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Historical Debate on Animal Experimentation

As the experimentation on animals increased, especially the practice of vivisection, so did criticism and controversy. In 1655, the advocate of Galenic physiology Edmund O'Meara said that "the miserable torture of vivisection places the body in an unnatural state." O'Meara and others argued that animal physiology could be affected by pain during vivisection, rendering results unreliable. There were also objections on an ethical basis, contending that the benefit to humans did not justify the harm to animals. Early objections to animal testing also came from another angle — many people believed that animals were inferior to humans and so different that results from animals could not be applied to humans.

On the other side of the debate, those in favor of animal testing held that experiments on animals were necessary to advance medical and biological knowledge. Claude Bernard — who is sometimes known as the " prince of vivisectors" and the father of physiology, and whose wife, Marie Frangoise Martin, founded the first anti-vivisection society in France in 1883 — famously wrote in 1865 that "the science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen . Arguing that experiments on animals ...are entirely conclusive for the toxicology and hygiene of man ... the effects of these substances are the same on man as on animals, save for differences in degree, Bernard established animal experimentation as part of the standard scientific method.