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Testing Times: A symposium on the ethics and epistemology of animal experimentation
20th and 21st September 2011
MGSM Conference Centre, Macquarie University
Animal experimentation is a highly contentious practice. It generates ethical concerns due to harms to animals and epistemological worries because translations between animal experiments and human clinical medicine are problematic. In spite of these issues, the practice continues to expand.
This symposium will bring together scientists, philosophers, sociologists, veterinarians and others to discuss animal experimentation and develop new approaches to the ethical and epistemological challenges it generates.
For more information please contact Mary Walker: testingtimes.symposium@gmail.com
Report on the Global Animal Conference held July 2011 University of Wollongong
Global Animal, an international Animal Studies conference, ran over two days in July and attracted more than 60 delegates from areas as diverse as literary studies, circus history and fieldwork with Australian indigenous species, all connected by their interest in the rapidly-growing, multidisciplinary field of Animal Studies.
The conference, convened by Dr Melissa Boyde, was a collaboration between the Faculties of Arts and Creative Arts and its themes included caged and captive animal, performing and representing animals and diasporic and oceanic animal. Reflecting the national recognition of creative works as research, the program incorporated a significant creative component.
Artist Michele Elliot’s haunting exhibition, the vanishing, developed and previously shown in Kolkata and Singapore with support from the Australia Council for the Arts was shown in the Faculty of Creative Arts Gallery. The installation, which explores the colonial legacy of hunting, comprised three life-size tiger sculptures, six thousand glass ‘bullets’ and three textile works with archival text embroidered on floating white cotton. The tigers were made in collaboration with a Bengali master craftsman and idol-maker, then cast in fiberglass and shrouded in calico wraps and hand-stitched red velvet.
Nikki Heywood, acclaimed Sydney-based performance artist and director, created the performance Museum of the sublime: relic #5 especially for Global Animal. This abstract performance work, which explored human-animal relations, including the issue of the live export trade, was part of a series which forms the creative research for her doctoral studies in the Faculty of Creative Arts.
A highlight of the conference was the keynote address by Professor Wendy Woodward from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa: ‘This animal which is not one: diasporic giraffes in the African puppet play Tall Horse and J M Ledgard’s novel, Giraffe’. Woodward, a leading South African literary scholar was a Visiting Fellow during July in the Faculty of Arts, with support from the LIC Research Group,
Other speakers included Professor Peta Tait of La Trobe University, a leading expert on circus history, whose book Wild and Dangerous Performances: Animals, Emotions, Circus will be published this year, who discussed ‘Feeling Live Leopard Collars’; UOW senior honorary fellow, Dr Denise Russell, known for her work on legal and ethical issues in marine ecology; and Dr Dan Lunney from the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water. Ace Bourke, of Christian the lion Youtube fame, was part of a discussion panel which included Professor John Simons, Executive Dean of Arts from Macquarie University, an expert on the colonial trade in animals.
The success of the Global Animal conference reveals the dynamic, growing interest that academics, artists and the community in general has in reconsidering and thinking through relations between humans and animals. Among a number of emails received by delegates after the conference this one perhaps best sums up the event:
'I just wanted to let you know how rewarding it was for me to be a part of the Global Animal Conference.
I found the papers diverse and intriguing and the discussions very stimulating.
From medieval swan ownership to ethical farming to Coetzee's Disgrace and dying dogs to Kira O'Reilly's pig performance to Milton's Paradise Lost to feral animal problems.... to Christian the lion and a debate about the manipulative quality of Whitney Houston's (!!) song overdub on the Youtube clip. What a great bunch of people and minds.' Nikki Heywood
Immediately after Global Animal the Australian Animal Studies Group (AASG) held its biennial conference at Griffith University in Brisbane. AASG has recently become incorporated, and Melissa Boyde was elected its inaugural President. The next major conference will be held at the University of Sydney in 2013, in association with its Human Animal Research Network, and in 2012 there will be a colloquium at the University of Melbourne.
ABC Radio Philosophers Zone
'Human Cures and Animal Sacrifices'
Interview with Denise Russell 31/10/2009
Denise Russell from the University of Wollongong argues that animals held for experimental purposes are in the same moral condition as human beings held as slaves. Secrecy and the status of science protect these practices from critical scrutiny. So millions of animals suffer and die in Australian experiments each year, though in other countries alternative ways of seeking knowledge have been developed.
You can read the full transcript or listen to the interview at:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/index/subjects_Animals_2009.htm
Festival of Dangerous Ideas
'No human cure justifies animal experimentation'
Talk given by Denise Russell 3/10/2009
Dr. Denise Russell makes a powerful case against animal testing, comparing it with the now largely illegal practice of human slavery. Millions of animals die in Australian experiments each year. Meanwhile in other countries, alternative ways of seeking knowledge about pharmaceuticals, biological responses to injury, surgical interventions or psychological processes have been developed.
Entrenched power structures mean that in Australia there is resistance to implementing alternatives. Scientific experiments using animals could and should be abolished.
You can watch the video of the talk here:
http://soh.viotv.com/Default.aspx?section=52f5d09a-39e4-44ee-9b09-a30d193420d8,0,DateAdded
2008 National Symposium
A one-day national symposium: AUSTRALIAN ALTERNATIVES TO USING ANIMALS IN SCIENTIFIC AND MEDICAL RESEARCH was held in Sydney at The Women's College University of Sydney on October 3rd 2008.
The symposium was attended by scholars and researchers with expertise and interest in replacement of animals in scientific research.
