From capitalist pigs to poisoned puppies
Brad Bolman on the shifting politics of animal experimentation
We live in strange times, not least when it comes to the politics of laboratory animals. In March, the official White House website insisted, “Yes, Biden Spent Millions on Transgender Animal Experiments.” Far from an eccentric outburst, this salvo reflects a puzzling preoccupation of the Trump administration and its cronies: just one month earlier, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace held a hearing on “Transgender Lab Rats and Poisoned Puppies.”
Many responded to this trans animal fixation by pointing out that most examples of research on “transgender animals” were really fundamental studies of the role of sex hormones in human health. Others noted the possibility of an almost cartoonishly misleading conflation of the concept of transgenic animals — experimental organisms whose genomes are altered to study everything from cystic fibrosis to brain development — with that of transgender people.
But while the “trans animals” accusation is deceptive, it reflects the strange alliance that has strengthened over the last decade between animal rights activists and conservative politicians. Some lab animal advocates have tried to attract right-wing opponents of government spending to their cause by framing studies performed on animals as wastes of taxpayer dollars. Latching onto today’s ugly transphobia, Mace’s hearing metonymized the wastefulness of the Biden administration through the “transgender lab rats” they allegedly sought to study.
But opposition to government waste only goes so far, and rats don’t elicit that much sympathy. That’s where the dogs come in: puppies, especially beagles, have become icons of modern scientific cruelty. A few cute beagles sat (or, more accurately, squirmed) behind the speakers at Mace’s hearing. Back in 2021, outrage at outlandish accusations that federally funded scientists were harming beagles overwhelmed the phone lines of Anthony Fauci’s office at NIAID.
Today’s lab animal advocates, then, wield the frames of waste and cruelty alongside each other, augmenting their appeals to fiscal conservatives with attempts to mobilize the broader public’s compassion for the most adorable subjects of scientific experimentation. In short: save the beagles, and don’t waste money on the rats.
I’ve been studying the history of animal experimentation for over a decade. Back in 2020, I collected some of my findings in an essay for the very first issue of The Drift titled “Capitalist Pigs.” There, I suggested that a group of reanimated “zombie” pigs revealed the central connection between capitalism and animal politics. Pigs are popular experimental organisms, I argued, in part because they are cheaply produced by the global meat industry and widely consumed. The logic and practice of factory farming sustain the utility of the scientific pig.
In the years since I wrote that essay, we’ve seen remarkable advances in xenotransplantation, as transgenic (not transgender) pig organs have been transplanted successfully into the bodies of suffering humans. Tim Andrews, a New Hampshire man who received a pig kidney in January, is still alive at the time of writing and may become the second human to survive months with a pig kidney.
As I noted in my Drift piece, xenotransplantation is a popular topic in science fiction because it taps into fundamental anxieties about the gap between humans and other animals, as well as fears of bodily impurity. But as I’ve explained elsewhere, advocates have also embraced science fiction to defend xeno’s necessity. This helps to explain why journalists slide into tones of awe and optimism like an old shoe when covering new breakthroughs. Amid a global organ shortage, one New York Times headline quipped, “Hope Arrives on Tiny Hooves.”
Readers of The Drift will recognize what might be missing from this Panglossian framing: the sacrifice of pigs, who die so that humans can live. This tendency to view other organisms as a standing reserve of spare parts for human use lurks behind the intensifying global environmental crisis we confront today. But politicians and animal advocates have done little to contest the use of pigs in xenotransplantation and other scientific processes. There is no White House webpage on the subject, and pigs went largely unmentioned at Mace’s hearing. The problem seems to be that xenotransplantation is not so obviously “wasteful” or “cruel” (at least, not in a way that bacon eaters can sympathize with).
Instead, animal advocates have focused their energy on those lovable creatures allegedly imperiled by Anthony Fauci: beagles. In my new book, Lab Dog: What Global Science Owes American Beagles, which comes out today with the University of Chicago Press, I help readers understand how a humble British hunting hound became one of America’s most beloved dogs and one of science’s most widely used research organisms.
From flying nuclear reactors and Gilded Age beagle clubs to Snoopy and Alzheimer’s drugs, pop culture collided with the practical concerns of scientists to make the little hounds into “standard” research organisms on just about every continent. Yet the characteristics that made beagles so valuable to scientists — their small size, easy management, and cooperative personalities — make them an easy target for critics of animal research today. As I write in the preface, reflecting on the widespread doggification of our culture, “We see ourselves in dogs and dogs in ourselves, whether on screens or in our homes.” And who would dream of hurting an adorable beagle?
In the conclusion of Lab Dog, I ask what mounting advocacy on behalf of beagles means for the future of research with dogs. There will almost certainly be fewer and fewer large-scale beagle labs, in part because researchers are increasingly invested in what I call “companion science”: less invasive studies where humans like you or I volunteer our dogs to provide behavioral data or test new drugs. These projects provide ways to work with dogs, which are central research organisms, without ringing alarm bells about waste and cruelty. If Americans can successfully defend the NSF and NIH against Trump administration cuts, we will see more grants for these studies going forward.
Rats, pigs, dogs: how should we treat these fascinating and complex creatures? “Capitalist Pigs” and Lab Dog are united by my sense that we too often separate the incendiary issue of laboratory cruelty from the quotidian suffering of animals. Many pet dogs now get fresh, vacuum-sealed meals, but they’re also locked up all day, subjected to extreme leash laws, and offered few moments of genuine freedom. We can build a world with less suffering, for humans and for other animals, but it will require more than political opportunism. As I write in Lab Dog, riffing on a line in historians Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s classic work Leviathan and the Air-Pump, “Solutions to the problem of animal experimentation require solutions to the problem of social order.”
Brad Bolman is a historian and the author of Lab Dog.
