Science, Gender and the Exploitation of Animals in Britain Since 1945

Catherine Duxbury

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780429867323
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book offers an historical analysis of the culture of animal-dependent science in Britain from 1945 to the present, exploring key areas of animal experimentation such as warfare, medical science and law from a gendered perspective. Questioning the nature of knowledge production in this area, and how animal experimentation intersects with broader cultural norms and values concerning sex, and gender, it examines the impact of contemporary forms of capitalism on animal dependent science, its historical trajectory and gendered configuration. With close attention to the broad social context from the creation of the Welfare State and the loss of Empire, to the emergence of neoliberalism in the 1980s and its present day omnipotent manifestation, the author asks how animal experimentation and the use of nonhuman animals in specific areas of science is gendered and has implications for women. Drawing on a variety of sociological, philosophical, feminist and historical theories and engaging with a wealth of primary and secondary materials of scientific research of the time, Science, Gender and the Exploitation of Animals in Britain Since 1945 contends that there is a persistent, gendered ideology of animal use which remains inscribed within the policies of the British neoliberal state. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, history and philosophy with interests in gender and the treatment of nonhuman animals.

Section II

Scientific intersections

The practice of animal experimentation and its gendered dimensions

4Animal experimentation at Porton Down

Britain's Military-Animal-Industrial Complex, 1948–1955

DOI: 10.4324/9780429461644-4

The funniest thing, according to J.D Morton, the scientific trials officer at Porton Down Chemical and Biological Defence Research Establishment (CBDE) in 1952, was the fact that monkeys could possibly have rights. In his narration over a grainy 1952 film about a secret experiment conducted off the coast of Scotland, Morten joked about the experimental monkeys. He highlighted the behaviour of one particular monkey in the film who was seen to be moving frantically about in his cage, and wryly exclaimed: ‘He's obviously a political agitator, haranguing the rest about the rights of monkeys, though they're only paying casual attention to him!’¹ This passing comment, made with a sense of humour, may seem odd to the contemporary reader. Where is the humour in expressing that monkeys may possible have rights? As the noted cultural historian Robert Darnton claims, ‘[w]hen we cannot get a proverb, or a joke, or a ritual, or a poem, we know we are on to something.’² The perception of this event from a distance might serve as a starting point in understanding the culture of military animal experimentation in Britain at this point in time.

Situated on the Salisbury Plain in Southern England, nestled between an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the picturesque New Forest, lies Britain's most top-secret military establishment, Porton Down CBDE. Created in 1916 as a response to the German use of chemical weapons (mustard gas) during World War I,³ CBDE remains Britain's most secretive and controversial military research establishment. Its agenda, having changed over the years as much as its name, is to investigate and compile research on modern day warfare technologies which enable the British army to be advantageous against those they deem its enemies. The official government line taken states that this ‘ensure[s] that the UK's military and wider public benefit from the latest technical and scientific developments’ and therefore inevitably ‘in the interests of national security much of this work is secret.’⁴ Because of its top-secret nature, Porton Down has seen over the years many conflicting and contradictory narratives about its practices circulating in the public milieu. Moreover, the use of nonhuman animals in its scientific experiments was, and remains, integral to its modus operandi. Still to this day, newspapers occasionally run articles raising concerns about the experimental practices undertaken at the establishment, but still, these practices persist.

1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPA_yce0Swg [accessed 12/05/14).

2 Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984). pp. 75–104.

3 (Carter 1992).

This first chapter of the section, on the material practices of laboratory animal experimentation, aims to ‘set the scene’ with regards to the landscape of British experimental science after the Second World War. The chapter sets the context for what is to follow in this section, by contextualising the creation of Britain's animal-industrial-complex, while the next two chapters outline its maintenance via the discourses of animal welfare.

