For the last decade or so, and up until the last couple of months, my work in science has been in academia’s ivory towers. Working as an academic, particularly as a student or post-doc with little responsibility for bringing in grant money, allows for a lot of high minded philosophizing (hence the Ph), grand rhetoric and remarkably little gray for all the black and white.

For example, not so long ago I wrote in response to a post by cyber-friend Maggie about animal research. In the post, I zealously defended the ethics of high-minded scientists performing life-saving research. Funny thing is, and in my defense I stated this clearly in that post, I’m not now nor have I ever been an animal researcher. I’m a plant geneticist, which means that the closest I ever got to animals was chasing the occasional raccoon out of my corn field.

Until now. One of my two current jobs brings me a step closer to the world of animal research.  You’ll have to pardon me if I’m not specific enough for your inquiring minds, but it’s all about self-protection. This job involves writing up research for a company that is within the broad umbrella of the “Pharmaceutical Industry”. Sitting at my desk in a building downtown, I’m still not  any physically nearer the animals than when I was fannying about in corn fields or greenhouses full of Arabidopsis. In fact, I’ve been intentionally avoiding a trip down to the animal house as I’m a bit squeamish about  blood. But in the reports that I write up on a daily basis, I’m exposed to a bit of the reality of animal research and, out of the abstract, it’s not particularly nice. Sometimes these mice don’t have it easy. Sometimes they’re exposed to what turn out to be toxic chemicals and all sorts of unpleasant things happen to them. Sometimes, technicians make mistakes and the mice deal with a bit more than they should have to deal with.

But, and this is a crucial but, these things happen so that they don’t happen to people. It’s a decision that we’ve collectively made as a society. The alternative is either we test drugs on people or that we don’t develop drugs at all.  My company, like most of them, is not one that is working on cosmetics or things to make your erection function. They’re, quite literally, trying to ‘cure cancer’.

Nonetheless, Big Pharma is no place for an animal loving socialist botanist. Sometimes I just have to put my precious, delicate academic morals in the cupboard and get on with the business of business. And sometimes I just have to laugh at the disconnect of it all.  In a recent report I wrote the following sentence in the “Results” section:

“X days after treatment one of the mice suffered a rectal prolapse.”

Which prompted a visit a couple of days later from my boss who reminded me, “Chris, mice don’t suffer. The ethics people get very unhappy if the mice suffer. ‘The mouse developed an rectal prolapse.’”

Reallllly? Shall we ask the mouse?

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