Invasive animal research: Weighing the harms and benefits

In ancient Greece, social taboos about dissecting human corpses greatly hampered early physicians during their investigations of anatomy and physiology1. Perhaps out of desperation, some turned to animals. A few, such as Alcmaeon of Croton (6th–5th Century BCE), went further still, practicing surgical or other invasive procedures on living animals (vivisection)2,3. These were among the very first animal experiments ever recorded.