Voracious Science & Vulnerable Animals: A Primate Scientist's Ethical Journey
360
Voracious Science & Vulnerable Animals: A Primate Scientist's Ethical Journey
360eBook
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Overview
Gluck begins by taking us inside the laboratory of Harry F. Harlow at the University of Wisconsin, where Gluck worked as a graduate student in the 1960s. Harlow’s primate lab became famous for his behavioral experiments in maternal deprivation and social isolation of rhesus macaques. Though trained as a behavioral scientist, Gluck finds himself unable to overlook the intense psychological and physical damage these experiments wrought on the macaques. Gluck’s sobering and moving account reveals how in this and other labs, including his own, he came to grapple with the uncomfortable justifications that many researchers were offering for their work. As his sense of conflict grows, we’re right alongside him, developing a deep empathy for the often smart and always vulnerable animals used for these experiments.
At a time of unprecedented recognition of the intellectual cognition and emotional intelligence of animals, Voracious Science and Vulnerable Animals is a powerful appeal for our respect and compassion for those creatures who have unwillingly dedicated their lives to science. Through the words of someone who has inflicted pain in the name of science and come to abhor it, it’s important to know what has led this far to progress and where further inroads in animal research ethics are needed.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226375793 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 10/26/2016 |
| Series: | Animal Lives |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 360 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Voracious Science & Vulnerable Animals
A Primate Scientist's Ethical Journey
By John P. Gluck
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2016 The University of ChicagoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-37579-3
CHAPTER 1
Erosion
Be sure you do not let anything, not even your good kind heart, spoil your experiment.
MAX GOTTLIEB TO MARTIN ARROWSMITH IN SINCLAIR LEWIS'S NOVEL ARROWSMITH
Most people, I think, do not reach early adulthood with a frame of mind and set of values compatible with experimenting on animals. Growing up — especially in a household with pets — children learn to appreciate animals as beings with inner lives much like themselves simply by applying their naturally developing empathy and intuition. Any tendency for society, with its sometimes ruthless objectification of animals, to refute this working assumption is counterbalanced by the teaching of the general "do unto others" ethical framework and a maturing sense of compassion for those who suffer.
The typical college-age person is therefore likely to view with some concern and twinge of conscience the implantation of electrodes in rat brains, delivery of painful electrical shocks to monkeys, and administration of powerful drugs to dogs. For this reason, those attracted to a career involving research on animals must undergo an emotional and ethical retraining process every bit as important as their scientific training. They must learn to put aside identification with animal pain and suffering and replace it with a passion for advancing scientific knowledge. They must come to believe that they are joining the ranks of a special corps of truth-seekers and improvers of the human condition who may assume their work to be justified on its face, no matter the cost in animal lives.
Such was the case for me. I grew up with deep emotional attachments to family pets, believed without question that animals had internal lives that mattered to them and were capable of feeling joy, sadness, fear, disappointment, and pain, and was revolted by cruelty to animals. By the end of high school, I had a well-developed sensitivity to suffering and a good sense of compassion. I also had an abiding interest in reducing the human suffering that I saw in the world, and when this interest found its vehicle in experimental psychology, I took a path that brought my career ambitions into conflict with my natural inclination to abhor the deliberate harming of animals. By the time I had finished my undergraduate education and started graduate school, my professors — and the overall research context into which I threw myself — had exorcised my sentimental concern for animals' welfare and constructed for me a new belief system in which there was really no such thing as the animals' perspective.
My father John was, not surprisingly, very influential in modeling how I should comport myself and treat others. A New York City firefighter and part-time longshoreman during most of my youth, he projected a quiet strength and protectiveness. When he returned from a full day of work, his clothing had a distinctive smell, a combination of smoke and bananas, which became for me the perfume of security. While there were many hints of a rough-and-tumble life at the firehouse and on the docks, he was a gentle man at home. He loved children — and not only those in his own family. When he and I attended local athletic events together, he would often engage the small children who sat near us, talking and laughing and giving them pennies. He also loved dogs. Although his expression of affection for the animals was muted, all of the dogs we lived with while I was growing up waited at the door for his return from work and then rested near him wherever he sat.
