Compassion for Animals in Scientific Research
Regarding the pain of lab animals
Updated May 6, 2026 | Reviewed by Davia Sills
When faced with the suffering of others, many people instinctively tend to turn away. “Attention has become a moral currency,” writes Bernard A. Saltzman in his new book Turning Away: The Poetics of an Ancient Gesture (2026). For Saltzman, turning a blind eye is “deeply embedded in the experience of being human.”
This is poignantly illustrated in the painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, circa 1558, attributed to Flemish painter Peter Bruegel the Elder, in which the artist depicts the myth of Daedalus and Icarus from Book VIII of Ovid’s Metamorphoses . Throughout the centuries, the myth has captured the imagination of many writers and painters, including the 16th-century Swedish painter Joos de Momper, and even Picasso, whose 1958 version is at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.
In Ovid’s rendition, the ploughman, fisherman, and shepherd continue their work, despite the amazing sight of a boy falling from the sky. The painting is further immortalized in W.H. Auden’s poem Musée des Beaux Arts: “About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters, how it takes place/while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along…how everything just turns away/Quite leisurely from the disaster…” (Karasu, 2009).
Alternatively, some can just as easily “engage in doomsday scrolling,” develop a prurient fascination with suffering, and become unable to turn away (Saltzman). We live, writes Susan Sontag, in a “society of spectacle” and can become voyeurs “regarding the pain of others” (2003).
Whether we turn toward or turn away from the misfortunes of others, either gesture is a “poetic way of enacting feeling” (Saltzman).
Viewing suffering can bring compassion, a complex emotion that involves not only the emotional response of recognizing the suffering of others but also a desire and wish to alleviate that suffering. But compassion, cautions Sontag, is an “unstable emotion,” and people can become inured to the horror and develop “moral or emotional anesthesia”: although there may be both shame and shock initially, the shock can wear off.
Most who write about compassion focus on the human component, but what about compassion for animals, and particularly those animals used in research?
The use of animals in scientific research has a long history, dating back at least to the Greeks and Romans when Aristotle and later Galen experimented on animals (Hajar, 2011). Nineteenth-century Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch used animal models (Frühwein and Paul, 2025).
Claude Bernard, considered the father of physiology, was a major proponent of vivisection (i.e., the dissection of living animals) (LaFollette and Shanks, 2008). In more recent years, Jonas Salk used tissue from the kidneys of monkeys to develop his vaccine for polio (Shampo and Kyle, 1998).
There is no question that animal experimentation has led to significant breakthroughs in medicine and is considerably more acceptable than the egregious ethical violations committed not only by the Nazis, who conducted experimentation on concentration camp victims (Carbone, 2026), but also by researchers in the U.S. who, for 40 years, intentionally withheld treatment from Black men in the Tuskegee syphilis study (Tobin, 2022). These abuses led to major reforms in the oversight of human research and the importance of informed consent (Carbone).
The use of animals in research has not been without controversy, particularly stemming from investigations that uncovered overt abuse and mistreatment of animals. Even Harry Harlow, famous for his cloth and wire-covered surrogate experiments with his infant monkeys, was accused of cruelty and torture for his "pit of despair" (Karasu, 2020).
PETA, i.e., People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, whose motto is "Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, or use for entertainment, or abuse in any way," was established in 1980. Its staff has gone undercover to document major animal abuse.
Larry Carbone, a laboratory veterinarian for over 40 years, explores the many complexities involved in the use of animals, from primates to fleas, for scientific research in his recently published book (Carbone, 2026; Morton, 2026).
Carbone writes, "A lab vet goes from someone who makes sick animals healthy to someone who makes healthy animals sick." Those who work with lab animals may experience considerable stress , sometimes related to what has been called the "caring-killing paradox" (LaFollette et al., 2020).
In the U.S., the NIH and the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversee lab animals, but no one knows how many are used by labs. There has been legislation, such as the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, to protect lab animals, but well over 99 percent were not covered. Mice, the most commonly used, rats, and fish were not considered animals under this Act nor under the 1985 Congressional update that established animal ethics committees to self-regulate and monitor some studies (Carbone).
There was another update in 1986 that established the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) to regulate vertebrate research, including mice, but Carbone is critical of its oversight, namely, that sometimes its members focus more on the technical justification for an animal study, rather than its ethical justification. Admittedly, though, some institutions do a better job of monitoring these rodent studies than others.
