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Ethics of Research with Non-Human Animals
Published in Howard Winet, Ethics for Bioengineering Scientists, 2021
Another major change in the link between humans and domestic animals was their employment in the quest to understand human physiology. Aristotle and some of his contemporaries made observations on some species that could only have been gained from dissection (Adams and Larson 2007). One of his students, Erasistratus, demonstrated one way flow in heart valves (Mcpherson and Mattingly 1999). But systematic invasive examination of living specimens that became known as vivisection was apparently first performed by Galen the Physician (126–216 A.D.). He utilized mammals such as apes and pigs but not humans (because their dissection was forbidden by Roman law) (Adams and Larson 2007). His conclusions formed the basis for Western medical practice until the 16th century (Mcpherson and Mattingly 1999) when Vesalius at the beginning of the Enlightenment was allowed to publish De Humani Corporis Fabrica that exposed a number of Galen’s errors (Dyer and Thorndike 2000). The church placed restrictions on vivisection for research between the eras of Galen and Vesalius and his contemporaries (New 1993).
Introduction
Published in Clive R. Hollin, An Introduction to Human–Animal Relationships, 2021
If some of the entertainment we derive from animals is relatively benign, then there is much that is not. Our species has little hesitation in the cruel exploitation of animals. The third section raises questions about our choices in which animals we elect to eat and, indeed, whether we wish to eat animals. Human cruelty to animals is evident in the maltreatment of household pets, and the killing of animals in recreational hunting. Animals are also put to use in the laboratory, raising a host of issues surrounding vivisection. The closing pages speculate on what the future may hold and how we humans could try to hold back the impending planetary crisis.
Medicine and the Counter Culture
Published in Roger Cooter, John Pickstone, Medicine in the Twentieth Century, 2020
This reference to self-care suggests that self-help groups can sometimes be seen as an important part of the lay resistance to orthodox medical dominance in the latter decades of the twentieth century. The number of visible and active campaigning self-help groups has increased in the Anglo-American context in recent times, covering areas as diverse as black health and HIV/AIDS. They range from the Patients Association and the Association of Victims of Medical Accidents in Britain, to the National Women’s Health Network in the United States. Interestingly, the counter culture of self-help and environmentalism has also begun to challenge medical definitions of public and environmental health, through legal disputes over scientific evidence and the interpretation of risks in the generation of conditions such as leukemia. At another level, the animal rights movement has been involved in Britain and the United States since the mid-1970s in endeavoring to stop medical scientists from using animals in research on the basis of moral arguments against vivisection. In general terms, the more the self-help group in question engages in radical protest against mainstream values and institutions in health care, the more it can be seen to be part of the new counter culture.
“All Manner of Industry and Ingenuity”: A Bio-Bibliography of Dr Thomas Willis 1621–1675
Published in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2023
British physician Thomas Willis (1621–1675; see Figure 1) was a pivotal early modern figure in the shift from the scholasticism of the Middle Ages to an observation-and-experiment-based (“scientific”) framework for human anatomy and physiology. Willis made astute clinical and experimental observations, performed dissections of various animals and human cadavers, conducted innovative vivisections of animals, interacted productively with other like-minded individuals, and wrote extensively on clinical medicine, anatomy, and physiology—all while maintaining a busy clinical practice. He made fundamental contributions to neuroanatomy (e.g., descriptions of the cranial nerves) and to cerebrovascular physiology with his anatomical and pathological findings on humans and his injection experiments of animals, as still indicated by his eponymous circle (i.e., circle of Willis). Oddly, given his historical importance, there have been few attempts to write or edit scholarly monographs concerning Willis or his work over the last half-century (Denham 1965; Dewhurst 1980, 1981; Feindel 1965; Hughes 1991; Isler 1965, 1968; Zimmer 2004). There have been even more limited attempts at Willisian bibliography: two unpublished and a third limited to editions of Willis’s Cerebri anatome (Denham 1965).
The Road Not Mapped: The Neuroethics Roadmap on Research with Nonhuman Primates
Published in AJOB Neuroscience, 2020
Experimentation with nonhuman animals has a long history, dating back thousands of years, indicating an ancient recognition that biological structures and functions are similar across animal species, and that, as is understood today, humans are but another species of animal. Owing to taboos concerning the dissection of human bodies, ancient Greek physicians going back to at least 6 BCE dissected animals and performed vivisections for anatomical studies (Franco 2013). Continuity and similarity of species is not, of course, identity of species. 16th-century Flemish physician Vesalius realized that some anatomical structures found in nonhuman animals do not exist in humans. His illegal, sacrilegious dissection of human cadavers led to more accurate descriptions of human anatomy, and also laid the foundations for modern comparative anatomy (Franco 2013).