A COMMENT.
THE annual Parliamentary Return of Experiments on Living Animals has again been issued, and is not, unfortunately, any more reassuring than usual. We are told, for instance, as matter for congratulation, that—
I. “The licenses and certificates have been granted only upon the recommendation of persons of high scientific standing.”
Quite so, but it was just the persons of high scientific standing whose cruel actions the Act was intended to restrain.
II. That “the licensees are persons who, by their training and education, are fitted to undertake experimental work and to profit by it.”
Quite so, again. It is well known that they do profit by it themselves in many ways, but the doubtful point has always been whether the public or the animals ever profit by it.
III. That “all experimental work has been conducted in suitable places.”
Certainly, but suitable for what purposes? The horrors of the Inquisition were also carried on in very suitable places, and no one ever doubted that the laboratories were “well equipped,” as the Inspector has before told us, and excellently adapted for their purpose, viz. the wholesale martyrdom of animals.
These assertions, intended apparently to be reassuring, merely state the case anew, and serve only to show how hopeless it is to expect the scientific mind to grasp even the fact that there are two sides to the question.
It is not surprising, after this opening, to find that all the old comfortable generalities are repeated, and that none of the information that we really have a right to demand is given. We learn, for instance, that all the licensees have, “as usual,” been loyal to the spirit of the Act—except, indeed, two naughty ones. One of these was so utterly depraved as to give an anæsthetic to an animal when his certificate allowed him to make the experiment without; and the other one, in trying to give ringworm to four mice (“scientific research” is reduced to this nowadays), actually made “a few bloodless scratches” without using an anæsthetic. We trust Dr. Poore, the inspector, gave them both a good scolding for giving way to such wicked propensities, and we are quite satisfied they will never do it again. After this scientific straining at gnats, we are not surprised to find that the proverbial sequel is amply fulfilled.
Thus the number of vivisectors has again increased from the 213 of the previous year to 236, and the grand total of experiments made during twelve months has now reached the large number of 7,500, being an increase of 2,821 on the preceding year. We are also plainly told that “the large increase which has been noticeable for the last few years, is likely to continue.”
The excuse for this increase is that so many animals have this year been inoculated with rabie virus and various matters to see whether they would contract rabies or other diseases. Of course some did contract the diseases, but here again we are kept in the dark; no mention is made of the numbers, and all the experiments are put down as “painless.”
We remember the well-known vivisector who drew up the Report of our Hydrophobia Commission in 1887 made a good many cruel experiments in a similar way. In his Report he said, that, while the virus was being squirted into their brains the animals were rendered insensible with chloroform or ether, and he adds the naïve little footnote that “all the experiments performed in this inquiry were thus made painless.” When challenged with this at a public debate, he tried to evade the issue by saying that the animals contracted paralytic rabies, which was not painful, and when gently reminded that by his own showing an equal number contracted “the ordinary furious form of rabies,” he did the only thing possible to him (short of apologizing), and said that he did not consider that that was painful either. This little incident is very instructive as showing how little reliance can be placed on the assertions in these official Reports that this or that operation is painless.
Of the after effects of the 5,984 inoculations here recorded, and characterized as “the prick of a needle,” we hear nothing. Did none of them have any effect at all, or did the poor victims die after days or weeks of pain and misery from rabies, meningitis, ” crater- like ulcers ” in their eyes, and the other sports of the physiologists?
Inoculations, we are told, are largely used for the diagnosis of disease, and “to decide whether valuable herds of animals shall be sacrificed or preserved.” Judging by the recent results of the physiologist’s “decision” to preserve the valuable herds in South Africa, the farmers must be beginning to think that the less they have to do with them and their inoculations the better.
Anæsthetics, of course, are mentioned, and we are told that all the operations, after which the animals are allowed to live, ” are done with as much care as are similar operations upon the human subject, and the wounds being dressed antiseptically, no pain results during the healing process. ” Such an assertion , is doubly misleading. What human beings, for instance, have their kidneys dissected out and lifted from the body, while their nerves are plied with electricity, or when do they have great pieces sliced and burnt out of their brains, or their hearts exposed and needles thrust into them?
Or what human being ever undergoes any severe operation under morphia and curare? The latter drug, while it paralyses motion so completely that the breathing has to be kept up artificially through a cut made in the windpipe, does not deaden but, on the contrary, increases the sensitiveness to pain. For this reason it is not allowed under the Act to be used as an anæsthetic, but the vivisectors are permitted to use it in conjunction with an anæsthetic. The result of this is, that while the poor creature is lying as rigid as a corpse under the influence of the curare, there is no possible way of telling-what is always rather a critical matter-whether or not the anaesthetic is having the desired effect. Are human beings ever treated like this? and if not, why does the Inspector imply that the animals are no worse off than they are?
Of the beneficent results generally supposed to come from vivisection, the Report is always very reticent. We certainly find a long list of diseases, including consumption, diphtheria, plague-cholera, anthrax, cattle plague, pleuro-pneumonia, and smallpox, of which we are told vaguely that “the knowledge has been increased by inoculation experiments,” but as they all keep on their deadly course with unabated virulence, apparently a little stimulated if anything by the physiologists’ unclean and unwholesome methods, we cannot feel very grateful for the “increased knowledge” said to have been acquired.
It is noticeable that rabies is not mentioned in the list of diseases studied. Can it be that the researchers have at length come to the conclusion that they have learnt about it all they ever will by their methods, namely, nothing; and, after the torment of “innumerable” animals, have given it up in despair. It is interesting, too, to see that smallpox has been studied. This must mean one of two things, either that Jenner’s vaccinations are not now held to be the satisfactory protection frequently asserted, or else that the vivisectors carry on their experiments in these diseases merely for the sake of experiment, and with no reference to the practical utility to mankind.
The one redeeming feature of the Return is the apologetic tone in which it is written, the obvious effort of all being to make out that they are not so bad as they seem. It shows a great advance on the tone of twenty years ago, when a vivisector (licensed again last year we see) could boast that he had “no regard at all” for the sufferings of his victims; and another could claim that if he bought an animal he had a right to do as he liked with it. They no longer venture to talk like this. When the Prince of Wales, before opening the new wing of a hospital, feels constrained to announce publicly that he has been told that there are no wicked vivisections carried on there, we may take heart. The vivisector, specially licensed to live down to a lower standard of humanity than his countrymen, is no longer a leader of public opinion. He now comes before us as an apologist. He has practically admitted our contention that it is not justifiable to inflict severe pain on animals for his own ends, and the only means by which he dares to carry on his cruel practices is by misrepresenting their real nature. The same spirit of increasing humanity which has been working for the last twenty years. will, we can be sure, continue to develop, and the vivisectors and their cruel work will become, more and more, objects of mistrust, dislike, and contempt.
Ernest Bell
The Animals’ Friend, 1896-97, pp. 188-9