![]() The setting of the experiment is an imagined government institution at Lawson Park in Cumbria. And this particular sordid performance hints at what we already know, that such experiments say as much about the species which devises them as they do about the animals who endure them. Adams states in his preface that he has not made up any of the experiments which he instances: unfortunately, he had no need to. It opens with a scene from experimental psychology: “survival expectation conditioning (water immersion)” – in plain words, seeing how long a dog will go on trying not to drown. Watership Down was his most successful book, both commercially and as literature, but The Plague Dogs, his novel about vivisection, is in its way just as remarkable. The author Richard Adams, who wrote a series of highly original novels with non-human animals as their leading characters, died on Christmas Eve of 2016. Richard would have been pleased and moved by this thoughtful piece by Matthew Simpson about his work ‘The Plague Dogs’ and his fundamental philosophical and moral opposition to vivisection. ![]() The Voice for Ethical Research on The Plague Dogs ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |