[HN Gopher] Vivarium: The keeper of a lab's animals stumbles ont...
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Vivarium: The keeper of a lab's animals stumbles onto a secret
[fiction]
I thought the HN crowd would appreciate this story I wrote about
the keeper of a university's lab animals. In reporting articles
about science, and being a biology-watcher generally, I've had an
uneasy time squaring my enthusiasm for cutting-edge biomedical
research with the fact that this research so regularly involves
breeding animals just to give them diseases and kill them. This is
done as humanely as possible, of course. The contrast hit me most
vividly during the pandemic when I was writing an article about the
immune system. [1] One of the scientists I spoke to told me about
putting hamsters on warming plates, picking them up gently -- in
general, caring for and about them -- and then feeling grief at
their deaths. But of course understanding the immune response
during infection with covid was a worthy cause. I felt no judgement
towards this scientist; they are in a difficult position. There
was another more direct bit of inspiration, when I read this
article [2], in 2023, about the toll that caring for laboratory
animals could take on people's mental health: > _Besides the
symptoms Sessions experienced, those who handle lab animals may
face insomnia, chronic physical ailments, zombielike lack of
empathy, and, in extreme cases, severe depression, substance abuse,
and thoughts of suicide. As many as nine in 10 people in the
profession will suffer from compassion fatigue at some point during
their careers, according to recent research, more than twice the
rate of those who work in hospital intensive care units. It's one
of the leading reasons animal care workers quit._ That left an
impression on me, and also armed me with a character: the
forgotten-about, somewhat miserable vivarium worker. The story
obviously takes many liberties with fact -- it is fiction -- but I
also tried to ground it in reality, and stuff that you might think
I made up (the guillotine, the crazy VR sphere in the first
paragraph), I did not. I hope you enjoy! If nothing else I expect
you'll appreciate the illustrations, done by my friend Ben Smith
[3]. [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/how-the-
corona... [2]: https://www.science.org/content/article/suffering-
silence-ca... [3]: https://www.stephenbonesproductions.com/
Author : jsomers
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-04-16 21:46 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (jsomers.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (jsomers.net)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I really enjoyed this. Thanks!
| Fomite wrote:
| Vivarium workers are so important. And yeah, both they and a lot
| of students suffer a lot of grief rooted in a necessary but
| empathetically hard part of their job.
| philsnow wrote:
| I kept waiting for Chekhov's gun (the sphere) to be fired.. but
| then the story ended.
|
| I enjoyed it, to be sure, but I guess I went in expecting it to
| be more Stross-y.
| j_bum wrote:
| This was honestly an extremely tough read for me. Very well
| written, and beautiful nonetheless. Some of this only can come
| from someone who's walked in that world before.
|
| I have a lot of PTSD from my doctoral work with mice. My gut
| reaction to the FDA starting to move away from animal models is,
| "thank god."
| mrec wrote:
| A beautifully-written and moving story; thanks for posting it.
| Have you written any other fiction? I couldn't see it (or even
| this one) in the list of writing on your frontpage.
|
| Wholeheartedly approve your reading list, by the way. _O
| Caledonia_ in particular is an under-recognized gem; I 've never
| seen anyone else capture the awesomeness of squirrels the way she
| does:
|
| > _Calm and tranced she walked up through the beeches again and
| saw two red squirrels leaping along their sinuous branches; they
| leapt and curvetted, stopped dead, flourished their tails and
| were off again, swift and smooth, fleeting like light up the
| trunks, so bright and merry and joyous that she wanted to shriek
| with delight._
| bombela wrote:
| You see awesomeness in a squirrel, I see a pest to eradicate.
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| It seems perfectly in character that your response would be
| so sparse while your interlocutor was so evocative.
| mock-possum wrote:
| > She would have died having never seen the sky.
|
| It's too much to bear.
| philipswood wrote:
| The story has a really tragic implication though...
|
| It strongly hints that millions will die in pain from the
| knowledge that the post-doc "lost" and that the other rats in
| the cohort died in vain.
| beavis000 wrote:
| Thank you, your story was excellent.
| lamename wrote:
| Your story does a great job at highlighting the small but
| profound every-day experiences of working in a lab with living
| beings as test subjects. It's hard to put into words the strength
| of wonder you can acquire for life working as a scientist or
| animal handler -- you have immense depth of understanding of the
| microscopic scale biology while simultaneously seeing it at work
| in real time in the whole animal (or society of animals) on the
| macro scale. It's the biology equivalent to the "pale blue dot"
| sentiment.
|
| The only similar deep, profound awe at life I've had outside of
| the lab was when my son was born. This might be the most common
| way people achieve this state of being. In all honesty this was
| one of the best parts of lab work. For me it happened every day;
| you're reminded of the insane complexity and the high degree of
| frailty of life. The terribly large power difference between
| yourself and a small animal in your hand. The deep similarities
| between humans and other animals, and at the same time, the
| worlds of difference. For me these experiences in the lab day
| after day put many other things in life on a lower rung, for
| better or for worse (like sustaining grad student pay and living
| conditions perhaps). But I wouldn't trade having that experience
| for anything.
|
| Your story hints at this beautifully, and I hope others get the
| chance to feel that feeling.
| collingreen wrote:
| > This is done as humanely as possible, of course.
|
| As humanely as possible within the constraints of time, budget,
| and "I really want to know what happens when I do X to these
| animals" I guess.
|
| It's amazing what kind of things we can sweep away with a quick
| "it's for [my assumption of] the greater good".
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(page generated 2025-04-17 23:01 UTC)