Overview

Examining the ideas and attitudes that encourage scientists to experiment on living creatures, what their justifications are, and how these have changed over time. Experimentation on animals—particularly humans—is often assumed to be a uniquely modern phenomenon. But the ideas and attitudes that encourage biological and medical scientists to experiment on living creatures date from the earliest expressions of Western thought. In Experimenting with Humans and Animals, Anita Guerrini looks at the history of these practices and examines the philosophical and ethical arguments that justified them. Guerrini discusses key historical episodes in the use of living beings in science and medicine, including the discovery of blood circulation, the development of smallpox and polio vaccines, and recent research in genetics, ecology, and animal behavior. She also explores the rise of the antivivisection movement in Victorian England, the modern animal rights movement, and current debates over gene therapy and genetically engineered animals. We learn how perceptions and understandings of human and animal pain have changed; how ideas of class, race, and gender have defined the human research subject; and that the ethical values of science seldom stray far from the society in which scientists live and work. Thoroughly rewritten and updated, with new material in every chapter, the book emphasizes a broader understanding of experimentation and adds material on gene therapy, self-experimentation, and prisoners and slaves as experimental subjects. A new chapter brings the story up to the present while reflecting on the current regulatory scene, new developments in science, and emerging genomics. Experimenting with Humans and Animals offers readers a context within which to understand more fully the responsibility we all bear for the suffering inflicted on other living beings in the name of scientific knowledge.

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9781421444055

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Guerrini applies a new prism to the history of human and animal experimentation, refracting important narrative lines of sight. By connecting cases of prisoners, children, and enslaved persons, all as unwilling subjects, to CRISPR-edited rats and DNA-rich museum specimens, this book illuminates even further scientific research's ethical and cultural legacies in the post-COVID world. -Karen A. Rader, Virginia Commonwealth University, author of Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900-1955 Guerrini's compelling history of our experimentation on humans and other animals is also an interrogation of experimental practice itself, examining the ideals and standards of science in a range of eras and settings. Fine-tuned and expanded to include more content on human experimentation and on animals outside the laboratory, this essential text for scholars, teachers, and students is now even more useful. -Rachel Mason Dentinger, University of Utah, coauthor of Animals and the Shaping of Modern Medicine An accessible and engaging overview of efforts to understand how bodies work. By treating histories of medicine and animal experimentation together, Guerrini reunites stories that are too often told separately, giving us a far richer account of how our own health is linked to that of the animals around us. -Nicole C. Nelson, University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders In revising what remains the best historical introduction to the use of animals in scientific and medical research, attentive to how the experimental use of animals reflects wider societal values, Guerrini extends her study to include a timely reflection on how the COVID-19 pandemic brought human-animal relations back to the center of public debate. A concise, balanced account of a challenging topic that serves as an ideal departure point for anybody interested in better understanding this complex and often contested subject. -Robert G. W. Kirk, University of Manchester, coauthor of Leech In 2003, Experimenting with Humans and Animals was a gift to those of us working to tether what seemed to be two distinct disciplines: animal studies and the medical humanities. This updated edition introduces the multispecies nature of public health to a new generation of scholars. From the perspective of another zoonotic global pandemic, Guerrini's historical book now looks prescient. -Lucinda Cole, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, author of Imperfect Creatures: Vermin, Literature, and the Sciences of Life, 160-1740

A compelling and engaging account of the ways experiments have been conducted on animals and humans from the time of Galen to the present. [Guerrini's] book is crucial not only for understanding the changing value placed on experiments over time but also because it invaluable deepens our knowledge of the history of medicine. -- Journal of the History of Medicine A fascinating tour through the history of animal experimentation, with reference to human experimentation for perspective. -- Journal of Clinical Research Best Practices An excellent survey of human experimentation on both humans and animals. Her attention to interactions between experimenters and the societies in which they live offers a valuable sociohistorical context for understanding today's ethical debates over cloning, genetic engineering, and the breeding of animals to supply human body parts . . . A fine interdisciplinary work. -- Choice Guerrini does a fine job of putting the anatomy and physiology studies of Galen, Harvey and Vesalius, and the vaccination work of Jenner, Pasteur, Koch and Salk in historical context. -- Nature Medicine The selected historical episodes involve individuals who are so eccentric . . . and experiments that are so shocking . . . that Guerrini's book reads like a work of historical fiction and, in turn, is highly engaging. This, or course, is not to be understood as a challenge to the work's historical veracity; rather, it is to be understood as a tribute to the captivating nature of the subject matter as well as the way in which that subject matter is presented . . . one cannot help but find Experimenting to be highly engaging . . . But being engaging isn't the book's only virtue. It also reminds us of and underscores a number of important issues closely tied to the contemporary debate on human and nonhuman animal experimentation . . . Guerrini's highly engaging, informative treatment on the history of the Western world's experimentation with humans and nonhuman animals is strongly recommended. -- Medical Humanities Review Unique, succinct, and informative . . . It is rare to mix the stories of animal and human research together, and this joint history has been little understood and appreciated among even modern day discussants . . . The history is well drawn and accurate. Inserts illustrating important historical documents provide a feel of the times and thinking under discussion. The mixture of history and ethics makes this appropriate both for mentors and young Martin Arrowsmiths. -- Journal of the American Medical Association Well-written, highly accessible, and highlighting the major trends, events, and people in the history of Western medicine, experimental biology, and physiology, Experimenting with Humans and Animals is an excellent introductory text in the history of science or medicine. -- Journal of Interdisciplinary History Within its confines, the author presented a balanced review of historical highlights (perhaps also lowlifes depending on perspective) surrounding animal and human vivisection and use in research . . . This was a great read and I recommend it to all. -- Laboratory Animal Practitioner

Author Information

Anita Guerrini is the Horning Professor in the Humanities Emerita at Oregon State University and a research professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of The Courtiers' Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV's Paris.

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