection movement, whilst the latter demonstrates how the Act affected the particular practices of provincial medical scientists. It will be seen, therefore, how provincial medical practices were both influential upon, and profoundly affected by, the growth of anti-vivisectionism and the passing of the Act. This paper emphasises how regional and varied medico-scientific practices were central to the story of the creation and impact of the Cruelty to Animals Act.

Selected anatomists: at the boundary of contemporary ethics.

Fascination with the interworkings of the human body has permeated scientific discovery for eons. Materials for dissection proved problematic for anatomists. Andreas Vesalius solved his dilemma by visiting local gallows where criminals had been executed. Eduard Pernkopf has been alleged to have taken some of his materials from victims of the Holocaust. Even today, executed criminals have served as subjects for anatomical educational purposes. These circumstances are explored and the contemporary ethics of each are compared.

Vivisecting Major: a Victorian gentleman scientist defends animal experimentation, 1876-1885.

Through an investigation of the public, professional, and private life of the Darwinian disciple George John Romanes, this essay seeks a better understanding of the scientific motivations for defending the practice of vivisection at the height of the controversy in late Victorian Britain. Setting aside a historiography that has tended to focus on the arguments of antivivisectionists, it reconstructs the viewpoint of the scientific community through an examination of Romanes's work to help orchestrate the defense of animal experimentation. By embedding his life in three complicatedly overlapping networks-the world of print, interpersonal communications among an increasingly professionalized body of scientific men, and the intimacies of private life-the essay uses Romanes as a lens with which to focus the physiological apprehension of the antivivisection movement. It is a story of reputation, self-interest, and affection.

Além dos confins do homem: Frances Power Cobbe contra o darwinismo na controvérsia sobre a vivissecção no Reino Unido (1863-1904) / Beyond the confines of man: Frances Power Cobbe against Darwinism in the controversy over vivisection in the UK (1863-1904)

O presente trabalho procura explorar as complexas interações entre darwinismo,fisiologia experimental e antivivisseccionismo na Inglaterra vitoriana. Como principaispersonagens encarregadas de conduzir essa narrativa foram eleitos Charles Darwin e a antivivisseccionista Frances Power Cobbe, mas vários darwinistas, fisiologistas e antivivisseccionistas também aparecem nas páginas dessa tese. Outra importante personagem desse estudo é o cão, animal de status privilegiado na Inglaterra, mas que aindaassim foi usado abundantemente nos laboratórios fisiológicos, e procuro explorar as implicações da presença desse animal na mesa de vivissecção.Os eixos temáticos nos quais meu estudo se apoiou foram: 1) a tese darwiniana da origem comum e consequente relação de continuidade mental entre animais e humanos, eas implicações éticas dessa teoria; 2) o problema da dor física e do sofrimento emocional na Inglaterra vitoriana e sua abordagem por Darwin e Cobbe; 3) a noção de crueldade, e sua associação à prática de vivissecção; 4) a faculdade da simpatia, e a noção darwiniana deuma “simpatia para além dos confins do homem”, relacionada ao conceito atual de comunidade moral. Explorando o contexto sócio-cultural e a produção de discursos favoráveis e contrários à experimentação animal do período, realizei também uma incursão nasestratégias retóricas de autodefinição e definição do adversário pelas duas partes em contenda, incluindo as formas como era retratado o laboratório fisiológico. A polarização entre selvagem e domesticado / civilizado foi também um questão importante nacontrovérsia sobre a legitimação da vivissecção na Inglaterra vitoriana, e procuro demonstrar que o emprego do cão como animal experimental era considerado também uma profanação dos afetos e virtudes domésticos. Considero que talvez a questão mais importante que informava as críticas de Cobbe e demais antivivisseccionistas à experimentação animal seja a temática da sensibilidade. O cão era considerado então, especialmente na Inglaterra, o mais sensível e emocionalmentecomplexo de todos os animais não-humanos, e a teoria darwiniana só vinha a confirmar e reforçar essa ideia, fornecendo fundamentos teóricos que a substanciavam. A indiferença ecrueldade que Cobbe atribuía aos fisiologistas, que sacrificavam esse animal sem hesitar, conferia aos homens da ciência médica a imagem de indivíduos insensíveis atuando emuma cultura laboratorial de embotamento afetivo ou mesmo de exacerbação dos instintos mais bestiais. Também me esforcei por demonstrar, com maior ênfase no último capítulo, que no discurso de Frances Cobbe a vivissecção figura como evidência máxima de que o espírito científico de sua época representava uma traição e, portanto, uma grande ameaça aosvalores morais tradicionais de amor e simpatia com os quais se construíam as civilizações e a nação britânica. Nessa chave de compreensão o darwinismo era retratado como protótipo desse espírito científico, e o apoio de Darwin e da maioria dos darwinistas às plataformas políticas dos praticantes da fisiologia experimental eram considerados agravantes especiais. O motivo disso era que a teoria darwiniana da origem comum consistia, na percepção dos antivivisseccionistas, na principal evidência científica da sensibilidade especial dos cães;dessa forma, ao emprestar seu prestígio e sua pena à legitimação da vivissecção, Darwin estaria traindo o animal cujo status moral ele próprio havia ajudado a elevar. Proponho como uma tentativa de explicação para esse aparente paradoxo da postura dos darwinistas em relação à vivissecção uma exploração das diferenças entre duas teoria de Darwin: a da origem comum e a da seleção natural, e procuro demonstrar que essas duas noções apontam para caminhos éticos antagônicos: a primeira para a expansão progressiva da esfera de consideração moral humana, de modo a abarcar também os animais; a última,para o estreitamento dessa esfera de consideração moral. Foi em resposta às implicações éticas e aplicações políticas desse segundo aspecto do evolucionismo de Darwin, relacionado à ideia de ‘sobrevivência do mais apto’, que Frances Cobbe se insurgiu,descrevendo a vivissecção como um “ultraje aos afetos” entre cães e homens.

