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What Animals Want by Larry Carbone Review: A Rigorous, Ethically Honest Policy Study
Larry Carbone's What Animals Want: Expertise and Advocacy in Laboratory Animal Welfare Policy (Oxford University Press, 2004) is a policy-focused nonfiction work by a veterinarian who brings both scientific credentials and training in the history of science and veterinary ethics to one of the most contested intersections in American regulatory life — the question of what animal welfare standards should govern laboratory research.
LuvemBooks Verdict
Best for
Scholars, veterinarians, policy professionals, and engaged general readers who want a rigorously sourced, ethically honest account of how competing claims about animal experience shaped U.S. laboratory animal welfare law.
Worth it if
You can engage simultaneously with policy analysis, veterinary science, and philosophy of science, and you value a book that holds moral tension without artificially resolving it.
Skip if
You are seeking a clear-cut argument for or against animal research — Carbone's deliberate acceptance of the prevailing societal consensus as a working framework will frustrate readers with abolitionist expectations or those without background in at least one of the book's three demanding disciplines.
What readers & critics say
American Scientist praised it as "the fruit of extensive research" into why policies on laboratory animal care developed as they have, calling it an "excellent new book" written by "a realistic, knowledgeable individual who daily weighs the cost and benefits of animal research" (americanscientist.org). Philosophy Now (philosophynow.org) highlighted the book's central tension: it can be read either as the account of someone doing the best possible for animals under difficult institutional circumstances, or as a confession of complicity in the very system Carbone describes.
Sources: American Scientist, Philosophy Now, Essays on Animal Ethics (blog)Ask LuvemBooks
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What Animals Want: Expertise and Advocacy in Laboratory Animal Welfare Policy by Larry Carbone is a rigorous policy analysis that uses the legislative history of the U.S. Animal Welfare Act as a lens to examine who gets to define animal welfare — and why that question is as much epistemological as scientific. Carbone's rare dual grounding in veterinary medicine and the history of science allows the book to hold the moral tension between animal welfare and animal research without forcing a false resolution. Scholars, veterinarians, policy professionals, and engaged general readers with backgrounds in ethics or regulatory history will find the rigor rewarding; those seeking a polemic for or against animal research will likely find Carbone's deliberate ambivalence demanding.
- Is it worth reading?
- For readers willing to engage with policy analysis, veterinary ethics, and philosophy of science simultaneously, What Animals Want offers genuine depth that is difficult to find elsewhere on this subject. Carbone's dual grounding — one foot in the humanities, one in veterinary science, as his own website describes it — allows the book to examine regulatory and ethical ramifications of emerging animal welfare science rather than simply adjudicating between activist and industry positions. The key caveat, as Philosophy Now reviewer Joel Marks observed, is that the book's acceptance of the current moral consensus as a working framework may read as insufficient to readers who feel the stakes for the animals demand a more abolitionist stance.
- Similar books
- Readers drawn to What Animals Want's inquiry into animal experience and ethics may find complementary perspectives in several related titles. Ed Yong's An Immense World: How Animal Senses Shape Our Planet explores how animals perceive reality in ways radically different from humans — a science-grounded approach to the question of what animals actually experience. Jonathan Balcombe's What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins similarly investigates animal cognition and sentience with scientific rigour. For a more polemical counterpoint, Matthew Scully's Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy occupies the abolitionist end of the spectrum that Carbone deliberately avoids. Thomas McNamee's The Inner Life of Cats: The Science and Secrets of Our Enigmatic Companions offers a more accessible look at animal inner lives, while Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark provides useful background on how scientific expertise and epistemological authority are constructed and contested.
- Who should read this?
- What Animals Want is best suited to scholars, veterinarians, policy professionals, and engaged general readers with an interest in animal ethics and U.S. regulatory history. Readers interested in the mechanics of how science and advocacy interact inside the U.S. legislative and regulatory process will find the Animal Welfare Act case study concrete and well-sourced. Those who approach animal research from a purely abolitionist perspective, or who are looking for a polemic rather than a policy analysis, are likely to find Carbone's deliberate ambivalence demanding rather than rewarding.
- What are the main themes?
- The book's central themes are epistemological authority, the politics of expertise, and the unresolved moral tension between animal welfare and animal research. Carbone examines whose knowledge counts in regulatory debates — asking whether the relevant expertise belongs to behavioral scientists, philosophers, veterinarians, or advocacy organizations — and why different claims carry different institutional weight. A secondary but equally important theme is the tension between professional embeddedness and moral critique: Carbone's admitted inability to call for the abolition of animal research, despite his veterinary oath to relieve animal suffering, is the book's animating contradiction rather than a flaw to be resolved.
- Is this a good book club pick?
- What Animals Want is a strong pick for book clubs or reading groups with an interest in bioethics, science policy, or animal welfare — particularly those that enjoy sitting with unresolved moral tension rather than seeking tidy conclusions. The book's central contradiction, articulated most sharply in Carbone's preface line 'I cannot call for an abolition to animal research, no matter my oath as a veterinarian to relieve animal suffering,' generates productive disagreement. Joel Marks's Philosophy Now review offers a useful external perspective to bring into the discussion, particularly around whether Carbone's acceptance of the prevailing moral consensus is an honest acknowledgment of institutional reality or an insufficient response to the animals' situation.
- What is the philosophy of science angle?
- Carbone's training in the history of science and veterinary ethics, both from Cornell University, shapes the book's approach to what he treats as a fundamentally epistemological problem: how do competing communities of experts — behavioral scientists, philosophers, veterinarians, and advocacy organizations — establish the authority of their claims about animal experience within a regulatory context? The book asks why certain forms of expertise carry more institutional weight in some regulatory arenas than others, treating the Animal Welfare Act debates as a case study in how scientific knowledge and policy interact rather than as a straightforward story of scientific facts informing good law.
