Rachel Carson and Laboratory Animal Welfare

Dogs and cats are still used in research today.

By Bernard Unti

In 1959, author and animal advocate Ann Cottrell Free made Rachel Carson aware that the Food and Drug Administration was keeping hundreds of beagle hounds for years in small cages, with no chance for exercise, in the sub-basement of a government building just a short distance from the White House and the Capitol. Carson's strong letter of protest to the FDA Commissioner was probably her first effort to help animals in laboratories. 

Her second action in this arena was a statement she submitted in 1962 in support of H.R. 1937, a bill sponsored by Representative Martha W. Griffiths (D-Mich.). The Griffiths bill, like most of the others introduced in this era, took England's Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876 as its model, and authorized basic record-keeping requirements, mandated comfortable and decent housing and nourishment, and called for pre- and post-procedural anesthetic relief when it would not interfere with experimental outcomes. 

Identifying herself as a "biologist and author," Carson wrote:

"The rapidly expanding development of new drugs, food additives, pesticides and many other materials requiring testing on animals prior to human use has enormously  increased the number of animals subjected to laboratory experimentation. The growing population with attendant greater need for the training of physicians and medical researchers is another factor in the increased use of laboratory animals.

"My reasons for supporting this bill are twofold: the first, scientific; the second, humanitarian. When animals are maintained under conditions of poor housing, lack of exercise, exposure to prolonged suffering and shock, the results of experiments can only be misleading. In the interest of scientifically accurate results, it is necessary that test animals be maintained in a state of general well-being.

"I support this bill also for moral and humanitarian reasons. No nation that calls itself civilized can allow the experimental animals to whom we owe so much to be subjected to neglect and mistreatment and to be forced to undergo unnecessary pain and shock. Our national conscience demands that standards be set up for proper laboratory conditions, for avoiding unnecessary experiments, and for the humane conduct of experiments actually carried out."

In the end, none of the bills focusing on regulating laboratory practices went anywhere during this period. Instead, continuing investigations of the laboratory animal trade, culminating in a famous raid on the premises of a Maryland animal dealer by HSUS investigator Frank McMahon and state police officials, led to the introduction of bills that focused on the supply of animals to American laboratories. The attempt to limit the possibility that people's lost or stolen pets might end up in research lay at the heart of the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act (1966). 

USFWS

Carson was committed to both science and animal welfare.

Owing to the bitter opposition of some segments of the research community in the United States, the approach embodied in Carson’s remarks, that of responsible regulation of animal use in research, testing, and education, would not be codified within American law or scientific practice for several decades more. 

Carson’s view did take hold in the 1970 and post-1970 revisions of the Animal Welfare Act, and the opinions she expressed have gained increasing support both within and outside the biomedical research community.  

Bernard Unti, senior policy adviser and special assistant to the president, received his doctorate in U.S. history in 2002 from American University. His book, "Protecting All Animals: A Fifty-Year History of The Humane Society of the United States," is available from Humane Society Press.