My position is that the animal protesters are coming at this all wrong. In fact, even though they may not see it this way, I would suggest that they have very much in common with right-wing protesters (i.e. anti-abortionists or anti-gay activists). These protesters, though they claim to be "anti-vivisection," are actually anti-biology, and therefore anti-research. They appeal to gut-thinking; rather than considering complex issues and forming coherent arguments, they have reduced the issue to one message, which is devoid of careful, intellectual, nuanced arguments. I suspect that most have not been challenged to carefully consider the message that they argue.

It is often said that expert knowledge is "conditionalized," meaning that experts do not simplify knowledge into sets of isolated facts, but rather, experts understand that facts depend heavily on the context of their circumstances. [1] Rhetoric that oversimplifies complex issues is therefore indicative of non-expert knowledge. Take for example the poster at left ("Vivisection is murder, Cal has blood on it's [sic] hands"). This type of rhetoric (especially the incorrect punctuation) is very similar to the anti-abortion protesters, and accomplishes about as much.

Sometime during the BOAA's Spring 2007 anti-vivisection campaign, a supporter posted information at indybay.org. In it, there was some supposedly "insider" descriptions of neuroscientists here at Berkeley, and their so-called "deplorable" research. The prominence of the untruths about Yang Dan's lab in particular ought to make any thoughtful person question the entirety of the post. In it, they described the numbers of ferrets and hamsters used in research every year in Yang Dan's lab. The Dan lab has never worked with ferrets or hamsters; and as far as I know, these have never been model species in neuroscience. One can even verify that her lab has never published about these species (i.e. search "ferret AND yang dan [au]" on PubMed). In addition to the oddly incorrect information about species used, the scale of the numbers were rather obvious overestimates for a lab of their size. The willingness to make up facts and promote her lab as somehow "notorious" for animal use is totally bizarre. From my perspective "inside the establishment," these sorts of allegations are impossible to debate, because they've just got their facts so ridiculously wrong.

Also note that in each of the "anti-vivisection" posters, the protesters illustrate "vivisection" as bizarre contraptions constraining awake monkeys. This illustration is also very far removed from any of the labs they are protesting. Because of their expense, non-human primate experiments are among the most rare animal experiments in academia. Based on this 1997 press release, I don't think there are any primate facilities on the UC Berkeley campus. Therefore, the illustration of constrained monkeys is far from representative of animal research at Berkeley. Its constant use suggests a willingness to misinform in order to advance a cause; such a rejection of the intellect is alarming.

Before continuing, let's consider the word "vivisection." To nearly all professional scientists, this is a word that summons images of pseudo-science like phrenology, alchemy, and the like. Etymologically, '''vivisection''' refers to the practice of operating on living organisms for the purpose of scientific research. The term is not generally used by present-day scientists, and at least one professional scientific society claims that animal rights advocates attempt to use the word to recast the terms of the discourse on animal research to favor their position. [2] According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, the word "vivisection" is used chiefly by opponents of animal research. [3]

The use of the word "vivisection" is carefully crafted as an archaic and scary sounding word to insinuate that wrongdoing has occurred, so use of the word is always a simple linguistic way to accuse a researcher of animal abuse. The truth is that animals are used in many types of research, including social science research, and that every possible care is taken to avoid pain in the animals. Nobody wants his or her animal to feel pain or stress because this pain can easily bias experimental results, so there is already a motivation for the scientist to avoid pain in their animals. Trained scientists never use the word "vivisection," and in the rare occasion of demonstrable abuse, those researchers are often scorned in the scientific community. To imply that Berkeley is guilty of "vivisection" implies that abuse has occurred; this is something that the protesters have never demonstrated. The truth is, they simply do not want animal research at all.

Biomedical research is cumulative. What we have learned about physiology using animals has been enormous, and there still is much to learn. For instance, an understanding of hormones came through the use of dogs [4]; literally every breakthrough that came after that in endocrinology drew on the knowledge provided from the original animal studies. Because scientists always build on the work of those who came before them, limiting foundational research would have far-reaching effects. For example, eliminating animal research would cease virtually all research about biology that occurs above the cellular level. There would simply be no more studies in organ development, immunology, aging, and so on.

Without animal research, we could continue to have an excellent understanding of cell biology and biochemistry, but we would have no means to investigate higher-order biology like stem cell differentiation, neural plasticity, and cancer. But these are the remaining frontiers in biomedical research! Without animal research, our understanding of biology would remain stuck refining 20th century hypotheses, rather than forging ahead to answer 21st century questions.

What would have happened if all animal research had stopped in the year 1900? Animal research directly led to the following cures or treatments since the beginning of the twentieth century:

This is only a partial list. [5] [6] If animal research had been stopped 100 years ago, many of these treatments simply would not exist today. Animal protesters who want to stop animal research have concluded that the personal and social benefits of previous and future treatments are not worth the use of animals in research. These protesters will still receive medical care which was earned by the sacrifice of animals, and they still continue to argue that medical treatments and techniques can be developed without the use of animals. I maintain that this is ethically dubious; one cannot condemn a source of medical knowledge and still take advantage of that knowledge. The only ethically consistent position for an animal research protester is to deny most modern medical care for conditions like asthma, diabetes, vaccines, antibiotics and organ transplants to themselves and their children. To take advantage of these treatments is to reap the rewards of animal research.

