The harrowing lives of animal researchers; Vox, March 3, 2025

Celia Ford, Vox; The harrowing lives of animal researchers

"Alyssa’s experience is anything but rare. Animal research, while largely hidden from public view, is widespread across the life sciences. Animals are used in everything from safety testing for medicines, cosmetics, and pesticides to exploring open-ended questions about how the mind and body work. The drugs we take, the products we use, and the medical breakthroughs we celebrate have been made possible in large part by lab animals and the people who, in the name of science, kill them. 

While it’s difficult to find the exact number of scientists, veterinarians, and animal caretakers working in research facilities, we know that somewhere around 100 million animals — mice, rats, dogs, cats, rabbits, monkeys, fish, and birds, among others — are used for research and testing worldwide each year. Between 2011 and 2021, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) provided $2.2 billion in grants for an estimated 4,000 research projects involving animals.

Animal research is traumatic — obviously for the animals unlucky enoughto be involved, but also for many of the humans tasked with harming them. Yet from day one, institutions teach animal researchers that expressing discomfort is akin to weakness, or tantamount to dismissing the value of science altogether. To compete for increasingly rare tenure-track jobs, graduate students and postdocs have no choice but to learn to suppress their emotions and get the work done. Principal investigators, senior scientists who direct animal research labs, often don’t care whether inserting electrodes into a conscious, chronically ill monkey’s brain makes you squeamish. If you can’t handle the heat, they say, get out of the kitchen. 

“The costs have always been out there,” bioethicist and former animal researcher John Gluck said. “They’ve just been completely ignored.”"