When Dad's schedule allowed him to be home on the weekends, he and I spent countless hours playing catch with whatever ball was in season and running around an undulating cinder track in a WPA-constructed park called Victory Field. There we watched local baseball, softball, and semi-pro football games until we were quite familiar with many of the players. Not much was said between us during those times; rather, they were dominated by the relaxed feeling of being together without a particular goal that needed to be accomplished. I knew my father wanted me to develop into a strong person with streetwise sense, as insurance against the risks he knew were out there waiting. If there was a demand that came from him, that was it.
My mother Dorothy was a cautious person, skeptical about the goodness of the world. Like my father she was experienced with the ins and outs of city life and actively counseled defensive vigilance. Significantly for me, however, she spoke her mind with confidence and strength, and she both valued and exemplified independence. She expressed affection more directly than my father, but firmly believed that love had its limits when it came to her personal and family relationships — except, that is, in the case of the family dogs. For them she was forgiving and effusively kind. She refused to buy commercial dog food, preferring to cook the dogs' meals of meat, rice, and vegetables. My mother had been encouraged by her parents to pursue higher education, but for her own reasons she left an academically oriented high school in New York (Julia Richmond) for a course in secretarial skills. She ended up working — contentedly, I think — as a secretary to the principal of an elementary school in Queens. She prided herself for her meticulous memory and organizational skill and believed she would have made a good doctor. I think she was right. Though she would have been happy for her children to have solid jobs in any respectable venue, she encouraged academic interests like her own mother had done for her.
My family occupied a comfortable two-room basement apartment in the house owned by my grandparents. My parents and sister slept in two of the three upstairs bedrooms, and I had the foldout sofa bed to myself in the living room of our apartment. While I did not have my own room, the arrangement did provide me the privacy to stay up and watch the Late Show and listen to the Symphony Sid jazz radio show late into the weekend nights. Most nights I could also invite the family dog to share the bed with me, in violation of my mother's rules. The dog and I were typically awakened in the morning by the sound of footsteps on the stairs from the upper floor, giving the dog plenty of time to jump to the floor and take up a more acceptable location.
In the immediate neighborhood where I grew up were three very large cemeteries. The cemeteries provided places for my friends and me to hang out in the late afternoon and evening, away from the prying eyes of neighbors and police patrol cars. Many of the grave sites had gray cast-iron furniture, the original purpose of which was to facilitate long visits by the friends and family of the deceased. We used the tables and chairs to just sit around, play cards by flashlight, talk, and, as teenagers, drink beer together. We meant no disrespect when we shared our drinks with the deceased by toasting them and pouring a little on the grave. It was a way to thank them for the use of the furniture and the much-valued privacy.
The cemeteries were also homes for the local wildlife. They were full of squirrels, many different kinds of birds, rabbits, and some feral cats. The squirrels were tame, readily accepting peanuts and eating leftover sandwich debris and potato chips. Many of the cats still wore collars from previous human associations and were sad to behold. Some would approach us seeking a kind touch; others crouched tightly on the periphery, too frightened to approach yet appearing to be trying to overcome their resistance. One day I saw a very large bird, about eighteen inches from beak to tail, with a deep, full chest and feathers of an orange-rust color with black highlights, perched proudly on a Civil War soldier's headstone. None of us who saw the bird had any idea what it was. Roy Johnson, the most intellectual of our group, later searched his encyclopedia and identified the bird as a pheasant. From that point on, bird watching was added to our daytime cemetery activities.
