The Sacrifice

How Scientific Experiments Transform Animals and People

by Lynda Birke, Arnold Arluke, and Mike Michael

Click here to order online!

The Sacrifice provides a uniquely detailed account of the sociological context of animal experimentation.  Drawing on historical material, media reports and professional debates, interviews with scientists and animal technicians, and ethnographic data from
laboratory settings, the authors provide a rich analysis of complex and changing role of the laboratory animal in the political and scientific culture of the US and UK.

     The Sacrifice traces the emergence of the standardized laboratory animal as a material and cultural artifact, and its continuing entrenchment in the techno-scientific enterprise. It also explores the subsequent rise of various scientific identities – a socially and institutionally intricate process involving not only scientists, but also animal technicians, regulators, animal rights activists, patient advocates, and the public at large. The work explores how, in the sometimes convoluted interaction among scientists, various public groups, and laboratory animals, each of these participants influences the other’s identities. In doing so, the authors take a very different perspective from other accounts of the experimentation controversy, seeking to understand it not as a moral impasse, but as an ongoing and constantly recreated set of social processes. The
authors have presented a timely study that warrants close attention.

ISBN:  1-55753-432-2

13-Digit: 9781557534323

Trim Size: 6 x 9

Binding:  Paperback

Pages: 220