The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain, and Science

by Bernard E. Rollin

Overview

How can science teach us that animals feel no pain when our common sense observations tell us otherwise?

Bernard Rollin offers welcome insight into questions like this in his ground-breaking account of the difficult and controversial issues surrounding the use of animals. He demonstrates that the denial of animal consciousness and animal suffering is not an essential feature of a scientific approach, but rather a contingent, historical aberration that can and must be changed if science is to be both coherent and morally responsible. Widely hailed by advocates of animal welfare and scientists alike on its first appearance, the book now includes an epilogue by the author describing what has changed, and what hasn’t, in this use of animals in scientific research and food production.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826221261
Publisher:	University of Missouri Press
Publication date:	07/31/2017
Edition description:	2nd Edition
Pages:	348
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Bernard E. Rollin is the 2016 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the organization Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research. Rollin has served on the Pew National Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production and on the Institute for Laboratory Animal Resources Council of the National Academy of Sciences. A University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, he lives in Fort Collins, CO.

Table of Contents

Science, common sense, and the common sense of science; Animal consciousness as an object of study; The tortuous path from Romanes to Watson; Animal pain: the ideology cashed out, 1; Animal pain: the ideology cashed out, 2; Morality and animal pain: the reappropriation of common sense; Consciousness lost; Consciousness regained: psychology; Consciousness regained: ethology and beyond; The Unheeded Cry revisited.

Editorial Reviews

Bernard Rollin’s The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain and Science is just what is needed to make people think seriously about why some scientists do what they do to non-human animals”—Animal Behaviour


“Being both a professor of philosophy and a professor of physiology and biophysics, Bernard Rollin is uniquely qualified to discuss the development of attitudes among scientists and to influence them.”—The Journal of Medical Ethics

From the Publisher

2 Stars from Doody

This second edition book is authored by one of the world's leading philosophers in animal welfare. The book is written sequentially, making it difficult to skip from one chapter to another without losing the progression of the author's central thesis. The last chapter represents a 1997 update of the original 1989 version, with five mini-essays on the current state of animal welfare in scientific research. The author's purpose in writing the original version in 1989 was to expose students to the central premise that scientists have ""suspended"" everyday common sense as an integral part of the scientific method. It is argued that scientists simply do not think about inflicting pain upon research animals, whereas they would take personal affront if one were to fail to treat pain in their own personal pets. The intended audience is students of veterinary medicine and bioethics. The text is minimally illustrated (two graphs in Chapter 9) but extensively referenced. The author makes a convincing historical argument. He cites conventional literature sources in a Socratic attempt to lead the scientist-reader to accept the central premise. Despite the 1997 update, the author fails to acknowledge the current rigors of institutional and federal scrutiny in scientific investigations using animal subjects. A sanctioned research project with animal subjects is impossible today without several levels of institutional review (including the university level) by a broad committee which includes lay representatives who have not ""compartmentalized common sense"" in an effort to promote scientific endeavors. As a history of the efforts of animal rights activists in modifying the views of scientiststoward their animal subjects, the text is valuable, but it contains little contemporary insight into the animal welfare concerns of today's scientists.

Jonathan H. Foreman

Updated edition of an animal-rights book first published by Oxford U. Press in 1989. Rollins (philosophy and physiology, Colorado State U.) argues against the objective, value-free stance of scientists who use animals by showing that this stance leads to the denial of the existence of animal consciousness and pain. In his study Rollins looks at his subject from the scientific and philosophic sides simultaneously, drawing on the work of Wittgenstein, Lloyd Morgan, McDougall, Buytendijk, Herrnstein, and Gallup. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

Reviewer: Jonathan Hale Foreman, DVM, MS, DACVIM (University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine)
Description: This second edition book is authored by one of the world's leading philosophers in animal welfare. The book is written sequentially, making it difficult to skip from one chapter to another without losing the progression of the author's central thesis. The last chapter represents a 1997 update of the original 1989 version, with five mini-essays on the current state of animal welfare in scientific research.
Purpose: The author's purpose in writing the original version in 1989 was to expose students to the central premise that scientists have "suspended" everyday common sense as an integral part of the scientific method. It is argued that scientists simply do not think about inflicting pain upon research animals, whereas they would take personal affront if one were to fail to treat pain in their own personal pets.
Audience: The intended audience is students of veterinary medicine and bioethics.
Features: The text is minimally illustrated (two graphs in Chapter 9) but extensively referenced.
Assessment: The author makes a convincing historical argument. He cites conventional literature sources in a Socratic attempt to lead the scientist-reader to accept the central premise. Despite the 1997 update, the author fails to acknowledge the current rigors of institutional and federal scrutiny in scientific investigations using animal subjects. A sanctioned research project with animal subjects is impossible today without several levels of institutional review (including the university level) by a broad committee which includes lay representatives who have not "compartmentalized common sense" in an effort to promote scientific endeavors. As a history of the efforts of animal rights activists in modifying the views of scientists toward their animal subjects, the text is valuable, but it contains little contemporary insight into the animal welfare concerns of today's scientists.

Doody's Review Service