ALICIA: “When I sac them”—I know, but it’s what we all say. I used to ask, “Why don’t we call it killing?” We are killing, and it’s not like anyone sees us, but then everyone says it, so, why not? I now say it without thinking about it. Others just said to me [when I’d ask about it], “Sac is the vocabulary we use.”
LS: What does “sac” make you think of?
ALICIA: In football you “sack a player,”—you get rid of it and knock it out of the game…. I feel like animal death is very central to animal research. A lot of people think, “Oh, you kill animals.” So much of your work leads to death. I think about how someone [in our lab] needs neurocells [from these mice], someone else [needs tumors]. We have to think about it a lot. It’s regulated. It’s the endpoint. I do most of my sacking by CO2 exposure. We all do CO2 [in the lab] where I work. [Others I know in other labs] decapitate them—[they say] it’s more humane. With neonates, you decapitate them with scissors. You use a PBS buffer—it’s isotonic with the body.28 I’m scheduled to learn how to do this next month.
LS: Are you comfortable about learning this?
ALICIA: I’m not stoked for it. But it’s necessary for what we’re doing. It’s supposed to be the most humane way. I should get over it. It’s what we’re doing….
LS: Do you like your job?
ALICIA: I like the people. That was the highest priority when I was choosing which job to take. I’m figuring out how I feel about science. Wow. We do this work to prevent tumors! I like going to work every day. I listen to a lot of podcasts [while I work].
In their essay “Transposing Bodies of Knowledge and Critique,” Carrie Friese and Adele Clarke (2012) offer a detailed description of a lab researcher intent on teaching a new recruit the proper—and most humane—method of killing a lab mouse. Throughout the teaching session the researcher grows increasingly frustrated, troubled by the number of animals that must be sacrificed as the student stumbles through the lesson. In contrast, Alicia’s perspective sheds light on the opposite side of the tutorial, disclosing important aspects of neophyte lab training, most notably the importance of demonstrating, and internalizing, emotional detachment. As she explains, mastering the “unintuitive” skills of lab animal management takes time, patience, perseverance, an acute memory, and stamina.
At this point in her training, Alicia focuses exclusively on the method and not the mouse (as typifies interview responses from other entry-level lab assistants like Alicia). Although seemingly mundane, her mastery of the proper way to pick up a mouse is in fact an important technical skill where animal care is concerned. As Dr. Rose, a director of a diabetes rat lab explained to me,
I’m embarrassed to say it took me decades to realize that handling a rat properly is a welfare issue—animals that are hand-trained are not afraid of humans, and so injections and the like, and even euthanasia, are far less traumatic for them because they aren’t afraid and trust us. I had to learn this from my animal technicians, and I am adamant that all junior researchers in my lab master this first before I let them move on to doing anything else. I do not want my animals fearful of what we do. This is the foundation of what “moral” means to me.29
Alicia’s emotional detachment is most evident precisely at these moments when animals must be euthanized because, as she puts it, “so much of your work leads to death.” Early on in her job, she questioned the rhetoric of “sacking,” stating, “We are killing, and it’s not like anyone sees us, but then everyone says it, so, why not?” Within such a framework she now elides the depersonalization of animals with humans, as evident in her analogy of the “sacked” animal and the “sacked” football player in which she says, “You get rid of it and knock it out of the game” (italics added). To be honest, I had a strong averse response to her description of how mouse pups must be decapitated with scissors. Although this is indeed widely understood as among the most humane ways to kill mouse neonates,30 unlike descriptions provided by other, more seasoned lab personnel I know, Alicia emphasizes that she is “not stoked for it” while realizing that “it’s necessary for what we’re doing” and that she “should get over it.” Of equal importance to Alicia is her ability to respond and think like a young scientist, most clearly demonstrated by the excitement she expresses in being part of important research that could “prevent tumors.” As she learns the necessary hands-on skills, she simultaneously masters the emotional stance that makes one’s total immersion possible, even though, at least at this very early stage in her career, she may well be listening to “a lot of podcasts” while she works as a means to ease the process of emotional transition. If she proves successful, she will indeed “figure out how [she] feel[s] about science.”
Training the Monkey
As she begins her intended career as a research scientist, Alicia is still in the process of learning the basics of animal handling, breeding, and “sacking.” As Dr. Rose reveals, though, successful experimental work requires patterned, predictable precision on the part of the researcher and the animal. This patterned precision of human-animal partnerships is most apparent in the actions of seasoned researchers, and especially in contexts involving “sentient” species such as dogs and NHPs. The carefully calibrated motions that enable a researcher to work often for hours beside or in close proximity to a macaque, for example, demonstrate the exquisitely fine-tuned calibration of what might be thought of as paired habitus, or what Brendan Hart, in his work with parents of children with autism, describes as “joint embodiment” (2014). Consider this description from my field notes based on my observation, over the course of much of a day, of an encounter between Jaime, a third-year postdoctoral student in neuropsychology and a five-year-old adolescent male macaque named Rufus. Jaime and Rufus have worked together on average four hours per day, five days per week, for the last two years:
Before entering the lab, Jaime issues a set of instructions to me, articulated clearly and calmly, and in a quiet voice. As he explains, Rufus “likes to be alpha,” and whereas not all monkeys are like this, Rufus is most comfortable and happiest in this position vis-à-vis others. This experimental session (which includes preparing the research apparati, donning proper protective attire, retrieving Rufus, running the experiment itself, and returning Rufus to his enclosure) spans close to six hours. Throughout, Jaime’s instructions and actions to me reflect carefully thought out and applied best practices where Rufus’s needs and comfort zone are paramount. Because of Rufus’s alpha orientation, Jaime stresses, “Don’t look Rufus in the eye” because this would be read by Rufus as a threatening posture. Instead, I am instructed to look away or look down. Jaime explains this approach is generally a good idea with all the monkeys in this lab (and when I stand outside the door to the monkey enclosure room, I avert my gaze when the other curious inhabitants look straight at me). Jaime explains, too, that I should be quiet and not make any sudden movements. I was on the alert. I was thinking about my habitus.
After preparing a small, hand-held container of rewards for Rufus acquired from a fridge in a large storage room, Jaime retrieves a “chair” or boxy Plexiglas enclosure from a row of these lined up against one wall, checks to make sure all parts are in working order, and then weighs it. (He will soon reweigh it once Rufus is sitting within the “chair.”) We then cover our heads and faces with surgical caps, masks, and face guards and don lab coats, latex gloves, and booties; we will remain dressed this way as long as we are in Rufus’s presence. I then follow Jaime down the hall to the housing unit, a spacious room where both sides are lined with “enclosures” or cages that house approximately a dozen pairs of rhesus macaques. Rufus is located near the door (I remain in the outer hallway and peer through an observation window), and Jaime squats down before Rufus’s enclosure, slowly and methodically feeding Rufus grapes, each time waiting for Rufus to stretch out his arm to request food, palm up. (Earlier that morning Jaime had encouraged Rufus’s cage mate, Hatty, into another enclosure.) Jaime explains he had trained Rufus step by step to move from cage to chair, actions I am able to watch through the window. First, Jaime threads a long metal rod with a hook on the end into Rufus’s cage. Rufus, who wears a dog collar, slips the rod’s lead line