We had a comment by one of our readers, Amy, in regard to our post Lobsters Feel Pain Too. Amy points out that she believes the article we referenced at the beginning of our post, "Crustaceans Feel Pain" published in the Guardian (a United Kingdom newspaper) uses "bad science" to support a good cause. Amy also suggests that we didn't read the entire article before writing our post.

Actually, Jane and I did read the entire article, and many others as well. The research supporting that lobsters feel pain was done by Professor Robert Elwood, an expert in animal behavior at Queen's University, Belfast. In the article referenced above, the rebuttal (which was not mentioned in our previous post) came from Richard Chapman, of the University of Utah's Pain Research Center in Salt Lake City. He claims the lobsters are merely retreating from a noxious stimulant and that "even a single-cell organism can detect a threatening chemical gradient and retreat from it, but this is not sensing pain." This ideology is supported by Lynne Sneddon, a Liverpool University researcher who stated that "shrimps do not have a recognisable brain" and therefore cannot sense pain since their nervous systems are not advanced enough.

Elwood contradicts these arguments by saying "Using the same analogy, one could argue crabs do not have vision because they lack the visual centres of humans" and concluded that there should be further work looking at whether crustaceans have the neurological architecture to feel pain. In his interview on NPR he is quite conclusive that they do feel pain. In his study, Elwood put chemicals on two groups of prawns (prawns and lobsters presumably share the same pain sensitivity), one had been pre-treated with water and the other with an anesthetic. The group pre-treated with the anesthetic did not react to the chemical, whereas the group pre-treated with only water did react. According to Professor Elwood, this proves that crustaceans do experience pain, however, he states, "what is not conclusive is that these animals do not experience pain in the way that we do."

According to Wikipedia, the issue is unresolved, however, the most current research (Professor Elwood's) indicates that lobsters feel pain. Also lobsters produce opioids which are neurochemicals that help mitigate pain. The presence of opioids suggests lobsters can feel pain.

In an article by Jane Smith, PhD, entitled "A Question of Pain in Invertebrates" - published by ILAR (the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research), Ms. Smith states that registering of a noxious stimulus may simply be a reflex in invertebrates, but goes on to say that pain is a subjective experience and suggests that we may not be able to "understand what other individuals (of our own or other species) might experience." She concludes that "A principle of respect should lead those who use invertebrates in research (or display them in zoos, rear them for food, and so on) to try to maintain the highest possible standards of husbandry and care, so as to promote the animals' general 'well-being' and, whenever practicable, to give the animals the benefit of the doubt where questions of pain and suffering are concerned."

And finally, from the abstract of Can Invertebrates Suffer? Or, How Robust is Argument-by-Analogy?

Suffering is a negative mental state – a private experience – and, as such, it cannot be measured directly. When assessing the capacity of an animal to experience suffering, we often compare the similarity of its responses with those of 'higher' animals, conceptualized in the principle of argument-by-analogy. By closely examining the responses of invertebrates, it can be seen that they often behave in a strikingly analogous manner to vertebrates.

Some of the research I've read claims that "lower" animals cannot feel pain as pain has an emotional component to it, and they lack the physical capacity to feel pain/suffer. Pain, suffering... As a vegan, I try not to inflict these states on beings so that I may eat. (Okay, so this brings up the migrant worker issue, which I am not prepared to discuss on this blog.)

Clearly, the lobster is experiencing a negative state, both when being boiled alive, and when it is put into a crowded tank in a well lit area (lobsters are solitary creatures who dwell in a dark environment).

So Amy, while I might agree with you that bad writing on my part (for not citing these other references in my earlier post) could be criticized, I don't think this is bad science. If you look hard enough, you can find conflicting research on almost anything. I am basing my post on the conclusions I am drawing from the materials I've read. You are free to come to a different conclusion as there really doesn't seem to be any definitive evidence at this point.

One summer, when Jane and I were dating, we took a trip through Maine. I don't remember why we chose to travel to Maine, but I do remember that it was our goal to eat a lobster for lunch and dinner every day. We missed one lobster, the restaurant we were eating at had "run out" just as we were ordering. Overall, we had a wonderful vacation. Maine is beautiful in the summer, and the lobsters we ate, fresh from the pound, were simply amazing.

When I think back on that aspect of our trip, I am somewhat nauseated. Jane and I ate those lobsters with gusto. We even picked out the animals we were going to eat, specifically, at the lobster pounds we visited. And they may have been the best lobsters we'd ever eaten. Today, I learned that lobsters feel pain, an unpleasant finding considering the lobsters I've eaten in the past have most often been boiled alive.

I also stumbled across an article by David Foster Wallace entitled "Consider the Lobster", in which Wallace poses the question:

"Is it alright to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?"

Wallace also asks:

"Given the (possible) moral status, and (very possible) physical suffering of the animals involved, what ethical convictions do gourmets evolve that allow them not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands?"

I've been vegan for over nine months now, I never intended to eat lobster, or any animal flesh, again (see our post "Another Reason Not to Eat Meat"). But I'm feeling badly tonight. I enjoyed eating lobster. I caused significant pain and suffering to those animals, and I never gave it a second thought.

addendum 3/14/08 -- For further information on this topic, please see our post Pain and Suffering -- The Lobster Revisited.

An article published by the Associated Press, dated February 14th, indicates there may be an end in sight to live animal testing of potentially toxic chemicals and products as it relates to the safety of human usage of these chemicals.

The Environmental Protection Agency, the National Toxicology Program and the National Institutes of Health have signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" to develop and implement new methods of testing. The "new" technique is known as high throughput screening (HTS). It is currently being used in the pharmaceutical industry for drug development, and by genomics researchers. It involves combining chemicals with human cells. Robotic machinery can then determine, within minutes, if there are any signs that the chemical being tested requires further investigation -- i.e. damage to the cells, changes to cellular structure, or even cell death. Similar technology is expected to help reduce animal testing in Europe.

The intent of the agreement is to increase the number of chemicals tested, and improve the validity of the data. Tests done on animals do not always accurately predict how human cells will react with a particular chemical. In addition, the expectation is that the cost to test new drugs and chemicals will be markedly decreased as the time and resources required to fully test a new chemical will be drastically reduced.

According to a related article in the New York Times today (Feb. 15), the main testing agency, the National Toxicology Program, has fully tested just 2,500 chemicals in 30 years. The new approach could screen that many chemicals, at 15 different exposure levels, in a single afternoon, said Christopher Austin of the NIH's Chemical Genomics Center. That could significantly reduce or even eliminate the backlog of new drugs awaiting testing/approval.

Information from these tests will then be combined with data from previous animal tests and computer modeling to predict likely outcomes. Scientists will have to retest proven chemicals with the new technology (HTS) and compare the results with years of previous animal research to see if the new testing is as reliable at predicting harm. Currently HTS is used to test positive results as scientists are searching for chemicals and drugs which perform a certain function. HTS will now be used to look for negative results: damage to human cellular structures.

The agencies acknowledge that full implementation of the shift in toxicity testing could take years because it will require scientific validation of the new approaches.

It's a wonderful example of what scientists always hope for, says Francis Collins, director of the NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute. "You develop a technology for one purpose, and you realize, 'Goodness! We can use it for something else!' "

We're still a bit removed from the day when animal testing will no longer be deemed "necessary." The expectation is that HTS will be tested and further refined over the next five years.

According to Dr. Catherine Willett, of PETA, "These agencies have been resistant to change in the past and this represents a paradigm shift in their thinking. There is no reason to use animals for specific toxicology tests. You can replace them with a battery of non-animal methods designed around the biology."