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Review
. 2013 Mar 19;3(1):238-73.
doi: 10.3390/ani3010238.

Animal Experiments in Biomedical Research: A Historical Perspective

Nuno Henrique Franco  1
Affiliations
Review

Animal Experiments in Biomedical Research: A Historical Perspective

Nuno Henrique Franco. Animals (Basel). .

Abstract

The use of non-human animals in biomedical research has given important contributions to the medical progress achieved in our day, but it has also been a cause of heated public, scientific and philosophical discussion for hundreds of years. This review, with a mainly European outlook, addresses the history of animal use in biomedical research, some of its main protagonists and antagonists, and its effect on society from Antiquity to the present day, while providing a historical context with which to understand how we have arrived at the current paradigm regarding the ethical treatment of animals in research.

Keywords: animal ethics; animal research; animal testing; biomedical research; history of science.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
“First Stage of Cruelty” by William Hogarth (1750), the first plate from “The Four Stages of Cruelty” series, which describes the escalating violent behavior that follows childhood cruelty to animals to an adulthood of criminal life. In this scene, two boys plunge an arrow into the rectum of a dog, while another boy, most likely the pet’s owner, pleads with them to stop. Meanwhile, some boys are burning the eye of a bird, while others tie bones to a dog’s tail. Also, some boys play “cock-throwing” (a popular sport in eighteenth-century England, consisting of throwing stones or bottles at a cockerel tied to a stake) while others hang fighting cats, and others even throw animals from windows. Source: ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Figure 2
Figure 2
“An Experiment on a Bird in an air pump”, by Joseph Wright of Derby (detail) (1768). In this brilliant artwork, the artist captures the multiple reactions elicited by the use of live animals as experimental subjects in eighteenth-century Britain, for which we can find a parallel in present day’s diverse attitudes on this topic, including shock, sadness, appreciation, curiosity and indifference. Currently in The National Gallery, London. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Figure 3
Figure 3
“A physiological demonstration with vivisection of a dog,” by Émile-Édouard Mouchy. This 1832 oil painting—the only secular painting known of the artist—illustrates how French scholars valued physiological experimentation in service of scientific progress [90]. Notice how the struggling of the animal does not seem to affect the physiologist or his observers. Currently part of the Wellcome Gallery collection, London. Source: Wellcome Library.
Figure 4
Figure 4
This full-page illustration of Pasteur in his animal facility was published in Harper’s Weekly in the United States, on 21 June 1884. At this time, there was moderate curiosity on Pasteur’s work in the US, which would intensify after his first successful human trials of a therapeutic vaccine for rabies in 1885. In the article, the reader is reassured that the use of dogs is both humane and justified in the interest of mankind. The use of other species, however, is barely mentioned [5]. Source: Images from the History of Medicine, U.S. National Library of Science.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Two outbred laboratory rats, of the Lister Hooded (Long–Evans) strain. Rodents are the most commonly used laboratory animals, making up nearly 80% of the total of animals used in the European Union, followed by cold-blooded animals (fish, amphibian and reptiles, making up a total of 9.6%) and birds (6.3%) [159] Photo: Francis Brosseron, reproduced with permission.
Figure 6
Figure 6
A large advertisement published in the 13 May 1991 edition of The Hour (p. 9), and part of a campaign in defense of animal research, sponsored by the United States Surgical Corporation. While the value of Pasteur’s work is undeniable, there is, however, no scientific grounding for the claim that only by experimenting on dogs would a vaccine for rabies have been developed, or that other animal models or even non-animal methods could not have been used to achieve this in over a century. These dramatic and biased portraits of animal research are now more uncommon, as an increasing number of scientists acknowledge the need to be more candid and open to objective discussion over the possibilities and limitations of animal research, and of the scientific process altogether.
Figure 7
Figure 7
This schematic illustration (adapted with permission from an original by Professor Bert van Zupthen) attempts to describe trends in the use of animals for scientific purposes in the Western world across time. It depicts the emergence of the first vivisection studies by classical Greek physicians, the absence of animal-based research—along with most medical and scientific research—across the Middle Ages, its resurgence in the Renaissance onwards, and the rapid increase in animal studies following the rise of science-based physiology and medicine in the nineteenth century. The curves represented are nevertheless conjectural, as there are no reliable statistics on animal use for most of the period covered. Even nowadays it is hard to estimate trends in animal research, as data from several developed countries is insufficient (for instance, in the United States, rodents, fish and birds are not accounted for in the statistics). The available data, however, suggest that the number of animals used in research and testing in the Western world peaked in the 1970s, and decreased until the late 1990s, or early 2000s, to about half the number of 30 years earlier, and stabilizing in recent years. While many, if not most, researchers do not foresee an end to animal experiments in biomedicine, the European Commission has nevertheless set full replacement of animal experiments as an ultimate goal [204], and the Humane Society of the United States has the optimistic goal of full replacement by the year 2050 [192].
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