For this chapter, I investigate this seemingly trivial and humour-filled relationship between the human and nonhuman, by focusing on the use of nonhuman animals in British biological warfare trials in mid-twentieth century Britain. My argument is twofold: first, I argue that the use of thousands upon thousands of nonhuman bodies (living and dead) helped to create Britain's military-animal-industrial complex (MAIC). At this time, not only was Britain creating an immense military-industrial complex in this era in order to compensate for its loss of Empire and steady economic decline since the Second World War, but, with the use of thousands of animals in the creation of weapons of mass destruction, was also creating an MAIC.⁵ Second, to enable this creation of the British MAIC, it was necessary to examine in precise detail and expediency, the pathological state of the dead animal body who was subject to these novel biological weapons. My argument here follows the work of many Foucauldian inspired Critical Animal Studies (CAS) scholars when discussing the biopolitical role of nonhuman animals in human social and political life.

Previous historical analyses of Britain's chemical and biological warfare practices have focused on the human and ethical dimensions, as well as the policy and politics of Porton Down, with Ulf Schmidt and Brian Balmer being the foremost scholars in this area.⁶ The problem with this is that the focus is very much placed on the human experiments that took place there, with the very significant use of animals in the development of weapons of mass destruction mentioned only occasionally. For instance, Ulf Schmidt, although discusses the use of nonhuman animals in the creation of biological and chemical weapons at Porton Down, still tends to downplay the integral role they played in the creation of WMD, as well as their structural impact in shaping and contributing to the economy.⁷ Rather I argue that the nonhuman animal should be seen as integral to the writing of military history, especially with regards to establishments such as Porton Down. Animals themselves are a force of social and economic change and this needs to be narrated and systematically analysed. If we take J.D. Morten's unruly monkey at the start of this piece, we can actively see their agency. The monkey is resisting, they are stressed, and clearly demonstrating their dislike of the situation. Despite this resistance, their own lowly position in the human hierarchy of existence sealed their fate and deemed them suitable for experiment, and ultimately this monkey was euthanised for the purposes of British warfare capabilities. Their body was central to Britain's post-war military goals and subsequent modern economic agenda. This shows how their death as much as their life, was productive for the biopolitics of Britain's emerging MAIC at this time. Without them, would Porton Down been able to develop such potent weapons of war?

4 Gov.co.uk.

5 Salter, 2014.

6 Brian Balmer, “The Drift of Biological Weapons Policy in the UK, 1945–1965,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 20, no. 4 (1997): 115–145. “Killing 'without the Distressing Preliminaries': Scientists' Defence of the British Biological Warfare Programme,” Minerva 40, no. 1, Special Issue: Ethics and Reason in Chemical and Biological Weapons Research (2002); Secrecy and Science: A Historical Sociology of Biological and Chemical Warfare (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2012); “The Uk Biological Weapons Programme,” in Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945, ed. Lajos Rózsa Mark Wheelis, Malcolm Dando (Cambridge M.A. & London UK: Harvard University Press, 2006). pp. 47–83. Ulf Schmidt, “Cold War at Porton Down: Informed Consent in Britain's Biological and Chemical Warfare Experiments,” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethic 15, no. 4 (2006); Ulf Schmidt, Andreas Frewer, ed. History and Theory of Human Experimentation: The Declaration of Helsinki and Modern Medical Ethics (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, 2007); Ulf Schmidt, “Medical Ethics and Human Experiments at Porton Down: Informed Consent in Britain's Biological and Chemical Warfare Experiments,” in History and Theory of Human Experimentation: The Declaration of Helsinki and Modern Medical Ethics, ed. Ulf Schmidt, Andreas Frewer (Stutgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, 2007); Secret Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

The military historian David Edgerton has argued that in order to understand the effects of modernity on the arms production and military technological processes, we need to examine the peculiar implications of modernity's relationship to warfare. To do this, he claims that we must make sense of ‘…the most important yet neglected aspects of economic life of the twentieth century.’⁸ One of these ‘important yet neglected’ aspects of economic and, consequently, military life of the twentieth century in Britain is the role that nonhuman animals have played in the construction of weapons of mass destruction. To do this, I am extending the concept of the military–industrial complex, and following the work of Critical Animal Scholars Anthony Nocella, Colin Salter and Judy Bentley, and argue that Britain in the immediate post-World War II era created an MAIC.⁹ With the military–industrial complex being that which comprises a partially imperviou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Section I Law, animal welfare and gender
• Section II Scientific intersections:The practice of animal experimentation and its gendered dimensions
• Section III Conclusion: 21st century compassion fatigue