A NEEDLESS ALARM.

Evening Star, Issue 19583, 15 June 1927, Page 6

A NEEDLESS ALARM.

Thk word “ vivisection ” will be always like a red rag to a bull to some people, who cannot agree that any possibility of pain should be made for the lower animals for the sake of preventing pain of human beings. But vivisection is a word that is most often misused. It means strictly operation on a living subject for the purpose of advancing the science of medicine. The vast majority of experiments, however, which come under its name are not operations, but inoculations, blood tests, feeding experiments, and so forth. At the Otago Medical School experiments are being made with monkeys with the object of learning more about the cause and cure of infantile paralysis, » disease which has made sad ravages among our children. And some persons, whose complaints were considered at a meeting of the committee of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals yesterday, have been much concerned for the monkeys. In view of the inquiries which have been made into the matter, and which were reported on by the chairman of the society, their minds need not be troubled on their account. It is not true that monkeys are permitted to be “ tortured alive by students ” in the interests of scientific research. Students are not admitted to what is known as the animals’ roof of the Medical School, and if the explanations of Dr Hcrcus jaud Dr Hector were less precise upon

the matter no one, with a reasonable mind upon the question, would suspect them of conducting experiments on dumb animals with a cruelty that could be avoided The value of vivisection, using the term in its most comprehensive sense, for increasing man’s knowledge of diseases has been sufficiently proved. Our knowledge of the origin of tuberculosis, the inoculation which has proved so effective against smallpox, and the investigations by which it is hoped to solve the problem of cancer would not have been possible without these experiments upon animals. The danger of unnecessary cruelty has always to be guarded against, and two Royal Commissions in Great Britain during the last fifty years have gone into the whole subject, and legislation providing safeguards has been loyally accepted by the medical profession. No operation, more than the lancing of a vein under the skin, is allowed to be done on any animal except under an anaesthetic. If any animal, after an operation, bo in severe pain which is likely to endure, it must be killed at once under an anaesthetic. We have no doubt that any operations performed locally, by responsible investigators. on animals are performed in the spirit of these regulations, but operations comprise much .the smallest part of the experiments at the Medical School. We understand that its collection of animals has all the appearance of being an unusually happy family, and we are informed that anyone who feels serious concern about its wellbeing can inspect it at any time. If the experiments were harder on the monkeys there are not many monkeys at the school, and one visitation of infantile paralysis—the last one—caused 166 deaths of human beings, mostly children, in New Zealand, besides maiming more, amongst over 1,200 sufferers, than can be thought on without perturbation. A sense of proportion seems to ho the most needed requirement for judging this matter, as in most other things.