Local shopkeepers and neighborhood notables, each with a colorful past and defining life story, provided me with abundant examples of the variety of personality and approaches to life that can be found in human society. A few of these people I remember with particular clarity. Abe the grocer, for example, was a short, pugnacious man with a crude, faded tattoo made up of a series of symbols and numbers on the inner portion of his left forearm. I learned from my father that the tattoo had been applied while he was in prison during World War II. Later, when I worked for him delivering groceries and stocking shelves, he told me stories about his time in Auschwitz. He was the first adult man I ever saw cry openly.
Based on what I saw in my family and neighborhood, I grew up believing that animals had a special place in human lives. For example, while my grandmother frequently fought bitterly with my grandfather and acted ambivalently toward my sister and me, she lavished affection on her dog Buddy, a beautiful white spitz. When I was about four years old, I tried to pull a small gardening tool away from Buddy, and he took exception and grabbed and held my right wrist in his mouth. My mother heard my cries, ran out, and intervened. Buddy's teeth had left a bleeding puncture wound, so she quickly took me to the doctor's office on the next block; he applied a few drops of acid to clean the wound. When we returned home, the facts of the incident were investigated with a neighbor, and in the end it was determined that I was primarily at fault. I was punished, while Buddy was compensated for his premature scolding with a special dinner.
My family had two dogs while I was growing up: Prince, an oil-black cocker spaniel, and then Penny, a medium-sized black-and-white mixed breed that my father bought from a cab driver for two dollars. My sister and I took turns walking each dog and caring for its needs. Each of them brought warmth and joy to our lives on a daily basis and was clearly a member of the family. For some unknown reason, however, neither Prince nor Penny lived very long. Their deaths were greeted with open, unembarrassed grief from the entire family.
When Penny died, the pain and sadness ran so deep that my parents decided that we would not get another dog. Instead my mother purchased a bright green and yellow parakeet that she named Paddy. She believed that the bird, while welcome in the house, would not elicit the same amount of attachment and subsequent pain when he died. Several times a week after dinner, my mother would hang an old bedsheet in the entryway between the kitchen and the living room. Then Carol and I would take turns opening Paddy's cage door so that he could stretch his wings. Paddy flew joyfully around the room, landing on lamps and tables and people's heads. It was a ritual that we all enjoyed, but it was clear that it was done for Paddy, an acknowledgment that he was spending most of his life in a cage and that was not quite fair. When Paddy was found cold and still in the bottom of his cage some five years after joining our household, it marked the end of the family's pet ownership. There was no way to escape the grief and sadness. Intimacy always engenders a vulnerability to loss, no matter the attempts to stay emotionally separated.
I can vividly recall the ragman coming down the alley every week or so in a rickety wooden wagon pulled slowly by a brown horse. From anywhere in the house I could hear the clanging of the cowbell that was attached to a pole to the right of the wood-plank front seat, and the rhythmical clip-clop of the horse's hooves on the hard cement. My grandmother would take me out to meet the man and the horse. She gave me treats and taught me how to feed the horse as she spoke to the driver in German. I was intimidated by the large animal at first but quickly came to enjoy his strong smell and the feel of his mouth and warm breath. I could see that he liked getting his forehead scratched and his neck and shoulders rubbed. That I become comfortable performing these acts of simple kindness seemed very important to my grandmother. To my memory, this was one of the few explicit lessons she intentionally taught me. While I enjoyed these encounters, I also became aware of the plight of both the ragman and his horse, who spent their lives going through other people's garbage in order to survive. I could see the man's tattered clothes and thin, drawn face, the protruding hipbones and ribs of the horse. When I asked my grandmother to help me understand these issues, she would simply say, "Das leben ist hart" — life is hard. I slowly began to understand what she meant.
Several times in my childhood I witnessed or heard of acts of cruelty to animals. I know that these experiences left a deep impression on me because I remember them very clearly. One of them occurred in the early 1950s, when I was about ten years old, on a visit to the home of my aunt Evelyn and her family, who had moved to Hempstead, Long Island. The small, comfortable house they had purchased sat on an acre of land that adjoined a tract of woods that had a small stream running through it. My cousin Robert and I immediately took off for the woods, to spend the day exploring.
