Animals in Research Facilities / 85nological failure routinely results in animal deaths in numbers far
exceeding this threshold, with little fanfare or public outcry. For
example, a failed generator caused a power outage in July 2006 on
the medical campus of Ohio State University. When electricity was
restored, it triggered the heating system and temperatures soared
to 105 degrees. Nearly 700 animals died. In 2005, failure of a ven-
tilation unit at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in Collegeville, Pennsylva-
nia, caused hundreds of animals to die or to suffer such distress
that they had to be euthanized. When reporters from the Philadel-
phia Inquirer followed up on the incident, they were told that the
number of deaths was “not unusual.” In 1988, workers at a National
Institutes of Health (NIH) facility in Bethesda, Maryland, failed to
restore electrical power to a building after performing maintenance
on the heating, air conditioning, and alarm systems. The lack of
fresh air killed 130 animals.^3
I have been vague about the species and described the victims
simply as “animals” for a purpose. Knowing the species changes the
scenario and highlights the importance of the social construction of
animals in our moral considerations. The 211 escaped animals who
were shot by South Florida residents were rhesus monkeys. The an-
imals who escaped from the breeding facility were monkeys and
baboons. Those who suffocated at the National Institutes of Health
facility and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals were mice. Of the 8,000 animals
who died at Louisiana State University (LSU) following Katrina,
some were dogs and monkeys but mice and rats made up the ma-
jority. Of those who died at Ohio State University, nearly all were
mice and rats. If you fi nd yourself feeling less sympathetic, you
are not alone. Public sentiment over these incidents varies widely
by species. One offi cial conveyed this distinction well when he ad-
dressed reporters about the incident at Wyeth. After explaining that
the number of deaths due to mechanical failure in a lab was “not
unusual,” he went on to say, “Horrible things have happened with
nonhuman primates dying, and this is perceived to be different.” In
other words, mice are expendable. Why should anyone care?
The lack of systematic reporting of the total number of ani-
mals used in laboratories in the United States makes it diffi cult