An Ethical Problem Part 28

STATE OF NEW YORK.

CITY OF NEW YORK. SS.

On this 31st day of March, 1920, before me, the subscriber, personally came A. B., known to me, and he, being duly sworn, declared that the foregoing report was signed by him, and that it is a true, full and complete statement of all mammalian animals used by him or under his personal supervision for experimental purposes in the ...........

Laboratory during the quarter ending March 31, 1920.

NOTARY PUBLIC.

Suggested form of report, to be made quarterly by the responsible head of each Inst.i.tution wherein animal experimentation is authorized.

A REPORT OF THE DISPOSITION OF ANIMALS (MAMMALS) USED FOR EXPERIMENTAL PURPOSES IN ALL LABORATORIES OF CARNEGIE INSt.i.tUTE DURING QUARTER ENDING MARCH 31, 1920.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | Mon-| Other | | | Animals. | Dogs.| Cats.|keys.|Animals.| Total.| |---------------------------------|------|------|-----|--------|-------| | I. Number used for original | | | | | | | research only, by: | | | | | | | Dr. X. .. .. .. | | | | | | | Dr. Y. .. .. .. | | | | | | | II. Number used for demonstra- | | | | | | | tions before students, by: | | | | | | | Dr. A. .. .. .. | | | | | | | Dr. B. .. .. .. | | | | | | |III. Number used by students for | | | | | | | observation of physiolog- | | | | | | | ical phenomena, etc. .. | | | | | | | |------|------|-----|--------|-------| | Total .. .. .. | | | | | | | |------|------|-----|--------|-------| | Number of above animals to | | | | | | | which curare was given, in | | | | | | | course of experimentation .. | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Signed) .....................

DIRECTOR OF LABORATORY.

STATE OF NEW YORK.

CITY OF NEW YORK. SS.

On this 1st day of April, 1920, before me, the subscriber, personally came C. D., known to me, who, being duly sworn, declared that the foregoing report signed by him, is a full, true and complete statement of the disposition of all animals experimented upon in the laboratories of the Carnegie Inst.i.tute, during the quarter-year ending March 31, 1920, to the best of his knowledge and belief.

NOTARY PUBLIC.

APPENDIX III

It is exceedingly probably that no young physician or medical student could testify to cruelties witnessed in any physiological laboratory, if they involved his instructors or fellow-students, without injuring and perhaps ruining altogether his professional career. Only in later years, when success and independence have been attained, can he venture to speak freely of what he has seen. Some men have thus spoken. The testimony of two is here given:

Rev. Frederic Rowland Marvin, M.D., Albany, N.Y.:

"Though now a Minister of the Gospel, I was educated to the profession of medicine, and was graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons (Medical Department of Columbia College) New York, in 1870.

In the cla.s.s-room I SAW VIVISECTIONS SO UNQUALIFIEDLY CRUEL THAT EVEN NOW THEY REMAIN IN MY MEMORY AS A NIGHTMARE."

(From letter to The American Humane a.s.sociation.)

"All medical students in America know that similar outrages are perpetrated in our medical colleges every winter. I have witnessed vivisections SO CRUEL AND UNNECESSARY THAT I AM ASHAMED TO REMEMBER THAT THEY WERE UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF MY ALMA MATER."

(From sermon preached at Portland, Oregon.)

Dr. Henry M. Field, Professor Emerituss of Therapeutics, Dartmouth Medical School, Dartmouth College, writes:

"I well remember my experience as a student of medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York.... I well remember the poor dogs, brought out from their dungeon, perhaps famished and tortured with thirst, should the experiment require such condition; their appealing eyes and trembling limbs, I shall never forget.... Indeed, SOME FORM OF TORTURE AND ATROCITY WAS EXPECTED AT EVERY LECTURE, AND SURE TO BE APPLAUDED.... The student who found entertainment in the unnecessary torture of animals, learned something besides physiology; his humane nature was perverted...."

(From letter to the Vivisection Reform Society, dated April 28, 1905.)

