Image: the cover of the book is two white mice in a glass container, one with her paws up aganst the glass and the other half hidden behind her. In the background is an out of focus person with goggles and other PPE looking in at the mice. In white letters- A Mouse in a Cage. In pink letters- rethinking humanitarianism and the rights of lab animals. In gray letters- Carrie Friese.
I was not expecting Carrie Friese's A Mouse in a Cage to bother me as much as it did. I read about the author and decided we likely had some common ground and that she was quite possibly adding new and important ethical analyses to the awful subject of nonconsenting animal research. Instead, I found myself angry and even insulted by some of the author's assessments in this text. This author's sensitivity could have been a major strength in some circumstances. Unfortunately here, she limits her sensitivity to commiserating with those who harm other animals in research and the techs that keep the animals alive in between. She does not spend a single moment shadowing someone who has rescued any of these animals after what they have gone through. I don't expect her to dive into the underground of the Animal Lib Front. There are plenty of above ground rescues such as Beagle Freedom Project. For how many times she mentions the "animal rights" people in conflict with animal researchers, she doesn't speak to a single one. This narrows her scope so much that throughout the book, you see her quieting every emotion she has in order to defend the people she has met. She discusses her upset at watching the slaughter of animals so that their ovaries can be transported to a new breeding program almost willing herself out of it. She repeatedly mentions crying, but almost treats these reactions as a problem.
If this was the only point of the book- shadowing people working in the field and talking about them- I would not have been bothered as much. It is fine as an academic exercise of cataloguing the lives of people and what they think of themselves. As a "humanitarian" extension to other animals exercise, it fails immensely. Not only does Friese fail to go deeply enough into how much sacrifice and harm occurs in relation to actual advances, the amount of red tape, hubris, and grant motivation that go into continuing to harm animals, and the issues with industries funded by it all. The biggest problem about the author's arguments for me is that Friese appropriates terminology from oppressed groups and liberation movements and then reconstructs them to describe oppression. Literal suffering and death of nonconsenting beings with absolutely no benefit to those beings, in order to support the careers and occasionally health advances (and mistakes) of another species.
There is also a very dry detached way that she discusses much animal research. It seems that she is doing so because she wants to avoid bias. She fails at this, instead creating what reads very much like an animal testing lobby propaganda piece disguised as an ethical advancement discussion of some sort. I can guarantee that if she spent time with a single one of the people who has taken in one of the very few animals to make it out of these places alive that she could have actually had some balance here. The author is so worried about being biased that she becomes excessively biased, tapping into the anthropocentric nature of our species- to treat those in cages as objects of use and discussion who only need be understood through the words of those who torment them.
At times, her use of terms felt so wrong that it reminded me of a Pride display on Amazon's front page. The audacity of referring to animal research as "care work" made my blood boil. A term of disability and feminist movements, turned on its head to describe people causing fear, pain, injury, illness, and death in other animals. She first uses this to describe lab tech work- the underpaid people who clean cages and so on. This I disagree with, but understand her point. I have met and worked with lab techs after they left the traumatic profession. They do see themselves as caring for the animals and are not in charge of the research decisions. However, to then extend this to the researchers themselves- who literally design systems which cause suffering and death in millions of animals per year- I was floored. Calling them "carers" as if they are somehow in the same league as actual carers was so offensive that I nearly put this book down for good several times. This is another opportunity where shadowing real carers of rescued animals would have better informed her position. Friese also uses identity politics of humans many times as a vehicle to describe nonhuman animal harm as somehow liberatory. She brings up consent multiple times, so I assume she is going to have a big section where she really tackles that. We get a couple of paragraphs that get nowhere.
Friese allows researchers a platform to tout the well worn slogan that animal researchers want their jobs to disappear- something they can say knowing that they will not work towards this goal and will fight it if it comes. Few if any of these people are going to stop their life's work and go back in time to another field- they have said as much quietly. Part of this is because those who would care enough to do so are weeded out early on. My experience in both getting an education and in research has shown me how swiftly ethical considerations for other animals are silenced. They have created literal front groups funded by everyone from researchers to cage makers to fight against any opposition towards animal harm for research. Furthermore, they consistently tout ethical standards- which the author happily repeats- while criticizing the people who are the only reason those standards are in place- animal rights/liberation proponents. They are allowed to both continue doing harm while also taking credit for the ethical work of others all while being wrapped up in a package of "care." Some will tout themselves as victims of activism while failing to even acknowledge the actual victims of their work.
I have had some extremely stressful events occur while reading this book and couldn't even muster up the energy at times to continue it. I told myself I would keep giving the author a chance and finish it. I thought surely she would get somewhere, interview a rescuer, give me something. I did not realize that half of the book was appendices and was grateful when it ended at 144 pages. This life stress likely taints this review, so I decided not to give a star rating. I did put page flags in the book for things that she said that made sense, but none were deep enough to overshadow this fury the mistakes of the text left me feeling.
This was also posted to my storygraph and goodreads.
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