[Experiments on living subjects: the vivisection debate in German and British medical weekly journals 1919-1939]. / Experimente am lebendigen Leib: Zur Frage der Vivisektion in deutschen und britischen medizinischen Wochenschriften 1919-1939.

By the end of the 1920s, animal experiments were considered a standardized procedure for testing medical substances and therapies. In the context of the so-called "crisis of medicine", however, some physicians and the wider lay public in Germany and Great Britain criticized animal based research. While British antivivisectionists had little relevance in the 1930s, their German counterparts allied with the National Socialist Party and gained social and political force. The debates within the German and British medical profession about doctors' interventions in that debate, as well as the public perception of doctors will be analysed on the basis of the most important medical weekly journals of the time, that were involved in these debates.

Emanuel Edward Klein--the father of British microbiology and the case of the animal vivisection controversy of 1875.

The new Appendix A of the European Convention for the Protection of Vertebrate Animals Used for Experimental and Other Scientific Purposes, which gives guidelines for accommodation and care of animals and was approved on June 15, 2006, was the main reason the authors decided to investigate the origins of the regulations of animal experiments. Although one might assume that the regulation had its origin in the United Nations conventions, the truth is that its origins are a hundred years old. The authors present a case of the nineteenth-century vivisection controversy brought about by the publication of the Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory in 1873, in which John Burdon-Sanderson, Emanuel Edward Klein, Michael Foster, and Thomas Lauder Brunton described a series of vivisection experiments they performed on animals for research purposes. It was the first case of vivisection to be examined, processed, and condemned for inhuman behavior toward animals before an official body, leading to enactment of the Cruelty to Animals Act in 1876. The case reveals a specific ethos of science in the second half of the nineteenth century, which was characterized by a deep commitment of scientists to the scientific enterprise and their strong belief that science could solve social problems, combined with an overt insensitivity to the suffering of experimental animals. The central figure in the case was Emanuel Edward Klein, a disciple of the Central European medical tradition (Vienna Medical School) and a direct follower of the experimental school of Brücke, Stricker, Magendie, and Bernard. Because of his undisguised attitudes and opinions on the use of vivisection, Klein became a paradigm of the new scientific identity, strongly influencing the stereotypic image of a scientist, and polarizing the public opinion on vivisection in England in the nineteenth century and for some considerable time afterward.

Necessary torture? Vivisection, suffragette force-feeding, and responses to scientific medicine in Britain c. 1870-1920.

