Delicate instruments or sensitive beings? Ethnographic inquiries into experimenters’ supposed insensitivity towards laboratory animals
Rémy, Catherine
Delicate instruments or sensitive beings? Ethnographic inquiries into experimenters’ supposed insensitivity towards laboratory animals - 2023.
26
In the scientific literature devoted to animal experimentation, the existence of a “mental compartmentalization” among scientists is described, which allegedly produces insensitivity towards laboratory animals. After recalling how animal experimentation has been regulated since the mid-19th century, this article presents two ethnographic inquiries carried out in research labs, on animal physiology and xenotransplantation. In the first lab, participant observation reveals a practice of experimentation which actualizes a “sacrificial form”: the guinea pig is pitied as a victim and treated with sensitivity by the animal breeders who are responsible for animal care, while scientists appear more detached. In the second lab, primates are valued and treated almost as humans, while the pigs elicit indifference. The thesis of mental compartmentalization must therefore be nuanced, and the conditions of its appearance explained, if we are to further our understanding of the relationship between experimenters and animals.
Delicate instruments or sensitive beings? Ethnographic inquiries into experimenters’ supposed insensitivity towards laboratory animals - 2023.
26
In the scientific literature devoted to animal experimentation, the existence of a “mental compartmentalization” among scientists is described, which allegedly produces insensitivity towards laboratory animals. After recalling how animal experimentation has been regulated since the mid-19th century, this article presents two ethnographic inquiries carried out in research labs, on animal physiology and xenotransplantation. In the first lab, participant observation reveals a practice of experimentation which actualizes a “sacrificial form”: the guinea pig is pitied as a victim and treated with sensitivity by the animal breeders who are responsible for animal care, while scientists appear more detached. In the second lab, primates are valued and treated almost as humans, while the pigs elicit indifference. The thesis of mental compartmentalization must therefore be nuanced, and the conditions of its appearance explained, if we are to further our understanding of the relationship between experimenters and animals.
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