91av

Our interviews with scientists who use animals were anonymous; but talking
to us as representatives of 91av allowed the researchers a public
platform. It allowed them to engage indirectly with the public debate and
present their case. They could also present themselves as people who think
about the moral dilemmas surrounding animal experimentation. Most expressed
concern that people outside science did not fully understand the issues,
nor appreciate that scientists, too, care about animals.

The scientists we interviewed felt strongly that the public is ‘hypocritical’
in its attitudes to animals, and unfairly singles out scientific research
as an area of particular concern. The scientists were anxious to establish
clear boundaries between themselves and ‘others’, and several emphasised
that animals are treated better in laboratories than outside them. The treatment
of animals raised for food was one example mentioned by a number of interviewees.
‘The things that get done to the animals here are infinitely nicer than
what happens on your average factory farm or abattoir,’ one commented.

The point these scientists were making was a criticism of both the meat-producing
industry and also what they saw as a hypocritical public that demands both
meat and medicines. One researcher felt, for example, that ‘we’re supposed
to be a nation of animal lovers, yet farmers’ animals starve and pets are
thrown out after Christmas’.

The scientists saw ‘the public’ as being particularly two-faced about
animal welfare in view of the way domestic animals are treated. ‘I don’t
think cruelty in experimentation is anywhere near as big a problem as in
situations, for example, where people will use dogs to kill badgers in an
arena,’ said one scientist. Another assured us: ‘The practice that I grossly
dislike is the total lack of care that I observe in the public domain with
regard to domestic pets. Most domestic pets are abused in a way in which
we do not abuse laboratory animals.’

The scientists we interviewed gave us a strong impression of a community
under siege. This was caused by the behaviour of the extreme animal rights
groups, and by what the scientists perceived as an increasingly antagonistic
public. In the wake of personal attacks, even bomb scares, it is not surprising
that most were wary of the animal liberationists. One scientist admitted,
for example, to being much more influenced by antivivisection campaigns
than by the 1986 Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, while another felt
that scientists were simply ‘too frightened’ to contribute to public debate.

The scientists’ reaction to those opposed to the use of animals in research
was one of bewilderment, particularly in regard to the more extreme antivivisection
groups. ‘It’s the antisocial tendencies of youth growing up,’ speculated
one scientist. ‘We’ve seen this sort of thing in all walks of life – an
increasing protest-against-everything syndrome.’ For others, the antivivisectionists
were ‘just a lot of hysterical people . . . They put animals above people’.

Some referred specifically to the movement’s violent attacks on scientists:
‘It is like the IRA,’ said one. ‘It contains people who are just members
of it to blow people up.’ Violent attacks changed the nature of the debate,
asserted one scientist, who was ‘not convinced that they are not just a
bunch of terrorists who were involved in something else and then found this
³¦²¹³Ü²õ±ð’.

Describing opponents as ‘hysterical’, or ‘antisocial’ implies that they
are deviant. One scientist we spoke to felt that the effect of labelling
them as deviant was to distract scientists’ attention from the underlying
ethical issues: ‘They are viewed as a bunch of loonies . . . they are not
viewed as people who have raised a problem that has got to be thought about,’
she said. ‘The problem isn’t that they have raised a moral issue and how
should we tackle it? The problem is ‘Oh, the antivivs are out, let’s take
the notice boards down outside the department’.’

Yet not all ‘antis’ were seen as deviant. One scientist felt, for example,
that ‘I certainly don’t lump all people who believe in animal rights with
people who condone violence, whereas in the scientific establishment if
you mention animal rights, people assume that you believe in bombing, which
is not fair.’ Another researcher believed that the groups perpetrating violence
‘aren’t respectable animal rights people . . . clearly they have no understanding’.

Separating out the ‘respectable’ from the ‘deviant’ allowed people to
express agreement with some claims while disapproving of the violent tactics.
Thus one scientist expressed sympathy with some of their claims because
‘in the past a lot of terrible things went on in animal experimentation’.

Although several accepted that some of their opponents may have a point,
most felt that the antivivisectionists have had too much influence on public
opinion. The public, in turn, were seen to be naive and easily led in their
response to the antivivisectionists. As one scientist told us: ‘It is very
easy for one or two extremists to manipulate the minds of the whole of the
rest of the group. Even people who are well educated and able to make up
their own minds can still be misled.’

The irrationality and anti-science feeling of the public was stressed
by several interviewees. They spoke of the difficulty of arguing a ‘scientific
case against an emotional case’ when they attempted dialogue with outsiders.
‘There is absolutely no room for dialogue at all . . . they just label you
as a person who chops up animals. They will under no circumstances listen
to any kind of reasonable argument.’ This lack of reasonableness is, according
to one interviewee, ‘the spirit of the times. People are not just anti-science
but anti-intellectualist; there is a return of antirationalism.’ Another
put it rather more bluntly, suggesting that people are ‘disillusioned by
science. The general feeling is that we’re not far off parasites.’

This perceived irrationality is one reason why scientists might mistrust
lay opinion on ethical committees. Referring to the cost/benefit balancing
exercise required by the 1986 act, one told us: ‘I don’t think the public
should decide that, because the evidence suggests they’ll make an emotional
decision.’ The act, another felt, had produced no change in the way science
is done: ‘Decisions are more affected by the intense anti-science lobby.
We really feel we’re being shot at all the time.’

