An Ethical Problem Part 30

The North-Western University Medical School of Chicago sent a courteous reply, stating that it would be hardly possible to make any report "as to the number of animals used in experimental work in our laboratories." Research work was carried on "in at least four laboratories of the Medical School, and in the work dogs, rabbits, and guinea-pigs particularly are used.... As the work of research varies materially from time to time in the several laboratories, we have no way of making even an approximate estimate which would be of value" of the number of animals used. Probably this is the case with most other large laboratories in this country.

The Eclectic Medical University reported the use of but six small animals in its research work. The director says:

"Our laboratories lead the world in cancer research, yet we have never used an animal for this purpose. We are the second laboratory in the world in research of pellagra, and have used only four animals.... We have achieved the above results because we believe in clinical and not in experimental research."

From some thirteen inst.i.tutions, chiefly belonging to the South or West, vague or imperfect reports were received. Some of them disclaimed the use of living animals in teacher, or the use of animals higher in the scale than turtles or frogs.

Two inst.i.tutions refused to give any information whatever. An official connected with Rush Medical College of Chicago wrote:

"The statement that your society is not opposed to vivisection may deceive the uninitiated. Either vivisection is a good thing and hence should not be interfered with, or it is a nefarious business and should be stopped.... You and your society are either honestly misinformed, suffer from delusions, or are lying bigots. In my opinion, mainly the latter. You are my enemy, and the enemy of every man of intelligence interested in the well fare (sic) of mankind and animals. I will give no information to wilfull (sic) falsifiers, the insane, or those too lazy or stupid to inform themselves of facts."

Some further study of a primary spelling-book might be recommended to this representative of an inst.i.tution of learning.

The inst.i.tutions making no reply of any kind numbered eighty-eight, or about 83 per cent. of those addressed.

The inquiry resulted in confirming previous impressions. It was not believed that information concerning the number of animals used would be generally given. The experiment of courteous inquiry, however, was deemed worthy of a trial. The result would seem to demonstrate that even the simplest facts concerning the practice of animal experimentation in the United States cannot be obtained except through inquiry inst.i.tuted by the authority of the State.

AN ETHICAL PROBLEM OR SIDELIGHTS UPON SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTATION UPON MAN AND ANIMALS --------------- PRESS NOTICES

"Dr. Leffingwell has probably done more than any other one man for the education of the public to a right att.i.tude on the vivisection question."--Dallas News.

"The author has studied this question for forty years. He shows by the material gathered in this volume and the interesting conclusions reached, the careful consideration of long years of study."--Detroit News Tribune.

"The author's moderation in discussing this burning question will appeal to a much wider circle of scientific readers than a policy that demands complete annihilation of all animal experimentation."--The Open Door, New York.

"The volume deals with vivisection, and the author holds that it is to preventive medicine that the world must learn to look, not to the conquest of disease by new drugs or new serums.... He enters deeply into the question, and shows the result of long and careful research work."--Norwich Bulletin

"In an elaborate discussion of the vexed question of vivisection, Dr. Leffingwell tries to take a mediating position. He is strong in showing that there has been a vast amount of needless and useless suffering to animals caused by vivisection.... Some of his quotations are amazing in showing the indifference and even cold-blooded cruelty of some surgeons."--New York Watchman.

"One of the most thorough books on vivisection yet published is by Dr. Albert Leffingwell, ent.i.tled 'An Ethical Problem.' It is not the book of an extremist or a crank. Dr. Leffingwell admits the necessity of vivisection in certain circ.u.mstances and for certain purposes. His endeavour is not so much to get rid of vivisection as to prove that the problem connected with it is an ethical one; that the practice should be regulated and guided by public authority. His book is thorough, ingenious, and, for the most part, very temperate in expression."--The New York Evening Mail.

"Readers of Dr. Leffingwell's earlier books will expect to find this one written in the same quiet tone, with the same care and accuracy, and they will not be disappointed. The book begins with a history of vivisection in which the reader's chief suprise will be in finding that medical opinion a generation ago was much more humane than now.

