Plea for a Sensitive Science

Abstract

The use of animals in scientific experiments has been under fire from animal-welfare and anti-vivisection societies for more than a century. During that time, although there has been a steady decrease since 1976, the number of experiments conducted in Britain each year mushroomed from a few hundred to the present level of about three million. The Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, which effected some control of animal research, remained solidly in place for 111 years, despite the increasing difficulties experienced by the Home Office in applying it effectively to the nature and range of animal experiments and tests carried out in the late 20th century. Only when it became obvious that, as a result of political lobbying by the animal-welfare movement in the mid-1970s, new legislation was bound to be drafted, did the scientific community as a whole admit that a new law was needed to replace the old Act and begin to launch a damage-limitation exercise.

‘A true science cannot possibly ignore the solid incontrovertible fact, that the practice of vivisection is revolting to the human conscience, even among the ordinary members of a not over-sensitive society. The so-called “science” … which deliberately overlooks this fact, and confines its view to the material aspects of the problem, is not science at all, but a one-sided assertion of the views which find favour with a particular class of men.’

Henry Salt (1892). Animals’ Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress, p. 97