One of the primary aims of late nineteenth-century laboratory experimentation was to ground understandings of illness and disease within new regimes of science. It was also hoped that clinical practice would become increasingly complemented by discoveries and technologies accrued from emergent forms of modern medical enquiry, and that, ultimately, this would lead to improved diagnostic and therapeutic procedures that could be applied to a wide variety of medical complaints. This met with resistance in Britain. So far, analyses of the British reception to forms of scientific medicine have focused on a science versus intuition dichotomy. This article aims to address other aspects intertwined in the debate through an exploration of alternative representations of the medical scientist available and the relation of this to perceptions of clinical practice. Using new technologies of the stomach as a case study, I shall examine how physiologists approached digestion in the laboratory, the responses of antivivisectionists to this, the application of gastric innovations at the clinical level, and the impact of the use of the stomach tube in the suffragette force-feeding controversy.

Probing the human brain with stimulating electrodes: the story of Roberts Bartholow's (1874) experiment on Mary Rafferty.

Roberts Bartholow's 1874 experiment on Mary Rafferty is widely cited as the first demonstration, by direct application of stimulating electrodes, of the motor excitability of the human cerebral cortex. The many accounts of the experiment, however, leave certain questions and details unexamined or unresolved, especially about Bartholow's goals, the nature and quality of the evidence, and the experiment's role in the history of theory and research on localisation of function. In this article, we try to fill these gaps and to tell the full story. We describe Bartholow's career up to 1874, review the theoretical and empirical background for the experiment, and present Bartholow's own account of the experiment as well as those of his supporters and critics. We then present our own analysis, assess the experiment's influence on contemporaneous scientific opinion about cortical excitability, and trace its citation record into our own time. We also review and assess ethical criticisms of Bartholow and their effects on his career, and we close by discussing the role we think the experiment deserves to play in the history of theory and research on cortical excitability.

The expression of the emotions in man and laboratory animals.

Similarities between human and animal emotions served as justification for both animal advocacy and animal experimentation in the later nineteenth century. Evolutionary kinship played a central role, at this time, in the competing arguments regarding the legal and moral status of nonhuman animals. During the vivisection debates of the 1870s, natural hierarchies were redrawn to include emotional sensitivity as a defining category of evolutionary status: a lack of sensitivity to animal suffering in humans could be regarded as regressive, while the highly developed sensitivities of particular animals earned them a special eminence. But it was this same cross-species sympathy that ultimately banished the experimental animal from the public gaze, as scenes from the laboratory were considered too disturbing to readerly sensitivity.

[Against the pariah's moral. Shopenhauer on the ethics of vivisection]. / Gegen die Pariasmoral. Schopenhauer über die Ethik des Tierversuchs.

In this essay I investigate Schopenhauer's position on the ethics of animal experiments. I argue that both his analysis of the dangers involved in performing vivisection on a wide scale and the guidelines he suggested in order to limit this cruel practice remain theoretically relevant in the context of today's debate on animal rights. Schopenhauer responded to the rapid increase in the use of animals at universities by calling for a philosophical system able to address the problems of animal ethics and treating vivisection as an important moral issue. This essay is divided into three sections: first, I reconstruct the historical background of Schopenhauer's reflections on vivisection; then I present the philosophical basis of Schopenhauer's guidelines for an ethical treatment of animals in university laboratories; finally I underline the modernity of Schopenhauer's position, focussing on a few specific examples (such as the problem of performing vivisection on apes).

Carl Cohen's 'kind' arguments for animal rights and against human rights.

Carl Cohen's arguments against animal rights are shown to be unsound. His strategy entails that animals have rights, that humans do not, the negations of those conclusions, and other false and inconsistent implications. His main premise seems to imply that one can fail all tests and assignments in a class and yet easily pass if one's peers are passing and that one can become a convicted criminal merely by setting foot in a prison. However, since his moral principles imply that nearly all exploitive uses of animals are wrong anyway, foes of animal rights are advised to seek philosophical consolations elsewhere. I note that some other philosophers' arguments are subject to similar objections.

"Would you let your child die rather than experiment on animals?" A comparative questions approach.

By placing the title question alongside five comparative questions and offering answers to the whole set as given by seven imaginary respondents, this paper analyzes the question's deceptiveness and the inconsistency of its implied claims. Apart from ambiguities of situation, history, and agency, the question's demand for a choice between "your child" and "nonhuman animals" obscures a field of other values regarding (1) species, (2) family ties, and (3) the wrongness-in-itself (or otherwise) of the experiments envisioned. This paper argues that while a "No" answer to the title question does not, as intended by the questioner, support the experimental status quo, even a "Yes" answer does not reflect a choice between one's own child and animals.