Man Mouse or Machine

Sometimes death is beautiful. The other day I was observing a perfusion, a lab procedure in which a mouse’s diaphragm is snipped open, and the right atrium of its heart is punctured. The mouse’s fur was snow white, and as scarlet blood overflowed the chest cavity and pooled into a frame on the styrofoam stage, I thought that unacceptable opinion: sometimes death is beautiful.

Instinct made my hand itch for the phone in my pocket, but even if I took a picture what would I do with it? Display it proudly, like a landscape of the seaside? Print it in gloss, mount it in a minimalist black square and step back for the public to admire? This was a visceral scene of organized chaos meant for a private viewing. The organs nestled in their appropriate compartments, the mouse’s head and paws spread into a perfect five-point star. I glanced at the researcher holding the forceps and was on the verge of saying something, but fortunately he beat me to it.

“It’s kind of pretty isn’t it? In a weird way.”

I started observing perfusions a few months ago. Five minutes into the first one, I was crouched into a corner trying to keep white flashes from overwhelming my consciousness. It was hard not to draw parallels between the cold numbness spreading through my forehead and the preservative flushing through the mouse’s brain. I appreciated that the demonstrators only looked back at me once, and otherwise said nothing. I was less than enthusiastic when they handed me the scissors and the hemostat for my first try, but they say the best way to resolve your fears is to face them. I just wished this particular one didn’t have a face.

Mice have enjoyed a long history of being chased by pretty much everything. Nature’s consolation prize has been a skill for evading attacks from above, even when the attacker has opposable thumbs and the mouse is confined to a plastic box. At one point the mouse escaped and I chased it along the floor for a humiliating 30 seconds before catching it by its tail, and dropping it into the anesthesia cup. Within a few breaths, the mouse was slumped against the wall.

Now came the actual surgery. I pinned down the limbs and used the scissors to cut through the skin and outer muscle. A few more snips and I could see the heart, a tiny lump of crimson, pulsing as if this were any ordinary day. There was something innocent in the way the chest cavity began to fill with blood after I punctured the atrium, like watching a toddler pour cranberry juice into a favorite cup. I inserted the needle through the heart’s apex and pressed the syringe plunger. The blood blushed pink with paraformaldehyde, the red eyes glazed to white and the limbs stiffened like a scarecrow. I was unsure which should feel more guilty: opening up a living creature or the satisfaction it gave me to do so.

I don’t find it pleasurable to end someone’s life. This isn’t a confession of latent psychopathic tendencies. The worst part of surgery is always putting the subject to sleep. Once they’re unconscious, it’s easier to see the creatures less like entities and more like complicated machines. Cutting through the diaphragm is no longer an act of sacrifice. It’s a technique to damage the machine beyond repair. The heart is just a pump and the blood is just a liquid. Nothing to fear.

Sometimes I worry I’m becoming too involved in my work. The other night, while wrapped in a pile of my friends on the sofa, my mind returned to the lab, and the red carcass bag that held the results of my evening’s handiwork. I was disappointed how easy it had been to desensitize myself; my previous dislike of gore had come from disgust rather than empathy. Is this how people throughout history have managed to commit acts of violence while maintaining the conviction of their own morality? Maybe all it takes is repetition, of a shifted perception, to make even unthinkable actions acceptable. I hugged my friends closer and tried not to think about it.

The next day I learned a new surgery, in which the animals were expected to wake up afterwards. The subjects were baby mice only two days old. We transferred them to a foil staging area padded with paper towels. They hugged each other close; they were so young that their eyes were still shut and their ears still folded. Their world had no light or sound, just the warmth of their siblings. I separated one of them from the pile and placed him in a foil dish resting on ice. The cold was enough to knock him out quickly, but the mouse spent his last moments before falling asleep reaching out with his paws for something that wasn’t there.

Perhaps I’m anthropomorphizing these animals too much. But then, recognizing the beauty in surgery rests on the ability to separate the whole from its parts, the soul from its machinery. Is it shameful to use this shifted perception to keep your hands steady when crushing a rib cage? Is it a contradiction for the same researcher who commented on the weird beauty of death to hover over the living pile of newborns and coo about how adorable they are? Where do we draw the line between trial and patient?

Through respect, rather than empathy, we attempt to minimize a creature’s pain and distress. Through respect, not objectification, we can appreciate the beauty of how life functions. It may not be the best of solutions, but it is a way to retain humanity while also retaining sanity. Still, there are moments when I look at my friends huddled together and can’t help but see them as animals with bones and organs, ready to be examined in the name of discovery. And there are other moments, when I’m pulling flesh over a snout like a hoodie over my head that the little black ball resting by the mandible transforms back into an eye.

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