Ethics of Research involving animals
Scientific developments and public opinion in the 18th and 19th centuries
2.5 As the study of animals developed in medical schools across Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, experiments became increasingly complex and invasive. Due to the absence of anaesthetics, many experiments involved vivisection in the literal sense of the word (see Box 2.1), as some researchers frequently operated on unanaesthetised living animals as part of their research. This practice disturbed many of their contemporaries and concern about the suffering of experimental animals increased. There was also opposition to practices which involved the death of an animal simply to illustrate a previously known scientific concept: for example, in the 17th century, the physician Robert Boyle repeatedly demonstrated respiration to interested audiences by placing an animal in a bell jar, which was then depleted of air by a pump, causing the animal to suffocate.9
2.6 Concern was expressed in different ways. For example, Alexander Pope published the essay Against Barbarity to Animals in an English daily newspaper in 1713. William Hogarth’s engravings, entitled The Four Stages of Cruelty, were published as inexpensive reprints in 1751 and enjoyed considerable popularity. Samuel Johnson denounced animal experiments in 1758 with a polemic published in the weekly news journal The Idler. While most contributions focused on animal suffering, there were also fears that lack of respect for animals would corrupt humans. Thus Thomas Percival expressed in A Father’s Instructions in 1789: ‘Cruelty…will steal your heart and every generous principle of your nature will be subverted’.10
2.7 During the 19th century there was a dramatic increase in scientific exploration in Britain and elsewhere. The study of evolution, and the natural sciences, often involved animal research. In France, a tradition of experimental physiology, involving large numbers of sentient animals, was initiated by Françoise Magendie (1783–1855) and his most famous pupil Claude Bernard (1813–78). In Germany in 1854, the visiting British journalist George Lewes observed ‘extensive apparatus and no end of frogs’.11
2.8 Among other things, the substantial expansion of the middle classes in Victorian Britain, and increasing amounts of leisure time, contributed to growing concerns for animal suffering among lay people and scientists. Marshall Hall (1790–1857), a physician and noted physiologist, supported animal research but stated ‘Unhappily… the subjects of animal physiology are sentient, and every experiment is attended by pain and suffering.’12 Presaging later systems of regulation, Hall set out five guiding principles of animal research to stimulate debate in the scientific community:
i) the lack of an alternative;
ii) a clear objective;
iii) the avoidance of repetition of work;
iv) the need to minimise suffering; and
v) full and detailed publication of the results.13
2.9 In Britain, experimental physiology, which was the main form of medical research at that time, was relatively underdeveloped by comparison with the rest of Europe.14 In 1863 an editorial in the leading medical journal, The Lancet, stated ‘… perhaps some two or three, or at most six, scientific men in London are known to be pursuing certain lines of investigation which require them occasionally during the course of a year to employ living animals for the purpose of their inquiries.’15 However, in the mid-1860s, when general anaesthesia was introduced to Britain, a new generation of medical scientists began to experiment on animals rendered unconscious with ether or chloroform. According to government statistics, the number of animal experiments conducted in Britain increased from 250 in 1881 (the first year that records were kept) to 95,000 in 1910.16
2.10 Although there were sporadic examples of publications from the early 18th century onwards (see paragraph 2.6), formal public and political debate about animal research in Britain can be traced to the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association (BMA) held in Norwich in 1874. The BMA had invited the French scientist Eugene Magnan to lecture on the physiological effects of alcohol. After the lecture, Dr Magnan gave a demonstration of the induction of experimental epilepsy in a dog by the intravenous injection of absinthe. There is no accurate record of what happened at the meeting, but it is known that some members of the audience protested and an eminent medical figure summoned the magistrates to prevent the demonstration from continuing. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA; see Box 2.4) brought a prosecution for cruelty, and several of the doctors present at the lecture gave evidence against Dr Magnan, who had returned to France to avoid answering the charges. The press followed these events with interest, and a heated debate unfolded in the pages of popular magazines. The very first animal protection pamphlets, calling for legislation to regulate animal research, appeared shortly after the BMA meeting.17
2.11 Over the next two years, the debate gathered momentum. The first animal protection society was formed in 1875 by the writer and suffragette Frances Power Cobbe.18 She had returned from Italy earlier that year, having organised a campaign against the use of dogs and other animals in experiments conducted by an Italian professor of physiology. She also founded the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection in 1898, based on the principle of total abolition (see Box 2.4).19 In 1875 Cobbe helped to introduce a bill into Parliament that called for the regulation of animal experiments.
2.12 The medical and scientific professions responded to what they had not previously perceived to be a serious threat to biological and medical research by countering the bill with a second, less restrictive draft. In an attempt to resolve the issue, a Royal Commission was established. It recommended in January 1876 that the practice of animal research should be regulated by law. In view of the two proposals, new legislation was prepared and introduced into the House of Lords in May of that year. The General Medical Council collected 3,000 signatures calling for amendments and a revised Bill was finally accepted by the Government, becoming the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act.20 This was the first legislation in the world to regulate animal research. The 1876 Act allowed certain experiments, but required that licence applications be reviewed and authorised. Decisions about licences were taken by the Secretary of State, but required eminent supporters, usually Presidents of the Royal Medical Colleges. Licences were administered by the Home Office (see paragraphs 13.2–13.3).
2.13 Between 1876 and the start of the First World War, public debate about animal research flourished in the UK, with the founding of several animal protection organisations and the establishment of a second Royal Commission in 1906.21 Several public lectures took place, and a great number of books and leaflets addressing concerns about animal research were published.22
Footnotes9 See Thomas K (1996) Man and the Natural World, Changing attitudes in England 1500–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
See also a well-known painting by Joseph Wright from 1768 showing such an experiment being conducted, available at:
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=NG725. Accessed
on: 12 Apr 2005.
10 See also Shakespeare’s Cymbeline Act 1, scene 5: ‘your highness shall from this practice but make hard your heart’; Dunlop
RH and Williams DJ (1996) Bioethics, animal experimentation and sentience, in Veterinary Medicine: An illustrated history
(St. Louis, MO: Mosby), Chapter 32.
11 Wilson AN (2003) The Victorians (New York: W. W. Norton & Company).
12 In Dunlop RH and Williams DJ (1996) Bioethics, animal experimentation and sentience, in Veterinary Medicine: An illustrated
history (Mosby), Chapter 32.
13 Rupke NA (Editor) (1987) Vivisection in Historical Perspective (London and New York: Croon-Helm).
14 Radford M (2001) Animal Welfare Law in Britain: Regulation and responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p67.
15 Anon (1863) The Lancet ii: 252–3.
16 French RD (1975) Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
17 Hopley E (1998) Campaigning Against Cruelty – The hundred year history of the British Union for the Abolition of
Vivisection (London: BUAV), p4; French RD (1975) Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society (Princeton:
Princeton University Press).
18 The Society for the Protection of Animals Liable to Vivisection later became the Victoria Street Society and then the
National Anti-Vivisection Society (see Box 2.4).
19 Hopley E (1998) Campaigning against Cruelty – The hundred year history of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
(London: BUAV).
20 French RD (1975) Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press); Hopley E (1998)
Campaigning against Cruelty – The hundred year history of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (London: BUAV),
p5; Radford M (2001) Animal Welfare Law in Britain: Regulation and responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p67.