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CHAPTER THREE: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANIMALS AND ETHICS IN RESEARCH

Animals have been subjects of experimentation for millennia and over the ages, we humans have contemplated our relationship with them. In the history of animals in research, changing moral sensibilities have always followed improvements in science and technology that in turn result in shifts in best practices. As scientific knowledge about living things increases, so does our sensitivity toward them, and this sensitivity brings about improvements in methodology. The study of life science as we know it today began in earnest in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is important to remember that scientists at the time had few tools to draw from in their arsenal of investigation. The study of physiology, for example, began in the 18th century, though anesthesia did not come into being until the mid-19th century. Today, with the rapid increase in both scientific knowledge and the technology to apply it, our range of choices is evolving more quickly and becoming more complex than our scientific forebears. But the patterns of scientific discovery and moral dilemma in our time are not new….