The humane protests of the last generation seem incredible to-day, when the profession almost to a man stands for the secvret and unlimited exploitation of animals."--S. N. Cleghorn, in Journal of Zoophily.

"This book is devoted to a study and discussion of medical experimentation upon both man and animals. The writer is forced in his literary style, and has long commanded special attention on this particular subject. In a skilful and scholarly manner he treats of the historical development of the agitation in favour of restricted and regulated experimentation. The book should be read by every person interested in the discussion, whether in favour of restriction or not.... All who desire to be placed in touch with the latest word in regard to this important humanitarian question should secure a copy of Dr. Leffingwell's scholarly book."--National Humane Review.

"Dr. Leffingwell a.n.a.lyzes the results of vivisection in America in a masterly way. Many methods of experimentation he finds not only extremely cruel, but valueless. For instance, the raising of the blood-pressure of a dog by scorching its paws, one after the other, so that the blood-pressure might be maintained for twenty minutes. 'Of what possible value was such an experiment?' he asks. 'Does anyone believe than in a human being, blood-pressure will ever be maintained by slowly scorching the hands and feet of the patient?' ... The matter is clearly presented, and is interesting to the layman as well as to the student of physiology."--Hartford Post.

"The ethical problem of which Dr. Leffingwell writes in his interesting and instructive book, is that which arises from the prevailing practice of experimentation for scientific purposes upon animals and human beings.... The book discusses what vivisection is, and what have been the mistakes and abuses done in its name, as well as the present unhappy conditions which surround the practice. The author demonstrates that much of all this vivisection work is not only unnecessary, but absolutely valueless to science. The book is to be commended to all who would know something of what vivisection is, what it does, and what is being done and should still be done to prevent its present useless cruelty."--The Christian Register.

"Perhaps no other man in America has so good a right to speak on vivisection, from the standpoint of an expert, as Dr. Leffingwell. To our mind, he has here gathered in a forceful way the last sane word to be said on this sensitive question. In these nineteen chapters he has discussed almost every phase of the problem. Dr. Leffingwell has occupied a difficult position, standing as he does midway between the contending parties.... He discovers the law of cruelty, and applies it mercilessly. He also discovers the law of sacrifice, and would apply it humanely. In short, this book may well be taken as an encyclopaedia on vivisection, looked at from the standpoint of the moralist and the physician. There are illminating appendices giving technical information, and the chapters are characterized by vigorous England, and a lively sense of a physician's obligations."

--Chicago Unity

"If nothing else in the book were to be remembered, it would be valuable that all earnest people should consider the careful a.n.a.lysis of the various positions which have been taken in regard to this position, and the critical definition with which Dr. Leffingwell has striven to replace the varied and unsatisfactory definitions which have been given for the term 'vivisection.' ... The stand taken by Dr. Leffingwell represents the best-founded position of those interested in protecting animals from needless pain. He contends that vivisection should be restricted rather than abolished. There should be no effort made to prevent those experiments which involve no suffering for animals, and all animal experimentation should be brought under the direct supervision and control of the State. 'The practice, whether in public or private, should be restricted by law to certain definite objects, and surrounded by every possible safeguard against license and abuse.' That this is not an aim impossible of attainment has been attested by so famous a scientist as Herbert Spencer, and by a large number of prominent American and English physicians and scientists."--Boston Transcript.

"It is greatly to be regretted that the general public is not more intelligent on the subject of vivisection. It is charged that to-day, in American physiological laboratories and in medical schools as well, helpless animals are subjected to torture.... The testimony to this seems irrefutable; and one is more disposed to give it credence when he knows of the atrocities that have been perpetrated in other countries, and learns that the practice of vivisection is unregulated here....

"It is fortunate that there is available such a book as that just issued by Dr. Albert Leffingwell, a veteran advocate of legal regulation, not prohibition, of vivisection. Persons who would be conversant with a question that ought to receive much more general consideration than it does should read 'An Ethical Problem.'

