“Norman led Jennie into the laboratory and had her sit on a metal table near the windows. She sat quietly while Norman fitted her with a helmet containing electrical monitors and couplings for attaching the helmet to other devices. She was watching people walking across the lawn.
When Norman finished, she had to lie down while the helmet was secured to a large machine and her arms and legs were secured to a table. All she could see now was the ceiling. Norman hooked up the monitoring devices in the helmet to a large console, checked out his equipment, then turned it on.
Jennie’s head was given a tremendous blow by a piston that crashed into her helmet. She was knocked unconscious and stayed that way while Norman pried off her helmet. When she regained consciousness, she went into convulsions for two minutes. When the convulsions stopped, Norman ran some tests on her.
She was blind now and could not control her arms sufficiently to grasp and carry to her mouth some food placed in her hands. Finally, she was wheeled into another room where she was given an injection.
Jennie died in less than a minute, and Norman began the work of decapitating her, describing the condition of her brain, and preparing slices of her brain tissue for microscopic analysis” (American Anti-Vivisection Society, 2002).
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If the experiment previously described was performed on a human being, maybe your friend named Jennie, how would you react?
How would you feel if this was performed on an animal who cannot give consent to participate in this research?
The experiment previously described was performed on monkeys to develop therapy for human victims with head injuries.
We would agree that it is considered unethical to run such a experiment on a human, however, it was allowed to be performed on a monkey in this case. This is just one example in many where the ethical use of animals in research may be questionable.
The ethical concerns raised against the use of animals in research includes:
- the amount of pain and distress an animal must endure during an experiment
- often being trapped in isolated cages, experiencing a lack of healthy stimulation
- being forced to suffer disease and injury
- having their lives ended prematurely