ANIMALS AND VIVISECTION.

Press, Volume XLIV, Issue 19389, 15 August 1928, Page 10

ANIMALS AND VIVISECTION.

TO TB3B EDITOB OP THE PBBSB. Sir,—An ever-growing body of otherwise sane and intelligent people appear determined to hinder and obstruct the great researches which scientists are ceaselessly carrying on for the welfare and advancement of mankind. I refer to the anti-vivisectionists, of which body your correspondent "Interested seems to be an ardent member. It is a subject which would, in the nature of things, be particularly abhorrent and repugnant to the emotional woman and the imaginative man. Permitting a loose rein to their highly imaginative and emotional faculties, they conjure up all kinds of terrifying and bestial outrages committed on dumb animals in the laboratories of the scientists. True, one does not expect to find so brilliant a figure in the literary world as G. B. Shaw supporting such puerile propaganda, but then this gentleman is no mean dramatist and the topic would naturally appeal to his theatrical instinct. I am inclined to think that women predominate in this concerted movement for forbidding scientists from experimenting on live animals, but it is not confined to women; this false and absurd sentimentality toward the animal world has stimulated a desire to ascribe to animals the attributes of a human being. And, "progressing" along these channels of thought, the time will surely come-when "enlightened'- sects will ascribe to vegetable life the attributes of the animal kingdom! , Are we, then, to abide by the hallucinations of the anti-vivisectionist, and forbid the acquisition of knowledge per medium of experimentation on live animals? I sincerely hope not. There is a striking and close relationship between man and animal, and if the ills of man are likewise the ills of animal it is our right to use the animal for our welfare and development. And from reliable sources we learn that the pain (if necessary) inflicted on animals is reduced to a minimum and no more than what animals are heir to in the struggle for existence in the animal world. I would ask your correspondent, "Interested," to what do we owe our vast knowledge in the realm oi medical science if not to experimentation on living animals? Modern knowledge, at any rate, is attained, to a vast extent, by these methods. Examinations of lifeless bodies must in-r evitably be incomplete and inconclusive, vetoeing as it. does the recording of particular reaction to particular stimuli. If the ills which assail the physical body are: to. be reduced to a minimum, and.to be prevented in generations yet unbonij the scientist must be allowed to experiment on those animals whose, ailments are akin to those of man.—Yours, etc., , G.R.B. August 13th.