"One of the most shocking facts with respect to unlimited vivisection--and that is the kind we have in this country--is that man's two most intelligent dumb friends, the dog and the horse, have been subjected to countless hours of inexpressible agony, and often not for the sake of investigation, but simply that students might become proficient in operating on living flesh, or witness the cruel demonstration of physiological facts already well establish.... The material presented in the book quoted makes the reader feel that in some respects scientific men have retrograded till they stand about on a level with the Iroquois Indian of two centuries ago."

--Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

"The volume is exceedingly precise and well written, fortifying itself with abundant particulars. It touches the hideous cruelties and devilish atrocities which are done upon various animals, and behind well-closed doors. One reads it with intense pain and a disgust which combines nausea with indignation toward the ruthless experimenters who, disclaiming the hindering use of anaesthetics, exhibit all the phenomena of nervous torment. Monsters of research would sneer aside all critics of such infernal 'physiological' laboratories....

"The book is a protest against the careful and subterranean silence and concealment which seem to conspire to resist all legal inspection. To evade or baulk investigation while causing pain in order to exploit it, to jeer at the humane shudder of the layman, to utilize feeble-minded paupers and friendless young children, to sophisticate a too credulous public with an austere formula as to the sacred secrecy of the laboratory--all this is an attempted HYPNOSIS of critics who really want to be fair, but who as citizens insists upon the right to know what is doing.

"The t.i.tle of the book--'An Ethical Problem'--is indeed justified by its array of evidence and argument. Particularly is it shown that on this question America is still in the dark ages. Reform demands a frank exact.i.tude as to the practices which, if Dr. Leffingwell is substantially accurate, are a disgrace to humanity. State control cannot always be avoided by ridiculing the 'sentimentality' of those who insist upon strict regulation. Painless vivisection for investigation may have its legitimate place; but to ill.u.s.trate what is already well ascertained by exhibiting animals in agony is both superfluous and debasing, repellant to every mind not seared by a morbid curiousity."--Hamilton College Record

"'An Ethical Problem,' by Albert Leffingwell, M.D., is by far the most judicial and unimpa.s.sioned contribution to the study of the question that it has been our privilege to read. Dr. Leffingwell has long been known both in this country and Europe, as a writer upon this theme.

No one, so far as we know, has brought to it at once so calm and balanced a judgment as he, or a more exact knowledge of the whole field in which biological investigation plays so large a part. This latest publication from his pen is the result of years of study, of unremitting toil in the great libraries of this country and abroad where every facility was at hand to obtain data and to verify facts.

It is a book written without bitterness ... which seeks to carry conviction, not by the force of unverified quotations, or the repet.i.tions of utterances often made in the heat of controversy, but by arguments based upon demonstrable fact, and supported by authorities to which you are referred, chapter and verse....

"The time must come when physiologists as a body--as Professor James declares they should have done long ere this--will meet public opinion half-way, 'and admitting that the situation is a genuinely ethical one ... give up the preposterous claim that every scientist has an unlimited right to vivisect, for the amount or mode of which no man, not even a colleague, can call him to account.' When that time comes, and we believe it is not far distant, some legal regulation of animal experimentation will be had. For this end, the book we have reviewed has been written; and when at last such regulation is attained, none will have a larger share in the grat.i.tude of all who will rejoice in it, than the author whose notable book we have been considering."

--Dr. F. H. Rowley, in Our Dumb Animals.

--------------------- "Dr. Leffingwell's 'Ethical Problem' is vivisection, TO WHICH HE IS IMPLACABLY OPPOSED, and which he describes as antivivisectionists generally do."--The Syracuse Post-Standard.

"Probably the best-considered treatise on the subject now in print.

The author does not take the position that experimentation upon animals is always wrong. He maintains, however, in the most convincing way, that such experiments should be permitted only by genuine scientists.... Anyone interested in this vital question will find much that is stimulating, suggestive, and convincing in Dr. Leffingwell's book."--Universalist Leader.