SOURCE: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17725433
The ethical terrain of lab animals has long been framed as a technical question of biomedical necessity governed by the 3Rs - Replacement, Reduction, Refinement [Russell & Burch, 1959]. Friese's ethnography compels us to reconsider this assumption with disquieting clarity.
Care and harm as entangled practice
Drawing on finely wrought ethnographic case studies from British laboratories, Friese illuminates the fraught dialectic between care and harm that structures the quotidian existence of laboratory animals. Her fieldwork follows technicians, veterinarians and scientists as they enact care routines - handling, enrichment, pain scoring - that are intended to safeguard welfare but that simultaneously enable procedures that cause suffering.
This duality has been documented in earlier laboratory ethnographies. Lynch's foundational study of lab work and Birke, Arluke and Michael's The Sacrifice showed how affect and detachment coexist in animal research. More recent work by Davies et al. on the UK Animals in Science Regulation Unit describes how care is bureaucratised through compliance forms that both protect and normalise harm.[2007][2020]
Friese advances this literature by showing that care is not external to harm but constitutive of it. To care well for a mouse in order to make it a viable experimental subject is to participate in a system where harm is made ethically manageable. This resonates with Giraud and Hollin's concept of entangled care, where practices of care and violence are inseparable.[2016]
Humanitarianism recalibrated
Her intervention advances a provocative thesis: that humanitarian sensibilities, traditionally conceived as moral compasses guiding human relations, must be recalibrated to encompass the non-human subjects upon whose suffering modern science precariously rests.
Friese draws on humanitarianism studies, particularly Fassin's analysis of humanitarian reason as a moral economy that distinguishes lives worthy of saving and suffering worthy of attention. By situating laboratory mice within broader philosophical debates on distant suffering, she unsettles entrenched anthropocentric boundaries of compassion.[2012]
This challenges two dominant ethical frameworks. Utilitarian approaches following Singer evaluate animal use through capacity to suffer and cost-benefit calculus, while rights-based approaches following Regan argue for inherent value that precludes instrumental use. Friese does not adjudicate between them but asks a sociological question: how do humanitarian logics already operate in labs, and what do they exclude?
Her answer is that British labs exhibit a form of selective humanitarianism. Mice are afforded names, enrichment and mourning rituals, yet their ultimate expendability is institutionalised through breeding, culling and experimental endpoints. This mirrors what Greenhough and Roe describe as industrial humanitarianism - where welfare becomes a mode of governing animals rather than challenging their use.[2019]
Normative implications beyond description
The review underscores how Friese's work is not merely descriptive but profoundly normative. By revealing how practices intended to safeguard welfare may simultaneously reproduce harm, she invites readers to confront the uneasy reconciliation between scientific progress and ethical recognition of animal rights.
This has implications for current policy debates. The UK's Animals in Science Committee and the EU Directive 2010/63/EU increasingly require culture of care assessments, yet Friese's ethnography suggests that culture of care can become procedural rather than transformative unless linked to questions of rights and justice.
Critical animal studies scholars such as Donaldson and Kymlicka have proposed frameworks of animal citizenship that move beyond welfare toward relational rights, while Garner and Donaldson debate whether lab animals can be considered political subjects. Friese does not adopt a doctrinal rights position but uses humanitarianism as a lens to ask whether compassion without rights is sufficient, provoking spirited debate among scholars, practitioners and ethicists alike.[2011][2016]
A seminal contribution
Published by NYU Press in 2025, Friese's volume constitutes a seminal contribution to the sociology of science and technology and to the burgeoning field of critical animal studies. It offers a tableau in which humanitarianism is refracted through the lived realities of lab animals, showing how British laboratories are sites where moral economies of care, science and suffering are negotiated daily.
For biomedical researchers, the book does not call for simplistic abolition but for reflexive attention to how care practices shape ethical perception. For sociologists, it demonstrates how ethnography can illuminate the micro-politics of humanitarian reason beyond human subjects.
Ultimately, Friese asks whether the technical language of necessity obscures a more fundamental ethical question: can humanitarianism remain credibly human if it excludes the non-human subjects upon whose bodies it depends?
References
Birke, L., Arluke, A., & Michael, M. (2007). The Sacrifice. Purdue University Press.
Davies, G., et al. (2020). Bureaucracy and culture of care in animal research regulation. Social Studies of Science, 50(5).
Donaldson, S., & Kymlicka, W. (2011). Zoopolis. Oxford University Press.
Fassin, D. (2012). Humanitarian Reason. University of California Press.
Friese, C. (2025). A Mouse in a Cage: Rethinking Humanitarianism and the Rights of Lab Animals. NYU Press.
Garner, R. (2013). A Theory of Justice for Animals. Oxford University Press.
Giraud, E., & Hollin, G. (2016). Care, laboratory beagles and affective utopia. Theory, Culture & Society, 33(4).
Greenhough, B., & Roe, E. (2019). Industrial humanitarianism and animal welfare. Environment and Planning D.
Lynch, M. (1988). Sacrifice and the transformation of the animal body. Human Studies.
Regan, T. (1983). The Case for Animal Rights. University of California Press.
Russell, W. M. S., & Burch, R. L. (1959). The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique.
Singer, P. (1975). Animal Liberation. HarperCollins.