My reaction last week, I suppose, will not be dissimilar from those of the majority of my readers. I growled. From my radio came a report about problems that British researchers were encountering with supplies of mice for medical experiments. Apparently anti-vivisectionists have been targeting the transport companies that bring supplies of mice from the Continent; and, having frightened the airlines off, were turning their attention to ferry companies, one of which had just decided to stop accepting lorries loaded with this living freight.
I growled because I don’t like bullying and intimidation and don’t approve of ‘direct action’, and because I’m sure that some animal experimentation is necessary if we are to develop drugs, procedures and products that are safe for human use. My mind is made up on this. Scientists have persuaded me. I’ve heard, read and now believe that circumstances arise where there is no inanimate substitute for this form of testing.
I nodded in sympathy on reading the next morning a leading article in my own paper, the Times, from whose sub-heading — ‘Crucial medical research is at risk owing to ill-informed criticism of scientists’ — you can get the drift. I got the drift. Again, I agreed. My paper, and others too, gave extensive coverage to the issue, the predominating tone being that single-issue fanatics in a minority cause must not be allowed to block work that is in the interests of all of us. I agree with that, too — without hesitation.
So I surprised myself by my reaction to a reader’s letter to the paper on the following morning. ‘Anyone reading your coverage of the ban by many ferry operators and airlines on the transport of animals for experiments would think that there is only one position that right-thinking people can take on this issue.’ Our correspondent went on to complain that not a word had been heard on behalf of those who have ‘well-founded ethical reservations about animal experiments’. Some three million animals die in British laboratories every year, he wrote, often after hideous suffering. There were two sides to this argument. And with that too I found myself nodding in sympathy. How odd. I support animal testing.
Are those two apparently opposite responses reconcilable? It’s doubtful. Yet are they not both valuable? I think so. And thinking more I had to conclude that though I’ve argued against extremism at every step of the way, the net result — I stress the word ‘net’ — of decades of fierce campaigning against vivisection is almost certainly positive. Britain today would be a crueller place without it.
Half a century ago there were almost no practical limits on vivisection. I remember as a schoolboy how in our biology labs we all pulled living frogs to pieces to study their organs — without being troubled by the morality of it. Acids were thrown routinely into animals’ eyes for the cosmetic industry’s benefit. Beagles in cages were forced to smoke. Nobody seemed to care. Such practices were indicative of an era when it seemed anyone calling themselves a scientist could do almost anything they liked in the name of science: the era, too, when remote, beautiful and ecologically precious islands were being blown to pieces for nuclear testing — and to most of us it didn’t seem to be an issue.
Then came the brigade of antis. They were obsessive. They were unreasoning. They seemed deaf to argument. Many of them were unprepared to compromise or seek any kind of middle ground. Typically, they were against all animal testing. In this blanket rejection of vivisection, in my view, they didn’t have a leg to stand on then, and they don’t now.
But by their single-mindedness and their fury they brought to public attention practices that when forced to think about it the public didn’t like. Scientists and legislators were shamed into asking more carefully what was necessary. The scope of acceptable animal testing has been more strictly defined, customers have learned to prefer cosmetics that don’t involve such practices, and manufacturers have learned how to develop them. The purists haven’t really achieved their aim, yet surely they have done much good.
In Spain my sister, Deborah, and her Catalan husband, Manel, have helped lead an anti-animal cruelty party — even stood for election, and draped themselves naked over stone slabs in a Barcelona square in a mass protest — and campaigned ferociously for years for a total ban on bull-fighting. I dislike bull-fighting but hope that changing public opinion rather than legislation will gradually end the culture. We seek the same outcome, but only my sister has devoted her life to this campaign. She feels more strongly and I can’t escape the conclusion that it’s the very force of her conviction that has impelled her to the extremity of her conclusion. With Debs you get the whole package: you can’t say ‘yes to the passion, but please moderate the aims’.
All my life I’ve tried to believe that balanced and moderate arguments could be advanced forcefully and effectively, sidelining the extremists. But I’ve come now to believe that the argument is usually defined by its outliers, even if its conclusion is finally framed by the mainstream. You have to have the outliers. You have to have the women suffragettes prepared to break the law and throw themselves under carriages. You have to have the Peter Tatchells grabbing headlines with caricatured versions of gay rights. Like a great ocean liner, the bulk of mankind has to have the dogged, single-minded energy of the tugboats pulling at right angles to where she’s going, apparently making no impression, yet finally altering her course.
Three cheers, then, for the anti-vivisectionists. Three cheers for responsible animal experimentation. And two cheers for a compromise between them both.
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