“Beautifully written…a comprehensive view of animal research.”—SCIENCE
A lifelong veterinarian invites us into animal labs—and shares his vision for more compassionate research.
For decades, laboratory veterinarian Larry Carbone has advocated for both animal welfare and medical progress. In The Hidden Lives of Lab Animals, he offers an insider's perspective on the ethics of using animals in scientific research. Recounting both heartening medical triumphs and heartrending stories of animal suffering, Carbone grapples with how to weigh scientific advancement against harms to our fellow sentient creatures—and how some of those harms can and should be avoided.
With a scientist's head and an animal lover's heart, Carbone shows how addressing animals' physical and emotional needs not only enhances their well-being but also leads to more robust scientific research. Authoritative and compassionate, The Hidden Lives of Lab Animals reveals the complex reality of what animals experience under the care of scientists, what humans gain from their involuntary service, and what we owe them moving forward.
Larry Carbone, former Director of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Program at the University of California, San Francisco, is author of What Animals Want.
"Larry Carbone's book is essential reading for people who will serve on animal care and use committees and determine which experiments with animals should be allowed. Get the insider's view from a veterinarian who practiced forty years in university biomedical labs. The answers are not simple. Animal research has led to great medical breakthroughs, but there are other experiments which probably should not be conducted. Carbone outlines steps that labs should take to provide better lives for laboratory animals. He states, 'My conclusion is that animal labs are still necessary if we want continued medical progress. They are more essential than animal activists portray but less so than researchers claim.' This is an insightful, important book that everybody who is interested in how animals are treated should read."—Temple Grandin, Distinguished Professor of Animal Science, Colorado State University, and author of Animals in Translation
"Carbone is widely recognized as a laboratory animal vet and an animal advocate. He's also a gifted writer, and his book is essential reading for individuals on all sides of the animal research debate. Carbone brings to the table a unique combination of extensive experience as a laboratory animal veterinarian and a national reputation as a first-class scholar and an animal advocate who cares deeply about the welfare of other species."—Hal Herzog, author of Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals
"Carbone captures our complex relationship with animals, blending ethology, medicine, and ethics in a sensitive, powerful narrative that will open both hearts and minds."—Brian Hare, Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, and coauthor of The Genius of Dogs and Survival of the Friendliest
"A charming and insightful first-person perspective on the murky world of lab animal research that rightly puts the animals front and center, and provides a nuanced discussion of the many ethical and scientific elements that are relevant. There is not another book that is remotely like this."—Dan Weary, Professor and NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Dairy Cattle Welfare, University of British Columbia
360 pp.6 x 9
9780520403963$26.95|£23.00Hardcover
Feb 2026