We talk about the “new normal” to describe life after COVID-19, but perhaps biomedical research itself may also be ready for a new normal, one that excludes needless animal suffering.
Image from
Jo-Anne McCarthur, We Animals
Two questions stand out as we process the tragedy and uncertainty of
the COVID-19 pandemic: how did this start? And how do we get out?
While both questions lack certainty at this point, both the likely
origin story and our proposed solutions speak volumes about our
approach to human health beyond this single pandemic. They also have
one thing in common: our use of animals, making transparent the
ever-present tie between our approach to human health and the ethics
of our animal use.
COVID-19, the disease resulting from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is just
one of many human infectious diseases that originate in animals.
Transmission of these zoonotic diseases has been linked to human
activity that increases the frequency of inter-species contact
required for a jump to occur. While both the intensification of
modern animal agriculture as well as deforestation likely play a
role, the crowded, unsanitary conditions in which we raise and sell
animals for food can foster the development of viral mutations
necessary for transmission. While we cannot say for certain where
SARS-CoV-2 originated, early human cases point to a connection to
markets in China that house and sell animals for food. Though, it
should be noted that these wet markets are not that dissimilar from
our systems of animal agriculture in the US in their physicality,
morality, and potential contribution to zoonotic outbreaks.
Because of this, many have called for the closing of wet markets.
This makes a lot of sense: no markets mean no playground for the
virus to hone its human jumping skills, which can mean no pandemic.
Of course, the risk of pandemics won’t go to zero in the absence of
these markets, but it is safe to say that we can drastically reduce
the likelihood of a future COVID-19-like situation by changing our
food system. This is a preventive measure that requires social
investment—which is no easy feat—but the cost of this investment
looks trivial juxtaposed to the enormity of death and economic
hardship we are experiencing now.
For those of us with one eye toward animal welfare, it is very easy
to see the mutually beneficial connection between human health and
animal ethics. Increasing our animal welfare standards in
agriculture, or even abstaining from meat when possible, can both
increase human health and animal welfare. It is a win-win for humans
and animals.
But what may be less clear is the connection between preventive
measures like these and the welfare of another group of animals: the
animals in our labs.
Though we have curbed the rapid spread of disease through social
distancing mandates, efforts are now focused on the development of
new treatments and vaccines, which have historically relied heavily
on animal research. Animals, ranging from mice to ferrets to
non-human primates, currently serve as models of viral infection,
readouts of drug and vaccine efficacy and toxicity, and factories
that produce reagents like those used for some serological testing.
As is always the case in biological research, their use is subject
to ethical consideration.
Our current moral framework asks us to weigh the costs of
experimentation to lab animals (both suffering and death) with the
potential, yet always uncertain, benefits it generates for humans.
Few of us would look at the acute severity of COVID-19 and not see
that the potential benefits dwarf the costs. Many would still make
this calculation despite knowledge of the widespread failures in
translating results from animal models to humans. Approximately 90
percent of clinical trials fail after success in animal models. Even
still, our justification would go something like this: all
information is valuable information because some unknown fraction of
it will pave the way out of the corner we’ve backed ourselves into.
But this calculation ignores that prevention was always an option.
Yes, hindsight is 20/20; but hindsight is what we need to avoid the
repetition of history. COVID-19 may be one of the worst public
health crises many of us have witnessed in our lifetime, but at its
core is a blueprint no different than many of our other health
battles.
As with all complex scientific problems—of which human health is a
particularly knotty one—we must make choices about the best approach
and prioritize our resources accordingly. When it comes to human
health, as COVID-19 exemplifies, we prioritize the treatment of
disease after the fact rather than the prevention of disease through
more fundamental and proactive social changes. This reactionary
approach is a consequence of our broader tendency to conceptualize
disease as a biological problem in isolation from its greater social
context. This foregrounds basic biological research in our
biomedical enterprise at the expense of alternative preventive
approaches.
Many of our primary health battles—cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular
disease, for example—contain both biological and social dimensions;
but for each of these diseases, as with COVID-19, our fight
prioritizes its biology. While we increase investment in biological
research to find better treatments, including those that use lab
animals, we do far less to address the social causes of disease. Of
course, we can (and should) point to the success of treatments born
out of biology; but, it would be a mistake to ignore the historical
benefit of preventive measures to human health and their untapped
potential moving forward.
This doesn’t mean that biological research is obsolete; but it does
mean that its importance must be judged in relation to epidemiology
and public health, economic policy, food policy, environmental
policy, social justice, and the like. Disease is often not just
biology gone awry; and the health of our population will benefit
from re-prioritizing our biomedical approach to recognize this. The
animals in our labs will benefit as well.
Our belief in the centrality of animal research to address disease
assumes that our treatment-centric approach is the best, if not the
only way to effectively promote human health. As we divert our
resources to an approach with prevention at its core, we will
naturally divest in animal research, reducing the total number of
animals used. To prioritize the social dimension of disease would
effectively reduce the cost to animals while simultaneously
increasing the benefit to humans. Again, this is a win-win for
humans and animals.
As we continue to find our way out of this pandemic, it is important
not to lose sight of its origin. COVID-19 is a tragic lesson in the
effects of deemphasizing preventive health measures in favor of
biological solutions; and it is a lesson in how this trade-off warps
our justification of animal experimentation by creating an inflated
sense of necessity. We talk about the ‘new normal’ to describe life
after COVID-19, but perhaps biomedical research itself may also be
ready for a ‘new normal.’ And while the proposed shift from a
treatment- to prevention-centric approach to human health does not
require a rethinking of the cost/benefit framework we currently use
to guide our use of animals in research, it is possible that as we
decrease our reliance on lab animals, we can open our eyes to new
moral possibilities as well.