Continuing the ‘What is Medicine?’ seminar series

What role do nonhuman animals play in the construction of medical knowledge? Animal researchers typically claim that their use has been essential to progress. But just how have animals fitted into the development of biomedicine? And how has their history fed into the ethical controversy around animal use? In this paper, I want to do two things: first, to trace how nonhuman animals, and their body parts, have become incorporated into laboratory processes and places. They have long been designed to fit into scientific procedures – now increasingly so through genetic design.

Animals and procedures are closely connected – animals in science are disassembled and reassembled in various ways. Indeed, whatever else it is, biomedical knowledge can be said to rest on a large pile of animal bodies and body parts. So, secondly, I want also to ask the speculative question – what might biomedicine have looked like if it hadn’t relied so heavily on a never-ending supply of animals?

Dr Lynda Birke is a biologist who has long worked in feminist science studies. She has published extensively in this area, particularly on feminist questions in biology. More recently, she has focused on the human/animal relationship – including the use of animals in science. Her most recent book (with Arnie Arluke and Mike Michael) is “The Sacrifice: How Scientific Experiments Transform Animals and People” (2007: Purdue). She is currently doing research on horses and their relationship with people, in the Anthrozoology Unit, University of Chester.

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