A BAN ON VIVISECTION

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20986, 14 October 1933, Page 9

A BAN ON VIVISECTION

TO TJIK KDITOR Ol' TUB PKESB Sir, —In England we have often been told that the New Zealanders can give John Bull tips on .aw and living. I rather wonder if they can. I saw a clipping or a cable this week that set my brain working, but it seemed the proper thing to wait for what the New Zealanders would say themselves. It said that the great Goering, Hitler's lieutenant, has abolished vivisection in Prussia, ana had not even a -aited for the law to be signed before making the offence severely punishable. Furthermore, it was given out that before long Germany, it was hoped, would soon put an end to vivisection throughout its borders. There was uncomfortable reservation about serums and lymphs (uncomfortable to the many whose relatives have died of them), but even so, decent people have much lo (hank Hitler for, after all. It is not news to lovers of animals that Germany, once blood and iron to beasts and humans, has been getting busy about her laboratories. It seemed worth mentioning, but after waiting some days for the New Zealanders to say something in this town, I saw I would have to mention it myself. There are some humanitarians about. There is, I read, a little society here that talks about things like cutting dogs into live pieces to show young students how to do it. I /erd, indeed at the same time, Ihat a Scottish parson had just preached an annual sermon about it down some little back street in St. Albat,.;. But why not give it a show in the Cathedral, or in the biggest Noncon.—but no, no one conforms in New Zealand, nor yet Australia. Well, I would not tell you that they work much at this in St. Paul's, but there are several hearty anti-vivisec-tion, anti-coursing, anti-hunting societies in England, and one or two live papers like the "Zoophilist" that do not let the country go to sleep. It was a Scottish parson, too, that used lo lead the anti's in Parliament. But New Zealand is dea I asleep about it; you do not know what young blood can do to protect science till you see stones and chairs flying at an antivivisection meeting in London. But they go on having them, and that is something. The stones hit hard, but the facts hit harder. About the only thing our anti-vivisection law in Britain docs is to make the faculty disgorge laboratory figures and facts every second year or so. They are awful. Half a million nnimals a year was the last return, I remember; going up like wildfire as the century goes on. They are supposed to be cut up and sewn up and so on under anaesthetics, but permits can be had for the asking to do it without, and the worst thing of all is the way ana?sthetics are steadily going out as the carving increases. And the good of it? Well, in the intervals of dodging stones and sticks, the anti-doctors give their side of it. which is that for one cured bv the carving fraternity two or three of four are buried and nothing s d; and that humanity in Europe and America is being poisoned faster by fermented essences of "material used" than the nature and hydropathic and mental healers can get the stuff out of its blood stream. What are the English doing about it? Nothing: there is too much money behind it, and too much easy kudos for the carvers. But we are going to pay for it, you may depend. And if we have to pay, what about the people who do not worry about animal laws—France, where the Pasteur Institute never uses anesthetics? It is only under dictatorship you can get past the moneybags like Goering. Well. I dc not know what New Zealand thinks about it, but it makes a decent Englishman squirm to bo beaten by a Nazi country—Prussia of all places. We shall get our own com back pretty soon, bv all appearances, and red hot. But that's another story.—Yours, etc.. VALENTINE VOX. October 13, 1033.