Vivisection - Animal Vivisection

Animal Vivisection

Research requiring vivisection techniques that cannot be met through other means is often subject to an external ethics review in conception and implementation, and in many jurisdictions, use of anesthesia is legally mandated for any surgery likely to cause pain to any vertebrate.

In the U.S., the Animal Welfare Act explicitly requires that any procedure that may cause pain utilize “tranquilizers, analgesics, and anesthetics,” with exceptions when “scientifically necessary.” The act does not define “scientific necessity” or regulate specific scientific procedures; instead, approval or rejection of individual techniques in each federally-funded lab is determined on a case-by-case basis by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, which contains at least one veterinarian, one scientist, one non-scientist, and one individual from outside the university.

In the U.K., any experiment involving vivisection must be granted a license by the Home Secretary. The Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 “expressly directs that, in determining whether to grant a licence for an experimental project, ‘the Secretary of State shall weigh the likely adverse effects on the animals concerned against the benefit likely to accrue.’”

In Australia, the Code of Practice “requires that all experiments must be approved by an Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee” that includes a “person with an interest in animal welfare who is not employed by the institution conducting the experiment, and an additional independent person not involved in animal experimentation.”

Anti-vivisectionists have played roles in the emergence of the animal welfare and animal rights movements. Among their arguments is that it is immoral to inflict pain or injury to another living creature, for whatever purpose.