Daniel Engber, senior editor at Slate, has posted the first of a five-part series about animals used for research. “Pepper, the stolen dog who changed American science,” thankfully wasn’t called Pepper, the stolen dog that changed American science,” so that was an encouraging sign.
Pepper was a beloved family pet. A Dalmatian, stolen and sold for research, she was likely terrified and probably in enormous pain when she was killed, a couple of weeks after she was taken. The story, rich in details about people who steal, scoop up and trade or sell animals, is disturbing on many levels, but a worthwhile read for its historic significance.
Here’s the final paragraph of the piece, which I’m sure you’ll have some thoughts about:
Pepper’s journey in the summer of 1965 helped start a national media sensation and a broad panic over the theft of pets for biomedical research. Her death on an operating table in the Bronx would help animal welfare advocates break a long-standing stalemate in Congress and push through the most significant animal-protection bill in American history. At the same time, she became a martyr to the cardiology revolution at a crucial moment in its development. Pepper also represents a turning point in science, from an earlier age when animals for experiment would be plucked from the road or the river, to a new era of standardized, mass-produced organisms that can be shipped right to the laboratory door. In a five-part series to be published over the course of this week, Slate will explore her legacy.
I look forward, with a tad of trepidation, to the part about Pepper being a turning point in science.
Perhaps I am mistaken or misreading, but didn’t she really represent a turning point in the commodification of dogs and other sentient nonhumans used for research?
Didn’t she represent the dawn of a new age of profiting from the “production” and sale of animals? The birth of a new business model?
Do you think she represented a time when people were relieved that their beloved pets could (technically, legally) no longer be abducted and tortured because some nameless, faceless other dog would be instead, and that dog had no significance?
Was what followed animal protection or pet protection, as pets are the animals who really matter?
Stay tuned. I look forward to the rest of the series.
