Animal Ethos

For a reader who is most interested in browsing the book’s contents, there are several points of entry. For those unfamiliar with my work, they’d probably find the Introduction (“Moral Entanglements of Experimental Animal Science”) informative (although, perhaps, dry!) reading, because it sets up key theoretical frameworks that inform the rest of the book. For an account of the curious history of television in labs, I recommend Chapter 2, “Why Do Monkeys Watch TV?” The most difficult chapter for me to write was the third one, “The Lives and Deaths of Laboratory Animals,” which stands alone as an “An Interlude” in the middle of the book. This chapter takes as its premise the inevitability of animal death (widely referred to as “sacrifice” in lab science) because the vast majority of research protocols require that research animals be killed once their involvement in a project comes to an end. Chapter 5, “The Animal Commons,” is my own effort to think outside the box by considering how the prohibition on animal sharing might be altered so as to alter both the ethical and moral premises and consequences of experimentation.

My personal favorites, though, are Chapters 1 (“The Sentimental Structures of Laboratory Life”) and 4 (“Science and Salvation”), because it’s here that I wrestle with the interspecies complexities of intimacy, affect, and emotion. Chapter 4 also allowed me to address mourning and memorial practices; those familiar with my previous research know of my longstanding interest in end-of-life issues and mortuary practices.

One can never predict how one’s work will be received. What has intrigued me thus far, in the few months since the release of Animal Ethos, is the interest it has sparked among lab-based personnel, especially those whose day-to-day work concerns lab animal care and welfare. I have received requests to participate in discussions and initiatives about how to think creatively about lab practices as well as how to speak publicly about realms of research, and associated daily work, that involved parties assume are highly stigmatized.More specifically, researchers and other lab personnel are reluctant to tell others—including close friends and family—about any work that involves animal experimentation.

Their interest and invitations stand in stark contrast to my earlier work on organ transplantation: as I soon learned there, biomedical personnel express faint interest in reading analyses of their professional work, whereas involved lay parties, such as the recipients of transplanted organs and the kin of deceased donors, are avid readers, including anthropological studies of their lives.

On yet another front, I’ve been surprised by the responses I’ve encountered among members of my own profession: whereas successful anthropological field research is based on the premise of cultural relativism, a project that addresses the lives and deaths of research animals exposes a fragile line demarcating where one’s own moral principles can eclipse a professional ability to suspend one’s judgment of a specialized social domain.

In several instances I’ve faced the perplexing question, “why don’t you tell us how to think?” My purpose, however, is not to craft others’ moral frameworks but, instead, to open up a world that is troubled on a daily basis by the messiness of the moral. The lesson here is that animals—especially research animals—inspire highly emotional responses in many of us, regardless of one’s training and profession.