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Laboratory Animals in Research and Teaching contains valuable information that college and high school instructors will need to establish and maintain laboratories at their institutions. The volume offers practical advice about administrative matters, ethical issues, and the guidelines and regulations for the care and feeding of animals. The authors, who include high school instructors, researchers, college instructors, and veterinarians, share lessons they have learned from their own experiences. Their suggestions address large institutions, as well as smaller ones (where resources may be scarce). The volume also includes useful appendixes that include classroom exercises, case studies, federal guidelines, and a detailed listing of resources. This will be an invaluable text for psychologists and teachers who seek innovative perspectives and methods for teaching and conducting research with animals.
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1 DEALING WITH THE ANIMAL RESEARCH CONTROVERSY HAROLD A. HERZOG
Whether at large universities, small liberal arts colleges, or high schools, psychologists who use animals in their teaching or research invariably will be affected by the debate over the use of animals in science. In the present chapter, I hope to help scientists and teachers better understand the philosophical and historical roots of the animal rights debate and the forces impelling the current animal protection movement. This chapter is an overview of the animal rights movement and its philosophical underpinnings. In addition, gerieral guidelines are suggested to enhance the potential for communication among animal researchers, students, faculty members, and the public. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES AND MODERN ATTITUDES The roots of the animal protection movement date to the 19th century (Rudacille, 2001). In England, public sentiment over the treatment of animals began to change in the early 1800s and resulted in the establishment of the first humane organizations and the passage of the first antianimal cruelty
legislation by Parliament. In the 1870s, a highly organized antianimal research movement emerged in Great Britain, which attracted the support of Victorian luminaries such as George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913). The antivivisection movement was opposed by a coalition of prominent scientists including Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), and George Romanes (1848-1894). Similar trends were evident in the United States, roughly coinciding with the emergence of animal research as an important component of the developing field of experimental psychology (Dewsbury, 1990). J. B. Watson (18781958) the architect of behaviorism, was particularly criticized for a series of studies in which he deprived rats of perceptual capacities to determine the role of sensory modalities in learning. Watson was pilloried in the media and was the object of hostile newspaper editorials in The New York Times and The Nation (Dewsbury, 1990). By 1920, however, antianimal research attitudes had largely subsided in England and the United States. (It is ironic that the European country in which a strong animal protection movement emerged between the wars was Germany, where Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis were vehement in their beliefs about the protection of animals; see Arluke & Sax, 1992, for a compelling interpretation of this paradox.) The 1970s saw renewed interest in the moral status of animals, due in part to the 1975 publication of the book Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher. The first public protests in the United States against the use of animals in research soon followed in the form of widely publicized demonstrations directed at animal behavior studies being conducted on cats at the American Museum of Natural History. In 1980, Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco founded P