The skeptic should reasonably question my assertion that biology requires animal work. After all, there are a number of in vitro techniques which do not require animals, and computational algorithms are getting better all the time. For example, insulin and glucagon kinetics can be modeled effectively using pharmacodynamic models. Similarly, in vitro techniques like monoclonal antibody production with hybridoma cell lines have enjoyed widespread adoption and drastically reduced the numbers of animals used for antibody production. In fact, monoclonal antibodies are far superior for certain applications. So I think it's reasonable to ask: can in vitro and computational techniques can entirely make up for animal work?

We should start out with a general dichotomy emphasized to students throughout graduate school. Theoretical and experimental approaches are two very different approaches. Theoretical approaches include mathematical or computational modeling; these approaches often seek to formalize in mathematical terms the dynamics of some system. Theory is not necessarily reality! Experimental approaches, on the other hand, seek actual measured quantities or observed qualities, and are often the final word on the reality of a theoretical model. Put simply, a theoretical model must be validated by comparing it to experimental data, and the model must make correct predictions of things unknown in order to be useful. With that in mind, it should be clear that mathematical or computational models in biology are conjecture, and remain so until their predictions can be validated by comparison to the living system. Because we need living systems to verify theoretical models, computational approaches cannot currently replace experiments with animals.

Regarding in vitro techniques, many of these methods have hidden costs of animal usage. Take, for example, the monoclonal antibodies mentioned above. For this approach, an animal serves as the initial source of immune B-cells. One of these cells is fused with a mouse tumor cell line to create a hybridoma capable of making only one type of antibody. Thereafter, no animals need be used; simply take care of the hybridoma cell line and the researcher has an antibody-making factory. An animal is nevertheless required for this technique every time a new hybridoma cell line is created. Similarly, for this and every other cell line, tissue culture media is needed. This requires the use of serum. A continuous supply of serum must be isolated from animals for continuing a given cell line. Furthermore, other in vitro techniques that have no obvious animal usage are littered with proteins isolated from animals. For example, actin and creatine kinase are often isolated from rabbit muscle. Tubulin, whose interaction with the anti-tumor drug Taxol was shown to give rise to anti-tumor properties, is often acquired from cows. So much basic biochemistry where in vitro techniques are used simply require the use of animals. Nearly every single biologist, whether biochemist, cell biologist, or developmental biologist, uses products derived from animals in order to perform modern research. This is why I claim that those who want to unilaterally end animal use are opposed to biological research generally.

I sympathize very much with the idea that humans should be patrons of the natural world and minimize suffering in all species. I personally do not like animal research and I don't think I could do it again. But these latest campaign organized by BOAA, IDA and other groups smacks of anti-intellectualism and groupthink. The unquestioning evangelical zeal of the BOAA and these protesters makes for a rather intellectually lazy addition to the activist student body here at Berkeley.

Berkeley really is one of the bast places in the world for humane care of animals. To me, the choice to protest animal usage here is just weird. Out of all the places that might deserve animal protesters, the choice of Berkeley doesn't make sense to me at all. The protesters have not carefully stated their position other than anger at animal research in general, but that is not a sufficiently nuanced position to entice many supporters, other than on MySpace.

I would suggest that it would be much smarter to campaign for greater openness with animal protocols and animal care committee meetings. Not only would this display a mature understanding of the procedures, people and process of animal use, it also makes sense. Protesting with bandanas and posters doesn't work for this issue, because the rhetoric is too simple for the situation. Does one really think that protesting is the only way to improve things? If one wants only to protest, the current tactic seems sufficient. But if one really wants to make a difference and ensure good oversight to prevent actual torture of animals, the protesters should think a little bit more about the means to an end. Get active, read up from reputable (non-extremist) sources and try to make a difference with decision-makers, not just intimidate the already powerless graduate students.

For the protesters, it's important to understand the way the rest of the world sees their methods. Protesters are very likely seeing this issue through the one-dimensional perspective of speciesism. They have come to the conclusion that humans have no innate right to use these animals; this argument has some merit, but needs further explanation. Do the rights of animals outweigh the need of the disabled for medical treatment? What about the medical care of neonates or the elderly? Are the protesters really ready to sacrifice their own quality of medical care to avoid direct benefit from the animals whose sacrifices gave rise to medical treatments? These questions require a much more nuanced, contextualized approach, and I hope that the BOAA and others give this some serious thought. At the very least, there should be responses to these questions, instead of just more protests and bandanas.

UPDATE: (2007-09-24) I can't find a breakdown of animals at Berkeley, but I do see that a more recent press release mentions primate care. So there may be some non-human primates on campus after all. If the commenter below is correct, then they make up less than 0.03% of laboratory animals on the campus, which doesn't change my point that the "vivisection" posters are unrepresentative.