After more than three decades of failed mouse-model Ebola experiments, the current crisis demonstrates yet again the urgency for biomedical research to move beyond animal models to newer, cutting edge human biology-based approaches to finding cures for human disease.
Read the entire article on The Dodo by John Pippin, M.D.
Drawing by Eva Meijer
Next time you walk across your local park you might want to try a new form of political communication – ‘greeting as recognition’. If a squirrel crosses your path, say hello. If a crow fixes you with one of his sharp black eyes, offer a respectful nod. If you’re lucky enough to encounter a dog companion, crouch low, ask if she’s having a nice walk, and let her approach and greet you if she will.
Eva Meijer is a Dutch artist, novelist and philosopher. In her current work, on animals and political communication, she is considering the role of greetings and other interspecies “language games”. We generally think of language practices, such as ‘protest’, or ‘greeting’, in a human context, but in fact, these words and the rituals they represent (like our language more generally) have been formed in an interspecies context, not a strictly human one. This is true in socio-historical terms, since we have always lived in multispecies communities, and at the individual developmental level. For example, many of us had beloved animal companions (or neighbours) as children, and learned the meanings of words like ‘love’ or ‘friend’ (or ‘need’, ‘want’, ‘hope’, ‘intend’) through interaction with nonhumans as much as humans. And so, when we use these words in relation to animals we are not making an anthropomorphic error of projection; rather, we are using words in the very context in which we (and other animals) originally came to understand and shape their meaning. So too for more politically charged linguistic practices such as greeting, or protest, or resistance.
A political caricature of the United States Senate from 1894
Credit: Library of Congress
Justin E.H. Smith, professor of History and Philosophy of Science, published an interesting article in the Opinionator pages of the New York Times, entitled We Are Not the Only Political Animals. He argues in favor of using a political framework in our interactions with animals.
Excerpt:
This supposed freedom from political strictures has motivated some, such as the 19th-century anarchist aristocrat Piotr Kropotkin, to take nonhuman animals as a model for human society. But for the most part the ostensibly nonpolitical character of animal life has functioned simply to exclude animals from human consideration as beings with interests of their own.
What might we be missing when we cut animals off in this way from political consideration?
You can read the entire article here.
©Pharaoh Hound (WikiCommons 2.0)
A colony of dogs has been maintained at Queen’s since 1981 for use in hemophilia research (miniature schnauzers, spaniels and beagles). This ongoing research project is instructive for thinking about the ethics of using animals for biomedical research to benefit humans, and the need for genuine public oversight.
Hemophilia is a rare blood clotting disorder, affecting approximately 3000 Canadians. Current treatment, which is highly effective, is to replace the missing clotting factor either on an as-needs basis if a bleed occurs, or as part of ongoing prophylactic treatment (self-injection with the deficient clotting factor 3 times per week). The standard treatment has improved significantly in recent decades, and most people with hemophilia can now live a normal life span, with excellent quality of life, although a minority of patients develop inhibitors (a rejection response to clotting factor) making their treatment more complex.
The Queen’s colony includes dogs purpose-bred to have hemophilia, as well as non-diseased dogs to serve as research controls, or as blood donors for the hemophilia dogs who need regular transfusions. As noted in this article, these dogs are used for experiments over and over again, into old age. Dogs in other hemophilia research colonies, like University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at least have outdoor runs, and access to a one acre outdoor play area. Not so for the Queen’s dogs who spend their entire lives in the lab.
Originally the Queen’s dogs were used to refine the standard infusion treatments for humans with hemophilia, and to study the problem of inhibitors. More recently, however, the dogs have been used for to explore gene transfer techniques as a possible treatment for hemophilia A (the common form of the disease which accounts for approximately 80% of cases). Here is the pubmed link to a 2014 gene therapy study conducted at Queen’s.
Queen's Animal Defence 