Exploring Compassion towards Laboratory Animals in UK- and China-Based Undergraduate Biomedical Sciences Students

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Research and teaching in biomedical sciences has led to huge advances in human wellbeing. However, some research activities require the use of non-human animals and can entail animal suffering. This suffering is obviously detrimental to the animal but can also negatively impact learners’ and researchers’ emotions or weaken the validity of the activity’s scientific outcomes. Taking a more compassionate approach in these research activities has the potential to address these issues, but compassion in the human–animal relationship is often only indirectly addressed in biomedical sciences teaching, and we need new ways of exploring this. Here, we developed a survey to measure compassion towards laboratory animals and used it in groups of biomedical sciences students in the UK and China. In line with other studies on compassion, we found that females are more compassionate than males and that nationality/culture-related differences are present. We found that students with lower levels of compassion are more likely to accept animal suffering in a research setting, and while exploring whether specific beliefs about animals’ mental capacities were linked to compassion, we found that a belief that animals are conscious is associated with higher levels of compassion. This survey can be used to investigate compassion towards lab animals, including investigations of ways to enhance compassion, and may help us create a more compassionate and scientifically robust setting for teaching, learning and research activities involving animals. ABSTRACT: Taking a compassionate approach to the non-human animals used in biomedical research is in line with emerging ideas around a “culture of care”. It is important to expose biomedical sciences students to the concept of a culture of care at an early stage and give them opportunities to explore related practices and ideas. However, there is no simple tool to explore biomedical sciences students’ attitudes towards laboratory animals. Accordingly, there is little understanding of students’ feelings towards these animals, or a means of quantifying potential changes to these feelings. We developed a 12-item questionnaire designed to explore compassion (the Laboratory Animal Compassion Scale; LACS) and used it with UK-based and China-based samples of undergraduate biomedical sciences students. In the same samples, we also explored a harm–benefit analysis task and students’ beliefs regarding some mental characteristics of laboratory animals, then drew correlations with the quantitative measure of compassion. Compassion levels were stable across years of study and were not related to students’ level of experience of working with laboratory animals. We observed a higher level of compassion in females versus males overall, and a higher level overall in the UK-based versus China-based sample. In a task pitting animal suffering against human wellbeing, students’ compassion levels correlated negatively with their acceptance of animal suffering. Compassion levels correlated positively with a belief in animals being conscious and possessing emotions. These data are in line with studies that show compassion is gender- and nationality/culture-dependent, and points to links between compassion, beliefs, and choices.