Animal Experiments - timeline

[Miss Virag]

This is something that came up with the direction my char has and people opposing animal testing. That surprised me, so I decided to do a little look in the topic. The results were surprising, though only partway. While you are free to think whatever you wish with your char, here is some of the findings I think might be useful in developing your char’s view on experiments with live animals (be it pro or against). I am aware I left out many many things, but these might be used in RP and also give you a little chance to see what all you want to explore more.

Should anyone have corrections, additions or opinions feel free to add it here and have a little discussion on what you all think is the general view and what is the minority view and what would be too modern.

[Miss Virag]

The Greeks already have reported animal testing and it was in Rome that the vivisection was recorded and is officially dating from.

1635 Ireland’s 1st animal rights act prohibited pulling wool off sheep, and the attaching of ploughs to horses' tails, referring to "the cruelty used to beasts".

Descart claimed in 1641, that everything is mechanical, but the soul of humans, which links them to god. The non-human, on the other hand, are nothing but complex automata, with no souls, minds, or reason. They can see, hear and touch, but they are not, in any sense, conscious, and are unable to suffer or even to feel pain.

1641 the first legal code to protect domestic animals in North America was passed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony: "No man shall exercise any Tirrany or Crueltie toward any bruite Creature which are usuallie kept for man's use." Meanwhile Cromwell prohibits sport fights for animals.
Reason: responsible stewardship, rather than ownership

1655 Edmund O'Meara spoke up against vivisection.
The chief scientific objection: that the pain that the subject endured would interfere with the accuracy of the results.
Counterargument: those in favor of animal testing held that experiments on animals were necessary to advance medical and biological knowledge.

Early objections to animal testing also came from another angle — many people believed that animals were inferior to humans and so different that results from animals could not be applied to humans.

1693, Locke changed perspective: animals do have feelings, unnecessary cruelty toward them is morally wrong, but the right not to be so harmed adhered either to the animal's owner, or to the person who was being harmed by being cruel, not to the animal itself.

1754 Rousseau: animals are not rational, but sentinel, this later is enough for us to avoid wanton ill-treatment.

1785. Kant: humans have no obligation toward animals, only humans. It is not good to be cruel as it makes people more prone to cruelty toward humans.

1789. Bentham: the ability to suffer and not the ability to rationalism counts (or babies should be acted toward like animals)

general view: Despite Rousseau and Bentham, the idea that animals did or ought to have rights remained ridiculous.

[Miss Virag]

The 19th century brought a change to that by increasing the interest in animal protection (not rights!). Before this time law was treating animals as property and cruelty toward animals found its way to law as property damage charges.

1822 The Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act (UK) or Martin's Act was one of the first pieces of animal rights legislation, it listed "ox, cow, heifer, steer, sheep, or other cattle", however this was held not to include bulls. While this remained subject to laughter some managed to get people fined on the base of this act. Throughout the century this act spread over the US too.

1824: Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Called to life because Martin’s act was not enforced.

1835. England, the animal fights were outlawed again

1866: American SPCA

1876 The Cruelty to Animals Act (also UK)
Researchers would be prosecuted for cruelty, unless they conformed to its provisions:
- an experiment involving the infliction of pain upon animals to only be conducted when "the proposed experiments are absolutely necessary for the due instruction of the persons [so they may go onto use the instruction] to save or prolong human life".
- the animal must be anaesthetised,
- used only once (though several procedures regarded as part of the same experiment were permitted),
- and killed as soon as the study was over.
The Act was applicable to vertebrate animals only.

1880s, Louis Pasteur convincingly demonstrated the germ theory of medicine by inducing anthrax in sheep.
Paul Bernard, the prince of vivisectors established animal experimentation as part of the standard scientific method.

In 1881, Louis Pasteur uses chickens in trial studies of his smallpox disease. This vaccine saved the lives of thousands of people. The sickness was declared extinct in 1980.

In the 1890s, Ivan Pavlov famously used dogs to describe classical conditioning.