Summarize this book
Is it worth reading?
Who should read this?
What are the main themes?
Is this a good book club pick?
What is the philosophy of science angle?
Summarize this book
What Animals Want is a nonfiction policy analysis centered on the U.S. Animal Welfare Act and the debates that unfolded once Congress moved to regulate how scientists use animals in experiments. Carbone's central argument is that competing claims about what animals think, feel, and want — not merely competing scientific findings — underlie the competing proposals for welfare standards, making the policy fight simultaneously an epistemological one: whose expertise counts, and how do we know what matters to animals as perceived by the animals themselves? Writing as a research laboratory animal veterinarian who holds degrees from Cornell University in evolutionary biology, veterinary medicine, and the history of science and veterinary ethics, Carbone inhabits an uncomfortable middle position — committed to welfare protections while professionally embedded in the system he critiques.
Follow up
What is Carbone's central argument?
What role does the Animal Welfare Act play in the book?
Where does Carbone personally stand?
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Age & Reading Level
Recommended age
Adult
Reading level
Adult
Content to know about
descriptions of laboratory animal experimentation
Skip if you want a clear-cut argument either defending or condemning animal research — Carbone's deliberate ambivalence and policy-analysis framing will frustrate readers seeking advocacy.
Our Review
A serious, dual-footed examination of science, ethics, and U.S. Laboratory animal welfare policy, this book resists easy categorization as either advocacy tract or dry regulatory history.
What the Book Actually Is and Argues
What Animals Want: Expertise and Advocacy in Laboratory Animal Welfare Policy by Larry Carbone front cover
What Animals Want is a work of nonfiction policy analysis centered on the United States Animal Welfare Act and the debates that erupted once Congress decided to update that law and regulate how scientists use animals in experiments. Carbone's central argument is that competing claims about what animals think, feel, and want — not simply competing scientific findings — underlie the competing proposals for animal welfare standards. In other words, the policy fight is also an epistemological one: whose expertise counts, and how do we know what matters to animals as perceived by the animals themselves? Carbone, writing as a research laboratory animal veterinarian, is direct about the animals' perspective: they don't want to be there. At the same time, as he states in the book's preface — "I cannot call for an abolition to animal research, no matter my oath as a veterinarian to relieve animal suffering" — he locates himself in the uncomfortable middle: someone committed to welfare protections while professionally embedded in the system he critiques.
Carbone's Credentials and the Book's Unique Vantage Point
Few writers are positioned to tackle this subject from as many angles simultaneously. Carbone holds degrees from Cornell University in evolutionary biology, veterinary medicine, and the history of science and veterinary ethics, and is a diplomate of both the American College of Animal Welfare and the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine. He served as Director of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Program at the University of California San Francisco. That combination of hard science, clinical experience, and humanistic training gives the book what Carbone's own website describes as "one foot in the humanities and one in veterinary science" — a stance that allows him to examine the policy and ethical ramifications of emerging animal welfare science rather than simply adjudicating between activist and industry positions. The result is a work that can hold the moral tension of the subject without collapsing it.
Strengths: Intellectual Honesty and the Depth of the Central Tension
What distinguishes this book, according to Joel Marks, writing in Philosophy Now (issue 85, July/August 2011), is precisely how Carbone inhabits this contradiction. Marks observes that the book can be read either as the account of someone doing the best possible for animals under difficult institutional circumstances, or as a confession of complicity in the very system described. That dual reading is not a weakness of the argument — it is the argument. Carbone's stated position is that he defers to, and helps constitute, what he calls "society's moral consensus" that animal research is justifiable and allowable while animal welfare must simultaneously be protected. This is an intellectually honest framing of a genuinely unresolved societal tension, and the book's willingness to sit with that discomfort rather than resolve it artificially is one of its real strengths.
The Policy Narrative: The Animal Welfare Act as Through-Line
The Animal Welfare Act serves as the book's structural spine. Carbone traces what happened once Congress moved to regulate laboratory animal use — a moment that drew scientists, animal advocates, ethicists, and regulators into a contest over whose account of animal experience should shape the law. This is not a story with clean heroes and villains. Competing expertise claims — from behavioral scientists, philosophers, veterinarians, and advocacy organizations — are shown to carry different institutional weight in different regulatory arenas, and the book examines why. For readers interested in the mechanics of how science and advocacy interact inside the U.S. Legislative and regulatory process, this through-line offers a concrete and well-sourced case study.
Who This Book Is For — and Where It Demands the Most
What Animals Want is written for readers willing to engage with policy analysis, veterinary ethics, and philosophy of science simultaneously. It is not a polemic, and readers seeking a straightforward argument for or against animal research will find Carbone's deliberate ambivalence demanding. Some readers, as Marks's Philosophy Now review reflects, may find that the book's acceptance of the current moral consensus as a working framework reads as insufficient given the stakes for the animals involved. That critique is a legitimate one, and it reflects the book's honest positioning rather than any evasion on Carbone's part. Scholars, veterinarians, policy professionals, and engaged general readers with an interest in animal ethics and U.S. Regulatory history are the audiences most likely to find the book's rigor rewarding rather than frustrating.
Sources & Further Reading
The key facts and claims in this review are grounded in the retrieved, verified sources listed below.
- Cited in this review
- 1
animal.law.harvard.edu
- 2
- 3
americanscientist.org
- Further reading
- 4
larrycarbone.com
- 5
philosophynow.org
- 6
onlineethics.org
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