APPENDIX IV

A LETTER OF DR. JOHN BASCOM, LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.

To the Editor of the "Springfield Republican."

SIR,--In the complexity of our many social problems, it does not quite do to extemporize an opinion. In a recent issue the Republican came very near falling into this fault. Taking as its text a striking example of locating a clot of blood in the brain, and referring the knowledge by which this was done to vivisection, it spoke lightly of the limitation which many have sought to put upon this practise. It is noot the a.s.sertion of the opponents of vivisection, that itis always useless, but that it has been carried much beyond the demands of any desirable and humane purpose. Even the example given is not so striking if we remember that it has long been known that each half of the body is governed not by the adjacent, but by the opposite, lobe of the brain.

Considering the uncertainty, and the costly nature, of the knowledge gained by vivisection, and the great abuse the practice has suffered, its opponents demand that animals should not be subjected to this suffering except in view of some definite and important question to be answered; that the pain involved in such an investigation should be reduced to its lowest possible terms; that experiments once satisfactorily made should not be indefinitely repeated; and that vivisection should not be left in the hands of every tyro acquiring the rudiments of knowledge. These claims are almost as much a demand of accuracy in knowledge as of humanity in temper. The pain involved in vivisection often creates such an abnormal state as to weaken or invalidate the conclusions drawn in connection with it. The careless student may easily confirm, as he thinks by observation, opinions not well grounded.

Vivisection has been objected to not theoretically or sentimentally simply, but on account of the monstrous abuses that have been a.s.sociated with it. In Europe men of distinguis.h.i.+ng ability have seemed to revel in this form of inquiry and to have prosecuted it without the slightest reference to the cruel and revolting features a.s.sociated with it. They have made of it a school of Nero in which brutality became a pa.s.sion of the mind.

One of the most deadly sins of men has been cruelty, cruelty to animals, to children, to women, to men. The basest of these forms is in some respects cruelty to animals, since animals are so thoroughly committed into our hands. It is not easy to devise a more hardening process than careless vivisection; and the claim that it is done in the name of knowledge is, unless it is profoundly and deeply true, an aggravation of the offence. Inhumanity is the worst possible temper for the medical profession to entertain, and the worst possible suspicion to attach to them. If the physicians cannot approach all suffering with an intense desire to relieve it, he is not true to his calling. It is with more or less fear that the defenceless human subject is committed to them lest they should make of him an experiment.

JOHN BASCOM.

Williamstown, December 15, 1902.

APPENDIX V

Among American physicians, probably the most distinguished medical writer of to-day is Dr. George M. Gould, author of several medical works, and formerly editor of various medical journals. His opposition to antivivisection ideals has always been p.r.o.nounced; but it has not prevented recognition of the abuses of the unlimited practice of animal experimentation. Some extracts from an address delivered by Dr. Gould before the American Academy of Medicine are here presented. The reader should understand that they are extracts only, and that they represent but one aspect of the speaker's views.

Perhaps they are the more valuable in that they are the utterances of the most p.r.o.nounced American critic of antivivisection of the present time.

THE LIMITATIONS AND ERRORS OF THE VIVISECTIONISTS

The first that strikes one is an exaggeration of the importance and extent of the vivisection method. As valuable an aid as it is, it is not the only, and perhaps it is not the chief, method of ascertaining medical truth. It has without doubt often been used when other methods would have been productive of more certain results. This has arisen from what a large and broad culture of the human mind perceives to flow from a recent and rather silly hypertrophy of the scientific method, and a limitation of that method to altogether too material or physical aspects of the problem....

Almost every point over which the controversy has raged most fiercely has been in relation to one or all of the three or four questions:

1. What is a vivisection experiment?

2. By whom should it be performed?

3. For what purpose should it be performed?

4. By what methods should it be carried out?

In reference to all of these questions, scientific men should unite and establish a common set of principles or answers. In my judgment their failure to do so at all, and besides this, their frequent exaggeration of logical limits and just calims, has been one of the unfortunate causes of useless and wasteful wrangling.....