Some ideas of the era:
- Lewis Gompertz (1824): humans and non-humans both have the highest right to their –own- body. It is our duty to promote happiness to all species.
- Edward Nicholson (1879): animals have natural rights to life and liberty
- Henry Salt (1894): there is no point in claiming rights for animals if we subordinate those rights to human desire = humans don’t have more moral worth or purpose as animals.
- Even the leading advocates of animal rights seem to have shrunk from basing their claim on the (…) argument (…) that animals, as well as men, though, of course, to a far less extent than men, are possessed of a distinctive individuality, and, therefore, are in justice entitled to live their lives with a due measure of that "restricted freedom".
- Shoppenhauer: only stopped short of advocating vegetarianism, as an animal's death was quick, men would suffer more by not eating meat than animals would suffer by being eaten. He argued beasts have rights and we have duties toward them.
- antropomorphism: ideology of the end of the century, focusing on the attribution of human qualities to non-humans.

[Miss Virag]

Early 1900s Brown Dog Affair: hundreds of medical students clashed with anti-vivisectionists and police over a memorial to a vivisected dog

In 1912, French surgeon Alexis Carrel used dogs to study rejoining severed nerves. This was the first step in organ transplantation.

In the 1920s, Edgar Adrian formulated the theory of neural communication that the frequency of action potentials, and not the size of the action potentials, was the basis for communicating the magnitude of the signal. His work was performed in an isolated frog nerve-muscle preparation. Adrian was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work.

In 1921 Otto Loewi provided the first strong evidence that neuronal communication with target cells occurred via chemical synapses. He extracted two hearts from frogs and left them beating in an ionic bath. He stimulated the attached Vagus nerve of the first heart, and observed its beating slowed. When the second heart was placed in the ionic bath of the first, it also slowed.

1922 Insulin was first isolated from dogs, and revolutionized the treatment of diabetes. (Noble prize for Frederick Banting and John Macload)

1933. The Nazi Animal protection law. The first law breaking the limits of humans and animals by putting the Aryans to the first place followed by wolves, eagles, and pigs, and Jews languishing with rats at the bottom. Vivisection was first banned, soon that ban lifted and changed to fit the needs of the Country.

general view: Despite the proliferation of animal protection legislation, animals had no legal rights, existing legislation was very much tied to the idea of human interests, whether protecting human sensibilities by outlawing cruelty, or protecting property rights by making sure animals were not damaged.

Cosmetics was one of the first "products" (non scientific) ever tested on animals in 1933, after a woman used a mascara called "Lash Lure". The womans eyes first burned and then soon after she became blind. Soon she eventually died. Because of this, the Food and Drug Administration passed the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act in 1938 to protect the public from unsafe products.

In response to a tragedy in 1937 where a drug labeled “Elixir of Sulfanilamide” killed more than 100 people, the U.S. congress passed laws that required safety testing of drugs on animals before they could be marketed.

[Fionnghuala]

Just for clarification: I have no problem OOC with Belle acting as middleman in Miss Virag obtaining research animals. However as the only ASPCA PC in play at the moment, and the fact that I can only handle PC owned animals, Belle can't just go around picking up the various un-named strays in town (which are emits and not objects at this point). As such I as the player behind Belle, can't really agree to handing over other players pets, of which I have one which the owner has been missing for a while. I don't have access to random non-PC possession animals and need input from staff as to if these can be made available for PC use by the ASPCA. Once I get the Ok from that end, we can work out how such animals will be delivered to the researchers.

Do we have an animal research area set up in one of the buildings yet? Or can we include a research area in the back of the ASPCA for PC use?

[Miss Virag]

I wasn't aiming at you whatsoever with this post, or anyone else that showed animal rights type of impulses. It was merely a topic that came up and because I had a different image in mind on what was era specific I did a little research. I put this up for a little food for thought and reference for RP if you decide to be on either side of the animal rights movement. I was hoping this is a base on which you can spawn arguments for both sides.

And don't worry about the pets. Miss Virag was going for PC pets for a deliberate reason. I understand staff needs to decide on that and I have no problems with waiting for an answer, may that be whatever answer.

[SB Fidgit]

Do we have an animal research area set up in one of the buildings yet? Or can we include a research area in the back of the ASPCA for PC use?

The Arkham Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is more an advocacy group than a research group. Stable and blanket your horses at night, keep your dogs inside during the winter, etc. And, yes, they run an animal shelter for wayward pets...

Which leads me to announce that within 24 hours, we will be opening the doors to the ASPCA . :)

I'm sure Belle will be happy about that.

[Fionnghuala]

Which leads me to announce that within 24 hours, we will be opening the doors to the ASPCA . :)

I'm sure Belle will be happy about that.

*jumps for joy* :D