November 19, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



709 



3. Anoilier argument is hosed on the so- 

 called "rights of animals." As a question 

 of theoretical ethics I am willing to leave 

 that for the present to the philosophers. I 

 can not argue with the man who insists that 

 his dog and his hog are as good as he is; 

 that he has no right to restrain the one or 

 to eat the other. If he refuse to eat meat, 

 or eggs, drink milk, use leather, wool or 

 other animal products for clothing or 

 shelter ; if he refuse to make counter attacks 

 against the lions or serpents which attack 

 him, he is consistent; I can not argue with 

 him ; I can merely watch him go his way in 

 the procession with the trilobite, the ich- 

 thyosaurus and the dodo. But intensely 

 practical questions arise and must be met. 

 And the life of a relatively few animals is 

 placed against the life and health and com- 

 fort of the human race. The antivivisec- 

 tionist insists that even if you grant that 

 the injury to the guinea-pig or the rabbit or 

 the horse will save the life of a child you 

 have no right to save it in that way. If 

 there is not room in the life-boat for the 

 woman and the dog you have no right to 

 push out the dog to make room for the 

 woman. 



But here I want to take issue squarely 

 with the claim that we have no right to 

 make experiments which cause pain — ^that 

 is a fatal admission which some of the Eng- 

 lish physiologists have made. We have a 

 right to perform painful experiments if the 

 knowledge that we seek can be obtained in 

 no other way. Ordinarily it can be obtained 

 better without pain, or can only be obtained 

 in the absence of pain, but the principle 

 remains. So long as man lives in the same 

 world with other animals, eating to some 

 extent the same food, subject to a large ex- 

 tent to the same diseases, it will be neces- 

 sary for man either to maintain the mastery 

 or to become one of the beasts of the field 

 himself. 



But especially I can not see why experi- 

 ments for the good of humanity and for the 

 benefit of the animals themselves should be 

 prohibited on the ground of cruelty and the 

 absence of right, in the light of the per- 

 mission of many other things. The castra- 

 tion of an animal as performed on the farm 

 by far exceeds in cruelty and callousness of 

 performance anything which I have ever 

 witnessed in a laboratory. A few hundred 

 animals are used in all our laboratories for 

 all purposes. The census report shows that 

 in California in 1909, there were born 163,- 

 728 bull calves. It is fair to assume that 

 150,000 were castrated. There were bom 

 41,927 colts. Of these approximately one 

 half were probably males, and making de- 

 ductions for those kept as stallions, there 

 were here at the lowest estimate 19,000 

 geldings. There were 283,741 pigs born, 

 which means probably 135,000 males to 

 have their testes ripped out. A total each 

 year in California of 304,000 operations. 

 Comparing these in number and violence 

 with the work in biological laboratories and 

 medical schools, the latter becomes wholly 

 insignificant. But the gelding of the boar 

 does not have the emotional appeal in it and 

 we hear little about it. Dehorning of cattle 

 is a painful operation, but it saves vastly 

 more pain which would result from the in- 

 jury which, without it, they would inflict 

 upon one another. 



4. It is urged that certain results of un- 

 doubted value (or from the standpoint of 

 the opponents of research, of possible 

 value) could have been reached by some 

 other way. This is a line of reasoning 

 which has been used with a great flourish 

 of apparent candor and show of plausibil- 

 ity. A biologist having by a long and 

 painstaking series of experiments found the 

 solution of a problem, a pettifogger takes 

 that solution and shows by a play on words, 

 how he could, 'wdthout experiment, have de- 



