Fore&c Science Znternational, 57 (1992) 1 - 3 Elsevier Scientific Publishers Ireland Ltd.
EDITORIAL
FORENSIC SCIENCE AND ANIMAL RIGHTS
Forensic science cannot remain entirely detached from one of the most controversial topics in medical and biological research. First there is the issue of criminality, where routine forensic investigations have to be made into the damage caused by militant Animal Rights activists. Laboratories and even scientists have been attacked and some time ago, a substantial part of a British department store was burnt out, as it contained a fur shop. Indeed, it is now virtually impossible for women in Britain to wear fur coats in public, because of the abuse and physical damage they are likely to suffer. However, apart from this direct forensic aspect, there is a much wider dimension to the issue. The Editor of this journal has received a letter from a respected subscriber who objected strongly - and threatened to cancel his subscription because of the publication of an article in which unanaesthetised animals were painfully killed as part of a research project. Does forensic research differ in this respect from the wider field of medical, veterinary and biological science? The growing debate on animal research is polarising into the extremists on either side - those who claim that the greater good to humanity justifies any means of attaining it - and those who claim that the dominant species on this planet has no right to maim, torture and kill to further its own interests. We are all familiar with the unanswerable arguments such as ‘Would you let your own child die to avoid vaccine research?’ or ‘Do you wear leather shoes and eat steak?’ or ‘Animal experiments help other animals through veterinary research’. In the field of clinical medicine, there is always the argument that animal experimentation may have a direct benefit in advancing diagnosis and therapy. However, even this relevance and usefulness is now being looked at much more closely - at least in many Western countries. In Britain and Australia, for example, much tighter control is being exercised on the use of animals, especially higher mammals. Ethical committees are now proliferating, to evaluate the (animal) cost-benefit ratio, before sanctioning the research. Even so, a scan through a series of medical, physiological and biological journals and a study of shelved theses in university libraries will arouse some perplexity when seeking evidence of universal advancement of the public health. A vast amount of published material using animal experimentation seems to have little practical relevance, other than to expand the curriculum vitae and the career prospects of the researcher. Multiple duplication of the same work is com0379-0733/921$05.00
0 1992 Elsevier Scientific Publishers Printed and Published in Ireland
Ireland Ltd.
2
mon, some done apparently to confound the results of rivals with the same narrow specialist interests. This has relevance in forensic research, more especially in forensic medicine than in ‘criminalistic’ science. Here there can be no question of therapeutic benefit, as the discipline exists solely to service law enforcement and the administration of justice. The attitude of each forensic scientist in regard to animal experimentation is wholly a matter of individual conscience and cannot be dictated. However, some aspects should be borne in mind. Firstly, presumably few would condone painful, sometimes mutilating experiments on conscious animals, where the results have no possible therapeutic use and can only have an often tenuous potential benefit to some medico-legal problem. By far the most common type of such experimentation is the infliction of wounds and burns, usually multiple, on animals who are then kept alive for times varying up to weeks, until they are ‘sacrificed’ for the performance of histological, histochemical or other techniques to attempt to differentiate antemortem from post-mortem lesions or to date the lesions. The forensic literature has been stuffed for 30 years with such work, often repetitive or only marginally different. This type of research is a favorite for Ph.D. theses, yet with all the published work, how many of us can honestly say that the techniques are regularly, if ever, used in routine forensic practice - or that the techniques have ever been put in expert evidence in more than a handful of cases world-wide? Most of such research gets passed from text-book to text-book, appears endlessly in references and lectures and the theses gather dust in university libraries but rarely figures in the millions of criminal trials each year, where their value can usually be at best indicative and almost never probative. Unfortunately, forensic medical staff working under some national medicolegal systems, have so little opportunity to participate in sufficient practical work, especially a substantial autopsy load, that they are forced back onto endless laboratory experimentation, without enough personal experience of the real forensic world to appreciate that much of this research is sterile in terms of useful applicability to case-work. There are further dangers in attempting to extrapolate animal results to the human situation - a prime forensic example is the work on the mechanism of drowning. The classical research of 50 years ago, where fluid and electrolyte changes were measured in scores of unanaesthetised dogs drowned within steel cages, has recently been shown to be substantially flawed, as the physiology of the dog differs considerably from the human. This Editorial was precipitated by the letter of complaint mentioned earlier, but reinforcement of the problem comes constantly in papers submitted to Formic Science International from certain areas of the world. The actual countries need not be mentioned, but research work is repeatedly offered where no mention is made of animal anaesthesia. Even more sadly, when referees or the Editor make enquiry, the authors often seem genuinely astonished and even uncomprehending that such a trivial matter
3
should be raised. Unless it can be shown both that there was a compelling scientific reason to operate on conscious animals and also that the results provide important advances that could be used in the practice of forensic science, it is the editorial policy of this journal not to accept such work. Editors of some other forensic journals have expressed similar opinions. Bernard Knight Managing Editor