Speakers from the fields of humanities, law and scientific/medical research from several Australian universities and from animal advocate organizations addressed the current state-of-play concerning the replacement of animals in the university ethics/scientific context.
Please click on the files below to see and hear the speakers’ presentations at the symposium, or to read a summary which outlines the key points that emerged on the day and the suggestions for future strategic directions.
You will need Quicktime Player to view these files. The latest version can be downloaded free from: www.apple.com/quicktime/download.
Power PC mac users should use Firefox to open the link.
The objectives of the Symposium were to explore these questions:
- How to get over the impediments to using alternatives to animals in scientific and medical research?
- What practical strategies can be used to promote alternatives to using animals in scientific and medical research?
Many themes emerged throughout the talks and discussions including:
a) The lack of national consistency in the law including the lack of consistency in the definition of ‘animal’.
b) The weaknesses in Animal Ethics Committees such as:
- the lack of transparency in decision making because of the confidentiality requirement;
- the assumption that animal research has widespread acceptance and does not have to be seriously questioned ethically. In fact ethical debate does not take place in ethics committees, instead the focus is on procedure. There is no possibility of challenging decisions on ethical grounds.
Other weaknesses are:
- alternatives are given a low prominence in the Code;
- the assumption by some members of the public that because animal research is regulated and there are ethics committees then any ethical concerns they might have had would be handled;
- the difficulty for the animal representatives or independent members to get an understandable translation of the scientific protocols, not always a problem but it sometimes is and there is little scope to seek independent advice;
- the lack of adequate enforcement systems for committee decisions.
c) The number of animals currently used in Australian research annually is approximately 6 million as contrasted to 3 million in the U.K.
d) The Code of Practice is not reconcilable with society’s interests in protecting animals.
e) It may be time to look again at the 3 Rs (reduction, refinement, replacement). Is it the best philosophical model to use to protect animals in the field of research?
f) We need to move beyond consideration of animals as property.
g) There appear to be no legal impediments to protecting animals by using alternatives. The legal need to use animal models to get research approved or commercialised is a myth.
How can the replacement model be made stronger? Some suggested strategies were:
- Lobby for national legal coverage of animal welfare and animal interests and a legislative review of the law in relation to animals. Standardize the definition of ‘animal’ across states and territories. Reject the notion of animals as property.
- Lobbying to strengthen the Code so that more account must be taken of alternatives in protocols. Reverse the assumption that animals are to be used in the Code. Mandating the use of non-animal models in some testing.
- Work on the weaknesses in Animal Ethics Committees to try to get those rectified. New moves could include research audits, unannounced inspections of research, enhanced transparency, development of concrete ways to work through ethical issues so for instance there can be rejection of low-value research, making information on alternatives available to ethics committees, using FOI to find out about committees’ deliberations (Elizabeth Ellis did this successfully at the University of Wollongong), allowing committee members to get advice about protocols, mounting test cases to challenge the validity of choice about not using alternatives, investigate the possibility of having animal advocates to defend alternatives. Implement a system where researchers and AECs are notified when alternatives become available.
- Building up information on alternatives, through the RAAT web-site : www.uow.edu.au/arts/research/raat and through other outlets, preferably with linkages between them.
- Set up a centre on alternatives which would research and disseminate findings.
- Change the culture which assumes that animal experimentation is justified for almost any scientific purpose by:
a). Helping undergraduate students object to animal experimentation in their courses and work for elimination of all use of animals for teaching (except for very clear vocational needs). There is no uniform approach nationally here. (Follow up Andrew Knight’s initiatives). Some students achieved change via the use of the media. This should be supported. Legislative change to abolish the use of animals in education should be pursued.
Provide students with information about alternatives e.g. through the RAAT web-site, supporting presentations to incoming doctoral students in science and medicine raising awareness of ethical issues (following the example of Malcolm France, Siobhan O’Sullivan and John Hadley at Sydney University).b). Support the funding of undergraduate courses and Masters programmes in alternatives.
c). Require students to develop an alternative to enter a degree where traditionally animal experimentation has been carried out.
d). Provide information for researchers to consider alternatives e.g. through the MAWA initiatives, the AAHR information bank, the DPI data base on potential alternatives and the RAAT website.
e). Limit the number of animals which can be used in experiments.
f). Bring in a tax on animals used, say 10%, which would be used to develop alternatives.
- Think about ways in which animal interests might be furthered beyond the 3 Rs framework.
- Encourage governments and NGOs to provide funding support for alternatives, including a centre dealing with alternatives. MAWA currently provide funding support for some researchers and the Voiceless Eureka prize is for research that helps to protect animals but there is no government support which contrasts with many other countries, except for the Victorian DPI which offers small prizes for supporting the 3 Rs and a new prize at the University of Sydney for reducing or replacing animals in research. A focus on the Federal Government might be appropriate given that the NHMRC is federal.
- Support monitoring of alternatives.
- Foster dialogue between the community and the research community, including the use of the media (as John Hadley suggested, break the monopoly of researchers’ reports on animal experimentation and foster 2-way exchanges). Try to get publicity for test cases and articles on alternatives which could then lead into public meetings.
- Foster dialogue between the various groups representing animal interests beyond those represented at the Symposium to work out the possibility of joint campaigns.
- Foster dialogue between groups representing animal interests, government representatives and some members of the research community especially in the latter areas, with people who may have some sympathy with promoting alternatives.
- Build formal and informal networks/partnerships between groups representing animal interests, government representatives and members of the research community.
- Encourage the development of data banks of animals used in experiments to avoid unnecessary duplication.
