The guinea-pigs' fate
A. M. Daniels
There is some alarm in the medical profession that the academic standards demanded by medical schools are now so high that only natural genius or, as is more often the case, sheer dogged persistence, can secure admission. It is feared that, as a consequence, the next generation of doc- tors will be emotionless technocratic auto- mata rather than the well-rounded, empathetic figures the public has come so to love and respect. But medical education has always done violence to natural human feelings. The student is taken directly to the dissecting room where, probably for the first time in his life, he is confronted with a corpse not just a corpse, but a roomful of corpses, starkly laid out naked and without dignity on white tables, the atmosphere heavy with the fumes of preserving fluid. Before they died the corpses no doubt sold themselves to medical science — the transaction being strictly cash on delivery. But no one dares show his repugnance, lest he be deemed unfit for a medical career. Before long, a mood of forced levity is generated (dare I call it an esprit de corpse?), and the dissection-hardened stu- dents christen their specimen with a face- tious nickname, and play practical jokes with severed parts of the human anatomy. Then comes physiology. This consists largely of pinning unconscious domestic Pets by the paws to laboratory benches and connecting various of their organs to elec- tronic recording devices. Owners of dogs or cats among the students have to pretend to themselves that the animals on the benches bear no resemblance to their pets at home. The experiments seldom confirm the laws of physiology they are supposed to illustrate, but that does not mean they are without educative value: as butter hardens the arteries, so practical classes in physiol- ogy harden the heart.
Students are encouraged to deepen their knowledge of physiology by engaging in original' research. They experiment on all kinds of animals, from the pithed tortoise (not a drunken reptilian, but a tortoise With its brain so macerated that its phy- siological functions are uninfluenced by its higher cerebral activities, such as they are), to the vervet monkey. The students learn to value knowledge above pity, on the doubtful grounds that knowledge is itself a higher form of pity. I remember with shame some experi- ments I performed as a student on guinea- Pigs. The information they were designed to yield was of limited significance, to say the least. When I came to report on my experiments, in that peculiarly dry and filleted language called Scientific English, I wrote that 'the animals were sacrificed', the passive mood of the sentence implying that no merely human agency was in- volved, the word 'sacrificed' implying that their deaths were in a noble, or even holy, cause (the furtherance of my career, for example).
The mode of death of those delightful and inoffensive creatures was actually as follows. I would pick them up by the hind legs held firmly together, and bring them down in an arc, their necks crashing on the edge of a bench. The guinea-pigs twitched, defecated, and expired — unless, as occa- sionally happened, they needed a second or third blow. It was a method of dispatch commonly used for small animals when the administration of drugs would have inter- fered with the organ being studied.
Students are introduced to the animal house, where they learn to overlook the dreadful conditions to which the involun- tary contributors to scientific knowledge are consigned. I remember in particular the white rabbits, which were removed from their small cages once a week for a half-hour hop on the floor of the animal house. Fed ad libitum, they grew complete- ly to fill their cages, and when removed were perfectly moulded into the cubic contours of a show-box, until they resumed a normal rabbit shape. They were so weak that their first efforts at hopping invariably resulted in their keeling over onto their sides. Only after 20 minutes were they able to hop without falling, and then it was soon time to squeeze them back into their cages.
I assumed, however, that the evidence of my eyes was in some sense mistaken. The animal house, after all, was inspected regularly by the Home Office, to ensure adequate conditions for the animals; and I could not conceive that the scientists whom I admired could permit any cruelty. But when the Anti-Vivisection League broke in one night and released the mice that had been carefully inbred for 50 years to produce genetically identical experimental subjects, and undid in one glorious hour the work of half a century, a still small voice inside me rejoiced, though I was not sure why.
The prospect pleases, but Mann is vile.' Later in their training students acquire knowledge derived from deliberately allowing the spread of hepatitis in a home for the mentally handicapped; the infection of prisoners with cholera and typhoid; the withholding of food and affection from children; all without protest. Later still, they learn to dissimulate, to connive at keeping patients in hospital for purely research purposes without their know- ledge, and to suppress disagreement with superiors. I once worked for a physician who insisted on useless and elaborate laboratory tests on the obviously mori- bund, which inflicted needless terminal suffering. I said nothing, on the grounds familiar at Nuremburg, that I was only following orders.
But the training is not without its value. Every day of his professional life, the doctor sees a great deal of suffering; but all the same he must eat his dinner. And it teaches a certain dispassion, an ability to see beyond appearances.
I once attended a meeting at which a noted scientist presented the results of his research on the biochemistry of the brain of a rat, with its implications for humans.
'That is all very interesting Dr said the chairman of the meeting. 'But after all, Man is not a rat.'
'Oh yes he is,' murmured a member of the audience, with some conviction.
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