(2) I believe scientific men have made a grave mistake in opposing the limitations of vivisection (not mortisection) experimentation to those fitted by education and position to properly choose and properly execute such experimentations. No harm can come, and I believe much good would come, from our perfect readiness to accede to, nay, to advocate, the antivivisectionist desire to limit all experimentations to chartered inst.i.tutions or to such private investigators as might be selected by a properly chosen authority.... At present the greatest harm is done true science by men who conduct experiments without preliminary knowledge to choose, without judgement to carry out, withoutout true scientific training or method, and only in the interest of vanity. It takes a deal of true science and patience to neutralize with good and to wash out of the memory the sickening, goading sense of shame that follows the knowledge that in the name of science a man could, from a height of 25 feet, drops 125 dogs upon the nates (the spine forming a perpendicular line to this point) and for from forty-one to one hundred days observe the results until slow death ended the animals' misery. While we have such things to answer for, our withers are surely not unwrung, and in the interests of science, if not from other motives, we have a right to decide who shall be privileged to do them.

I have adduced this single American experiment, but purposely refrain from even mentioning the horrors of European laboratories. This is not because I would avoid putting blame where it belongs, but because such things are peculiarly p.r.o.ne to arouse violent language and pa.s.sion, clouding the intellect and making almost impossible a desirable judicial att.i.tude of mind. The Teutonic race is to be congratulated that it is guilty of at least but few examples of the atrocities that have stained the history of Latin vivisection, and before which, as before the records of Roman conquest and slavery, or of the "Holy Inquisition," one shudders at the possibilities of mental action in beings that bore the human form and feature....

To jeer at and deride "sentimentality" while pretending to be working for the good of humanity is hypocritic and flagrant self- contradiction. This att.i.tude of mind on the part of a few men does more to arouse the indignation of opponents than any cruelty itself.

Scientific men should root out of their ranks such poor representatives. They are enemies in the scientific household.

Dr. Klein, a physiologist, before the Royal Commission, testified that he had no regard at all for the sufferings of the animals he used, and never used anaesthetics, except for didactic purposes, unless necessary for his own convenience, and that he had no time for thinking what the animal would feel or suffer. It may be denied, but I am certain a few American experimenters feel the same way, and act in accordance with their feelings. But they are not by any means the majority, and they must not only be silenced, but their useless and unscientific work should be stopped. They are a disgrace both to science humanity....

And this brings me to what I can but conceive as a grave and profound mistake on the part of the experimentalists--their secrecy. A truly scientific man is necessarily a humane man, and there will be nothing to conceal from the public gaze of anything that goes on in his laboratory.

It is a mistake to think our work cannot bear the criticism of such enlightened public sentiment as exists here and now; if there is necessary secrecy, there is wrong. People generally are not such poor judges as all that.... I would go even further. Every laboratory should publish an annual statement setting forth plainly the number and kind of experiments, the objects aimed at, and most definitely the methods of conducting them. At present the public somewhat ludicrously but sincerely enough grossly exaggerates the amount and the character of this work, and by our foolish secrecy we feed the flame of their pa.s.sionate error. As organized, systematic, and absolute frankness, besides self-benefit, would at once, as it were, take the wind out of our opponents' saiils. Do not let us have "reform forced upon us from without" in this contention, but by going more than half-way to meet them, by the sincerest publicity, show that as wel as scientists and lovers of men we are also lovers of animals.

Faith, hope, and love--these three. To faith in knowledge, to hope of lessening human evil, we add love--love of men, and of the beautiful living mechanisms of animal bodies placed in our care.

As it appears to me, this most unfortunate controversy, filled with bitterness, misrepresentation, and exaggeration, is utterly unnecessary. Both of the sharp-divided, hate-filled parties are at heat, if they but knew it, agreed upon essentials and furiously warring over non-essentials and errors. I frankly confess that one side is about as much at fault as the other, and that the whole wretched business is a sad commentary upon the poverty of common charity and good sense....