Not so long ago, I heard a research scientist talking about the work he was doing and its context in the discipline.\u00a0 He was looking at a particular set of genes that were implicated in cancer, and was interested in manipulating those genes as a means of controlling tumor formation.\u00a0 He wanted to work on zebrafish.<\/p>\n
There was a number of advantages to zebrafish, he said.\u00a0 For one thing, they’re closely enough related to humans to have the right genes, and so engineering cancer in them ought to provide a decent model for its analogue in humans.\u00a0 The other advantage had to do with their welfare; zebrafish, bless ’em, not being the most neurologically complex of animals, they are less likely to suffer as a result of the experiments, or less likely to suffer to the same degree,\u00a0than would be, say, mice or rats.<\/p>\n
The problem was this: the accepted model for the kind of work he was doing is the mouse model.\u00a0 The speaker found, as a result, that he was effectively forced to use mice – if he didn’t, the chances of getting his research published fell dramatically.\u00a0 That is to say, he faced a paradox: he could reduce suffering by switching species, but in doing so, he’d run the risk that any suffering he did still cause would be entirely in vain, because the research wouldn’t be accepted.\u00a0 So he had either to pursue research that he thought unnecessarily harmful just in order for it not to be wasted; or he had to spend time that he could have spent curing cancer establishing the viability of the zebrafish model, in the hope of generating a massive culture change across the leading oncological journals.\u00a0 Neither of these was an enticing prospect.<\/p>\n