Furthermore, Carbone describes what animal ethicists call speciesism, namely giving preferential treatment, such as allowing exercise for some animals, such as dogs, based more on people's emotional attachments to them rather than what an animal may require. Writes Carbone, "The great conundrum in animal research...we want animals whose bodies and diseases most resemble us humans, but whose mental and emotional capabilities are so different that we commit no sin in harming them."
And after Jane Goodall's research with her chimps, primates evolved "from subhuman primates to nonhuman primates," but although they are social, they could still be kept alone in a cage for years without exercise.
Carbone believes that too many lab animals suffer from untreated pain, especially after a surgical procedure. Further, they often lack appropriate stimulation because researchers want a so-called neutral environment and fear that addressing these issues will "wreak havoc on their data." The problem, though, is that "there is no such thing as a neutral environment."
Significantly, Carbone emphasizes that when animals are treated without regard for their physical and psychological welfare, they can become poor research subjects. For example, grabbing mice by their tails, housing them in sterile, small cages that limit their instinctive ability to burrow, and exposing them to forced-air ventilation, all of which stress them, will potentially compromise data. One challenge, Carbone admits, is that not all those concerned with the welfare of animals agree on a definition of environmental enrichment.
Carbone suggests that researchers should always question whether animal experiments are justified, useful, or even potentially misleading. Further, these models have their limitations and are not always "reliable predictors for human disease" (Frűhwein and Paul). Carbone hopes that animal labs will become obsolete eventually, as there will be other means of gathering data. There are three "Rs" of alternatives: replace, reduce the number used, and refine methods of handling the animals.
Animals are in labs precisely because they are subjected to experiments that cannot be conducted on humans, and unlike human studies, where informed consent is required, animals are not capable of giving us their consent. Consider their pain and suffering, and don't turn away.
Note: Special thanks to David B. Allison, PhD, Endowed Professor and Director of the Children's Nutrition Research Center, Baylor, for clarifying that the institutions with which he has been affiliated have required considerable supervision for his mouse studies. And for a fascinating discussion of Harlow's research, see Deborah Blum's 2011 book, Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection.
Please also note that psychologytoday.com blogger Marc Bekoff, PhD. has also written on Larry's book and interviewed Larry for his blog: See this link: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/202511/the-hidd… .
Carbone L. (2026). The Hidden Lives of Lab Animals: A Vet’s Vision for a More Humane Future. Oakland, California: University of California Press.
Frühwein H; Paul NW (2025). “Lost in translation?” Animal research in the era of precision medicine. Journal of Translational Medicine 23: 152 (12 pages).
Hajar R. (2011). Animal testing and medicine. Heart Views 12(1): 42.
Karasu SR (2009). Compassion failure, schadenfreude, and the fall of Icarus. Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities. https://hekint.org/2017/01/23/compassion-failure-schadenfreude-and-the-fall-of-icarus/ (Retrieved: 5/1/26).
Karasu SR (2020). Traces of ourselves: the remarkable power of touch. Psychologytoday.com. https://sylviakarasu.com/wp-content/uploads/traces-ourselves-the-remarkable-power-touch.pdf . (Retrieved 5/1/2026).
LaFollette H; Shanks N. (1994). Animal experimentation: the legacy of Claude Bernard. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 8(3): 195-210.
LaFollette H et al. (2020). Laboratory animal welfare meets human welfare: a cross-sectional study of professional quality of life, including compassion fatigue in laboratory animal personnel. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 7(article 114). (13 pages).
Morton DB (2026). Creature comforts (Books et al, Animal Research). Science, 19 February, 772.
PETA. (no author). PETA’s history: Compassion in Action. https://www.peta.org/about-peta/learn-about-peta/history/ . (Retrieved 5/1/2026).
Saltzman BA. (2026). Turning Away: The Poetics of an Ancient Gesture . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Shampo MA; Kyle RA (1998). Jonas Salk--Discoverer of a vaccine against poliomyelitis. Mayo Clinic Proceedings 73: 1176.
Sontag S. (2003). Regarding the Pain of Others . New York: Picador (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Tobin MJ. (2022). Fiftieth anniversary of uncovering the Tuskegee syphilis study: the story and timeless lessons. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 205 (10): 1145-58.
Share this post Facebook Bluesky Linkedin Email
This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.