EDITORIAL
FORENSIC SCIENCE AND ANIMAL RIGHTS
Forensic science cannot remain entirely detached from one of the most controversial topics in medical and biological research. First there is the issue of criminality, where routine forensic investigations have to be made into the damage caused by militant Animal Rights activists. Laboratories and even scientists have been attacked and some time ago, a substantial part of a British department store was burnt out, as it contained a fur shop. Indeed, it is now virtually impossible for women in Britain to wear fur coats in public, because of the abuse and physical damage they are likely to suffer. However, apart from this direct forensic aspect, there is a much wider dimension to the issue. The Editor of this journal has received a letter from a respected subscriber who objected strongly - and threatened to cancel his subscription because of the publication of an article in which unanaesthetised animals were painfully killed as part of a research project. Does forensic research differ in this respect from the wider field of medical, veterinary and biological science? The growing debate on animal research is polarising into the extremists on either side - those who claim that the greater good to humanity justifies any means of attaining it - and those who claim that the dominant species on this planet has no right to maim, torture and kill to further its own interests. We are all familiar with the unanswerable arguments such as ‘Would you let your own child die to avoid vaccine research?’ or ‘Do you wear leather shoes and eat steak?’ or ‘Animal experiments help other animals through veterinary research’. In the field of clinical medicine, there is always the argument that animal experimentation may have a direct benefit in advancing diagnosis and therapy. However, even this relevance and usefulness is now being looked at much more closely - at least in many Western countries. In Britain and Australia, for example, much tighter control is being exercised on the use of animals, especially higher mammals. Ethical committees are now proliferating, to evaluate the (animal) cost-benefit ratio, before sanctioning the research. Even so, a scan through a series of medical, physiological and biological journals and a study of shelved theses in university libraries will arouse some perplexity when seeking evidence of universal advancement of the public health. A vast amount of published material using animal experimentation seems to have little practical relevance, other than to expand the curriculum vitae and the career prospects of the researcher. Multiple duplication of the same work is com0379-0733/921$05.00
0 1992 Elsevier Scientific Publishers Printed and Published in Ireland
Ireland Ltd.
2
mon, some done apparently to confound the results of rivals with the same narrow specialist interests. This has relevance in forensic research, more especially in forensic medicine than in ‘criminalistic’ science. Here there can be no question of therapeutic benefit, as the discipline exists solely to service law enforcement and the administration of justice. The attitude of each forensic scientist in regard to animal experimentation is wholly a matter of individual conscience and cannot be dictated. However, some aspects should be borne in mind. Firstly, presumably few would condone painful, sometimes mutilating experiments on conscious animals, where the results have no possible therapeutic use and can only have an often tenuous potential benefit to some medico-legal problem. By far the most common type of such experimentation is the infliction of wounds and burns, usually multiple, on animals who are then kept alive for times varying up to weeks, until they are ‘sacrificed’ for the performance of histological, histochemical or other techniques to attempt to differentiate antemortem from post-mortem lesions or to date the lesions. The forensic literature has been stuffed for 30 years with such work, often repetitive or only marginally different. This type of research is a favorite for Ph.D. theses, yet with all the published work, how many of us can honestly say that the techniques are regularly, if ever, used in routine forensic practice - or that the techniques have ever been put in expert evidence in more than a handful of cases world-wide? Most of such research gets passed from text-book to text-book, appears endlessly in references and lectures and the theses gather dust in university libraries but rarely figures in the millions of criminal trials each year, where their value can usually be at best indicative and almost never probative. Unfortunately, forensic medical staff working under some national medicolegal systems, have so little opportunity to participate in sufficient practical work, especially a substantial autopsy load, that they are forced back onto endless laboratory experimentation, without enough personal experience of the real forensic world to appreciate that much of this research is sterile in terms of useful applicability to case-work. There are further dangers in attempting to extrapolate animal results to the human situation - a prime forensic example is the work on the mechanism of drowning. The classical research of 50 years ago, where fluid and electrolyte changes were measured in scores of unanaesthetised dogs drowned within steel cages, has recently been shown to be substantially flawed, as the physiology of the dog differs considerably from the human. This Editorial was precipitated by the letter of complaint mentioned earlier, but reinforcement of the problem comes constantly in papers submitted to Formic Science International from certain areas of the world. The actual countries need not be mentioned, but research work is repeatedly offered where no mention is made of animal anaesthesia. Even more sadly, when referees or the Editor make enquiry, the authors often seem genuinely astonished and even uncomprehending that such a trivial matter
3
should be raised. Unless it can be shown both that there was a compelling scientific reason to operate on conscious animals and also that the results provide important advances that could be used in the practice of forensic science, it is the editorial policy of this journal not to accept such work. Editors of some other forensic journals have expressed similar opinions. Bernard Knight Managing Editor