The scientists’ perception of public disapproval, combined with fear
of physical attacks, has inevitably made them wary. Laboratories using animals
now operate security systems, and images of high security abounded in our
interviews. ‘I think scientists are being put on the defensive,’ said one
researcher. ‘Their answer to the problem is to put up high fences and security,
without opening doors – without opening to the public to let them see what
is going on.’

Attacks from an ‘ignorant’ public

Scientists emphasised what they saw as not only the irrationality of
the public, but its ignorance. Thus the public, we were told, ‘have this
vision that you are all slightly mad and you are all waiting for the opportunity
behind closed doors to inflict pain and misery on animals. If that is a
general perception, we really have let ourselves down badly.’ Other perceptions
of public ignorance included the view that ‘the general public don’t know
what goes on behind these walls and they see a load of rubbish in the newspapers
and on the television’, and that ‘there’s often such a poor grounding in
what experiments are, or how they’re done or what science is at, or aims
to answer’.

Communicating with the public was seen by many scientists to be necessary,
so that the case for using animals could be made: ‘We’ve got to stick our
heads above the parapets to show we are actually ordinary people trying
to do a good job for humankind,’ commented one, adding that scientists must
‘talk to the press, the public, all the rest of it’. But the interviewees
also recognised the difficulties of doing this. One researcher felt that
‘scientists carry all the blame because they have become very poor communicators’.

Lack of communication was not only the fault of the scientists, however.
The press was also to blame. Journalistic ‘cutting the corners’, one scientist
felt, meant omitting all the ways that scientists might qualify what they
say. The result was that ‘you end up with something which may contain the
facts but is not the truth . . . it is anything but. It always says far
more than you want it to say. If that is the general principle, then the
public is continually misinformed.’

Several felt that an important problem with public perceptions of the
debate was that people have seen so many of the gruesome images used by
the antivivisection campaigns, and are not sufficiently aware of the moral
reasons in favour of doing research using animals, so they could not be
expected to support it. ‘It would be nice for the public to understand that
babies are out there dying so we are not just doing these experiments for
no reason,’ explained one scientist whose research focused on fetal physiology.

Yet they were also very much affected by the terms of the public debate:
all pointed to some way in which they would personally draw a moral line
– by not using certain species or techniques, or not supporting cosmetic
research, for example. Many pointed out that their opinions had shifted
in recent years, as the debate became more prominent. For several researchers,
a part of the problem of communicating with nonscientists was that the public
did not appreciate the scientists’ own ways of negotiating a moral standpoint.
Nor did the public recognise that research need not always be gruesome or
painful. One example of this was expressed by those scientists whose research
did not involve any invasive procedures but relied on making observations
of the animals; the public, in their experience, always expected animal
research to be about cutting things up, or about testing trivial commercial
products.

Fighting the squeeze on science

Several scientists referred to the underfunding of British science.
At least one felt that this was more important in putting constraints on
science than public disapproval. But public opinion was, he felt, used to
‘legitimise the squeeze on science’. Others made the link between public
concerns and underfunding more implicitly. ‘I think there’s an awareness
among scientists and the bodies that give scientists money that somehow
public information about the use of animals has to be improved . . . people
have become more and more reluctant to raise their head above the parapet
. . . people are frightened to address these issues.’

Better funding might help biologists to mount a publicity campaign:
‘We don’t have millions of pounds to spend on PR like, say, the nuclear
industry does,’ complained one researcher. ‘I suspect they probably do more
damage to more different species than we do, but they’ve got this fantastic
PR machine going. So everyone goes to Sellafield and looks around.’

Implicit in these responses is the bewilderment of many scientists over
the strength of public attitudes. If only the public understood, if only
the facts weren’t so distorted by the media, the story seems to go, then
the public would be more sympathetic. But would they? Better communication
on its own may not be enough because it ignores the context in which people
understand animal research. If antagonism to animal experimentation reflects,
in part, a wider anti-science feeling, communicators must address this feeling
head-on.

Anti-science attitudes might, for example, be the product of people’s
deeper anxieties about what science and scientists are, and what they might
do. The history of public concern about animal experiments provides one
example of such concern. Historians of science, such as Mary Ann Elston
of Royal Hollaway and Bedford New College in London, have described the
public outrage at the beginning of the 20th century concerning ‘vivisectors’
working in London hospitals. Concern was focused partly on the issue of
cruelty to animals, but there were also anxieties about the growing power
of the medical profession. If they’re doing this to animals now, people
felt, will it be us next?

Over and over again the scientists interviewed invoked an image of a
community besieged by the weight of public anxiety. Our interviews also
underlined the gap between scientists’ perceptions and those that they attributed
to the public. Public perceptions undoubtedly seem to be shifting – although
detailed studies of how people perceive the issues involved in animal-based
research are lacking. Many of our interviewees would like to see more public
debate of the issues. But they also admitted their fear of reprisals.

Metaphors of barricades and parapets abounded in these conversations,
further emphasising the feeling of siege. Moreover, many of our interviewees
felt that the behaviour of some of those scientists who spoke openly in
defence of using animals had done little to lessen hostilities. One scientist
explained the problem, yet again invoking the fortress. The antivivisectionists,
we were told, were successful because they used ‘images that caught the
public imagination, while the scientific community only put one or two heads
above the parapet, who were looking in the wrong direction, and said the
most banal and stupid things that were bound to incense the public’. But
would more heads, and looking in the right direction, reduce the controversy?