The Value of a Life: Compassion fatigue in animal research
Content warning: This article talks generally about animal research, including animal euthanasia as part of scientific experiments. If this topic makes you uncomfortable, we suggest skipping the below material.
Being an animal lover is one of the most intrinsic parts of my personality. I’ve been a horse-girl, dog person, cat enthusiast, and nature admirer for my entire life. When I couldn’t choose a major in undergrad, I looked down the list and picked Animal Science because nothing sounded more familiar and safe than getting a college education studying my favorite non-human companions. Ironically, most of my courses ended up focusing on the animal agriculture industry - so instead of cuddling cats and dogs for lab credit, I spent many freezing afternoons stuffing between the campus dairy barn and meat processing facility. But as I moved away from the world of Animal Science and entered molecular microbiology research, I realized I would have to become intimately familiar with a creature that I hadn’t learned about in any of my courses: laboratory mice. I was never drawn to rodent companionship growing up. The closest I ever got to owning anything smaller than a cat was the two pet rats my elementary school class raised, who were inauspiciously named Romeo and Juliet. I’m not exactly sure what educational lesson this duo was supposed to teach us, but the only thing I remember about the furry pair of star crossed lovers is the day I arrived at school to discover an unusually silent crowd of kids piled up against their cage. Juliet had died sometime in her sleep, leaving these elementary schoolers and Romeo to figure out how to process the death of their beloved companion. This tragedy not only reduced me to tears, but the sight of the limp, puffy white rat disgusted me. I promptly decided that I wanted nothing more to do with the pet rodent scene.Although my early-career experience with the unfortunate demise of Juliet likely saved my parents from housing countless generations of gerbils under their roof, rodents still tug at my animal-loving heartstrings. They might not move me as much as a precious nuzzle from a pony or doe-eyed look of admiration from a labrador, but mice have their own undeniably unique adorableness (I mean, just look at that pink nose and those little whiskers!). Apart from these admittedly biased measures of cuteness, it’s an undeniable fact that rodents - including those used in laboratory research - are living creatures that occupy space on this planet. When you kill a mouse, it is obvious that a life has ended. And for some people who find themselves participating in the rodent euthanasia process that is a cornerstone to many essential research efforts, the constant presence of this prescribed end of life can be really hard to deal with.I want to stop and acknowledge that there’s probably some fraction of people who are reading this and currently rolling their eyes, saying “come on, it’s just a mouse…you’ve got to be kidding me.” Look, I hear you. I see the undeniable irony of spending my daytime hours being existentially pained by laboratory mouse sacrifice, and then immediately driving to the barn where I keep my horse after work and screaming at the sight of any moving rodent while welcoming their demise in strategically placed mouse traps around the hayloft. However, there is something particularly onerous about seeing the fragile life of a captive laboratory mouse vanish under your control. No matter how many times you tell yourself “it’s just a mouse,” it is exhausting to watch life repeatedly extinguish in service of a scientific endpoint.I recently found myself entangled in an ever-growing web of compassion fatigue during a series of mouse experiments this fall. I started out apprehensive but enthusiastic to collect data to corroborate some exciting preliminary experiments that I had conducted last Spring, and the daily handing and prodding of my mouse-subjects didn’t bother me much. However, as the weeks wore on and I was charged with overseeing rounds and rounds of animal sacrifice, I started to question if all of the sacrifice was worth it. I was still excited about the study and the data we were generating was great, but mentally I was becoming exhausted by the burden of playing God in the preplanned life and death cycle of my laboratory mice. The study concluded several months ago and I have some time to think back and reflect on my animal work experience. I did some research and found that I was not alone in experiencing compassion fatigue during this type of long term animal experiment - far from it, there is a whole body of literature available to help animal researchers cope! Below are a few tips to help you better prepare for animal work, design and run successful experiments, and maintain your mental health during this often taxing process.