When we arrived at the stream, three or four boys a little older than ourselves were huddled together on the bank staring into an aluminum pot. Peering over their shoulders, I could see an eel in the bottom of the pan along with about an inch of murky water. The eel curved around the inside edge of the pan, and it slithered in circles as the boy holding the pot reached down to poke it. Robert, who knew the boy, quickly jumped back and yelled at him to leave the eel alone and throw it back into the water. The boy ignored him.
I didn't understand why Robert was shouting until I looked more closely and realized that the boy held a small pocketknife and was trying to stab the eel with the point of its blade. Whenever he moved the knife toward the eel, placing the tip of the blade on its skin, it slithered away before he could penetrate the eel's body.
Robert shouted at him again. This time the boy looked up angrily and said he really wanted to see what the eel looked like on the inside and Robert had better leave him alone. Some of the other boys chimed in and glared at us threateningly.
Robert and I came to an unspoken agreement that the eel's life was not worth the beating we were likely to get if we continued to intervene, and so we walked off. I was sorry for the eel and felt like a coward. From the look on Robert's face I could tell he was feeling the same. As we walked away, I remember wondering, what did the eel looked like inside? We returned to the house, where we got caught up in a play with Robert's sisters, and laughter soon replaced the feelings of fear and cowardice.
Another exposure to cruelty to animals took place when we visited the home of my father's sister Edna and her husband Russell in rural Connecticut. Off to one side of their rustic house was a large boulder into which my uncle had chiseled a cat's head. The date of its completion, 1944, was also engraved neatly into the base. He explained that the sculpture was a memorial to one of their beloved cats, Nosey, a mostly brown-and-gray cat with an odd dark marking below its nose that looked like a mustache. The story he told was that after the cat had gone missing for several days, its body was found nailed to a tree. An accompanying note stated that the cat had been tortured because its face reminded the perpetrator of Hitler. I was horrified by the story and frankly could not fathom the depth of hate that it represented. Why would someone who hated Hitler choose to express it by crucifying a cat?
In school, I was prone to distraction and generally did just enough work to get by. However, as a result of prodding by my family and the efforts of my father's younger brother Ed, a worldly and curious merchant seaman, to get me interested in reading, by the time I reached high school I was more academically motivated. I also studied the clarinet and saxophone and spent hours each evening practicing. I had great fun performing rock and roll and jazz with small local combos at dances and café venues. A group of my friends and I were attracted to the Greenwich Village bohemian scene, where we could listen to music and poetry readings for hours for the cost of a cup of coffee or hot spiced tea. These experiences encouraged more serious reading of authors like Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, the existentialists Camus and Sartre, and the beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg. These explorations transformed me: I started to become a more mature, skeptical, and reflective thinker. I began to read books on biology, American history, and geology. Science began to take more and more of my time.
Nonetheless, by the time of graduation from high school I had not seriously applied to any colleges. I began to think that I might skip college and take a city job like my father or focus on music as a profession. In an attempt to keep my academic options open, however, I enrolled at the Bernard Baruch School of Business and Public Administration of the City College of New York (CCNY), taking classes in accounting, marketing, and economics. But I failed to connect with the business curriculum; I didn't want to learn about ways to manipulate the consumer and keep track of profits and losses. In protest and disgust I just walked away from the classes, allowing a string of incompletes to fill my academic record.
Still, honestly evaluating my musical skill and the likelihood of consistently making a living as a musician yielded the conclusion that while I was competent and even talented, I was not star quality by any stretch of the imagination. Facing these facts, and considering my father's advice to not follow in his footsteps, I began to think more seriously about going to an arts and sciences college.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Voracious Science & Vulnerable Animals by John P. Gluck. Copyright © 2016 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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Table of Contents
PrefaceIntroduction
1. Erosion
2. Induction
3. Practice
4. Awareness
5. Realignment
6. Reconstruction
7. Protection
8. Reformation
Epilogue
Notes
Index