Vivisection Part I

During these readings, I was confronted with images that, for the first time since watching Earthlings, made me sick to my stomach. "Realdo Colombo, cut open a pregnant dog, removed the puppies, and then hurt them in front of the mother. Ignoring her own pain, she tried to comfort the pups." (Guerrini 46) I understand that this experiment was performed a very long time ago, and that ethics regarding animals hadn't traveled as far as it has today. But for one, many scientists didn't agree morally with the practice even then. "Few of them took literally Descarte's argument that if animals were machines, they did not feel pain as humans did." (Guerrini 45) Second, the arguments employed back then to justify animal experimentation are strikingly similar to the ones used today. "Its' necessary for the advancement of medicine, science, and thus humanity as a whole." We think that since the time of those early natural philosophers that we have elevated our state of being, eliminated the cruelty of the past. We look upon their views as at times despicable, as if we have evolved in sensibility. And yet, the experimentation has carried on, most of us purposefully ignorant, with those who aren't crying "necessity!"

This is such a tough subject for me. On the one hand, it plain and simple does seem necessary in certain cases. Emphasis on certain cases. For instance, the study of tumors in rats for cancer research. In fact, I am a part of an organization designed to raise money for research such as this, or at least for the same purposes. But studying brain trauma in apes by throwing their heads in a metal harness at literally breakneck speeds? I'm not so sure. It is necessary and beneficial that we research methods for curing the diseases that ail us. However, it seems incredibly speciesist for me to feel that animal testing in the method for doing so. Believing vivisection is necessary is by nature speciesist, as it is literally valuing your life over an animal's. When it comes down to it, though, what other choice do we have? Should we perform these experiments on willing humans instead? No one would volunteer for such procedures, and the mere mention of such human experimentation sounds despicable. So the argument goes round and round in circles. We are evolutionarily designed to value our species over others, just as they are designed to do the same. I am at a loss. All of this aside, there is no denying that a line must be drawn. In this case, the allusion to Frankenstein is particularly apt. "Victor Frankenstein built his creature of body parts from stolen corpses, but did not then assume responsibility for his creation. His neglect of and cruelty toward the creature leads eventually to  his own death." (Guerrini 75) The connotation here is ominous, that if we do not find some way of halting scientific progress, eventually we will be consumed by our own creation. Furthermore, just as the monster is a foil for Frankenstein, animal testing is a self portrait of our inner selves: our capacity to inflict needless pain on others, wrought from the arrogant belief that we can, and therefore should. "The world has seen and tired of the worship of Nature, of Reason, of Humanity; for this nineteenth century has been reserved for the development of the most refined religion of all-- the worship of Self." (Carroll 544) I have no answers, only a visceral feeling that somewhere along the way, animal testing went much further than was ever necessary, and that necessity doesn't make it right. "Let it not be thought that this is an evil that we can hope to see produce the good for which we are asked to tolerate it." (Carroll 544-545) I wish vivisection didn't exist, but what's more, I wish I could believe certain people didn't enjoy it, and that one day it wouldn't come back to bite us in the ass.

A recent production of Frankenstein, in which the two lead actors (Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller) traded off the role of Frankenstein and his monster each night. Brilliant. I wish I could've seen this so badly it hurts.