Make one ethical decision at the start of the study. Decision fatigue is the result of having to make multiple choices over a time period. Basically, our brains run out of juice when faced with too many choices. In order to alleviate decision fatigue in animal research, make one, purposeful, ethical decision for yourself at the start of your animal study that the use of animal life for this work is necessary and permissible. If you have already decided that animal sacrifice is a meaningful and unavoidable contribution to the data collected in your study, it will save you from any mental anguish every time you have to euthanize animals as part of the previously outlined research protocol.
Clearly define why animal research matters to you. Much like making an ethical decision about utilizing animals for your study, clearly articulate to yourself why the data you will collect from this animal work matters to your research and science as a whole. What value information could you not obtain without the use of animal models? How will this progress your research? How will it contribute to the entire scientific community? Definitively outlining these outcomes can help keep the overarching meaning of your work in perspective, especially over the course of a long study.
Design your experiment carefully. It is unrealistic for every animal study to go off without a hitch and produce beautiful data that can be written up into a high impact journal. However, we want to maximize the chances that the animal lives we are using will contribute to the most meaningful work possible. IACUC guidelines inherently encourage reduction in animal waste, but if you psychologically know that your experiment is designed in a very thoughtful, careful way that maximizes scientific returns, it can ease the mental burden of animal sacrifice.
Thank every animal used in your study. Acknowledging the use and value of each animal used in your research will help bring more compassion and humanity into the often sterile research process.This practice also brings additional purpose to each animal life used in your work while acknowledging the realities of the sacrifice that is sometimes inherent in research. I like to say something along the lines of: “Thank you, mouse, for the value you have brought to my work and scientific progress as a whole.”
Find time to mentally reset after animal work. As a scientist, all work hours are not created equal. Time spent semi-mindlessly setting up PCR reactions is not the same as minutes dedicated to more emotionally laborious efforts of animal research. Recognize and honor the mental drain that animal work might take on your psyche, and adjust your rest schedule accordingly. During an animal experiment, you might need to lighten your overall workload, take more time for mental health breaks and self-care, or turn to the outside support of a mental health professional.
Set boundaries if things get overwhelming. Animal research isn’t for everyone, and that’s ok. I don’t think anyone feels completely comfortable or at ease working with animals as part of their research design, but for many scientists the quality of data they can obtain from animal models outweighs any ethical discomfort. However, if you are participating in animal research and finding yourself burned out, severely uncomfortable, or chronically stressed out, then it may be time to set some boundaries around what research activities you are able to participate in. We all have our unique scientific niche, and it is ok to define your limits in order to preserve your mental health and continue to find joy in your research work.
Literature Review
Compassion fatigue, euthanasia stress, and their management in laboratory animal research https://ohsu.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/compassion-fatigue-euthanasia-stress-and-their-management-in-labo
Laboratory Animal Welfare Meets Human Welfare: A Cross-Sectional Study of Professional Quality of Life, Including Compassion Fatigue in Laboratory Animal Personnel. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2020.00114/full
Compassion Fatigue in Laboratory Animal Personnel during the COVID-19 Pandemichttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8628530/
Easy Reads
Compassion Fatigue: The Cost of Caring https://www.mcgill.ca/cmarc/files/cmarc/cost_of_caring_-_november_2019_0.pdf
Something to Watch
Compassion Fatigue: Education and Engagement in Animal Research https://www.labroots.com/webinar/compassion-fatigue-education-engagement-animal-research-copy-5ebc6fdf19e28
About the author: Maddie Krieger is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Oregon Health and Science University. Her work combines wet lab and computational approaches to investigate the polymicrobial nature of oral diseases. She loves talking to other current or aspiring scientists about non-traditional STEM education and career paths. Maddie has been the Communications Chair of WIS since April 2022, and is passionate about science equality and bringing issues of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to the forefront of discussions around STEM career paths and education. In addition to being a scientist, Maddie is an avid runner, equestrian, reader, and fan of deserts and reality TV.
