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The Darwinian Revolution

Even though public opinion held that animals existed to serve human needs, there was opposition to vivisection during the time of Magendie and Bernard. In France, a series of public lectures by Magendie catalyzed an outcry against unnecessary cruelty in animal experimentation. Authors Victor Hugo and Voltaire were highly critical of animal experimentation, and in Germany, the composer Richard Wagner also voiced criticism. The emergence of science as a major influence and leading institution perturbed society profoundly. As science gained power, those of romantic, artistic sensibility found the emphasis on object reality and seeing animals and people as tools, as examples of mathematical laws, became abhorrent.

The two polarized approaches to understanding the natural worldwere echoed in societal debate. The old way — the way of “observation” and non-interference — was pitted against the “modern,” experimental method. This method demanded intrusion by the scientist as one variable at a time was changed and then the “system” examined for the result of that change.

Just as society disagreed about the role of animal experiments in the “new science,” so did scientists themselves. Pasteur reportedly had some discomfort over using animals, and Descartes himself rarely performed vivisection. British scientists viewing their French counterparts at work expressed horror at seeing public demonstrations of experiments on unanesthetized animals and a certain undercurrent of cultural animosity developed, with the British criticizing French practices. The established philosophic tradition in Britain that had already begun to discuss the morality of humane treatment of animals. Welfare concerns over treatment of horses and cattle were particularly intense, and in 1821, the British House of Commons passed the Martin Act, the first animal protection legislation.

So, as noted earlier and throughout this discussion,contemporaneous with the proliferation of scientific discovery was an evolution in ethical thinking, particularly in Britain, as society attempted to make sense of new discoveries and reconcile them with traditional moral thought. John Locke (1632-1704), a doctor as well as a philosopher, studied animals and said that causing them to suffer was immoral. In 1776, Humphrey Primatt, an Anglican theologian, insisted that animal cruelty was inadequately controlled by law and maintained that God would require a strict accounting from humans for creatures entrusted to his care. David Hume (1711-1776) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) refuted the Cartesian position of animals as mechanistic bodies. They both saw basic similarities between human beings and animals. Bentham, a contemporary of Magendie, asked a different question than “Do animals have minds/souls?” “The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” he posited.

Around this time, English physiologist and neurologist Marshall Hall (1790-1857) began to pioneer animal welfare issues. In 1831, he suggested five guiding principles (which later formed the basis of the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act) to ensure that vivisection took into account animal suffering:

1. Is the experiment necessary? (Will observation alone suffice?)
2. Does it have the possibility of achieving the desired result?
3. Can the protocol be modified to reduce discomfort?
4. Has the experiment been done before?
5. Will the protocol produce valid results?

Hall also proposed the founding of a scientific society to oversee the publication of research results and recommended that “the results of experimentation be laid before the public in the simplest, plainest terms.” Although his suggestions were not taken seriously at the time, many of his principles found their way into legislation over a century later both in the U.K. and the U.S.

Into this volatile brew of science and social consciousness, Charles Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 caused a great upheaval. Darwin’s discoveries suggested there to be less distinction between animals and human beings than had ever been imagined. This revelation increased the separation between the world of the church and the world of science.

Darwin’s work implied not only that animals do suffer, but that their suffering is morally significant. If animals were close to us in terms of a nervous system, then the concept of an animal’s pain and suffering needed to be addressed. The issue also arose that, if animals are not similar to human beings due to evolutionary intervention, it became necessary to examine the tradition of using animals as models for humans in science.

One outcome of Darwin’s work was an increase in the study of animals themselves, in particular animal behavior. The study of animals became valuable in and of itself, whether or not results could be extrapolated to human beings. While animals were still considered research tools, ethologists, working in the field as well as the lab, showed that animals have interior lives. Romanes (1848-1894), the youngest of Darwin’s colleagues, laid the foundation of what he called comparative psychology, postulating a similarity of cognitive processes and mechanisms between humans and animals. Morgan’s (1852-1936) Canon of Interpretation refers to the level of psychical faculty or mental development assumed when explaining behavior. It refers particularly to comparisons across species and was related to the theory of emergent evolution. These advances in the development of comparative cognition added profoundly to the philosophic discussions about the moral standing of animals.

Although researchers into animal behavior went against the Cartesian notion of animals as machines, they did follow Bernard’s example of creating rigorous experimental protocols, looking for objective data, and mistrusting anything that seemed anecdotal in nature. This new view of animals in experimentation is perhaps best embodied by Pavlov (1849-1936), the Russian scientist known for his pioneering work in psychology, who used the dog as a model. In his many years as a physiologist, Pavlov was committed to the Bernardian method – i.e., careful experimentation — yet, his documentation included how his research subjects were cared for.

Unlike Pavlov, whose work was supported by the government, researchers in Europe, Britain and America at this time did not generally have the financial and practical resources for extensive animal studies. This changed when the laboratory rat came entered the scene. Although first used for rat baiting, the mutant albinos were often kept for breeding or as pets and as they became progressively tamer after it was discovered they could be quite gentle if properly handled early in life. By 1860 the rat had begun its career as a laboratory animal in France, where it was occasionally used in studies of breeding. This provides the first example of a species being domesticated for entirely scientific purposes.

Scientists immigrated to the United States at the turn of the century in response to a massive growth in scientific work here. At the end of the Civil War, there was a rapid increase in industrialization in conjunction with an increasing respect for science and technology. Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1876 to be a center for scientific activity and, along with Harvard University and the University of Chicago, became one of the major centers for scientific research. The laboratory rat became the biological tool of choice, and by the end of the 1920s, was central to almost all psychology department labs. Rats were reasonably inexpensive, easy to house and care for, had short life spans compared to higher mammals, and reproduced rapidly. The domestication of the rat for a research tool was the first step in what was to become an offshoot of using animals for research—changing the animal itself into a better tool for a specific use.

Animal experimentation became part of the general science establishment in the U.S., and although there were public concerns, most Americans bought into science and technology as a panacea for societal problems.