SCHWINDAMAN, CONNOR, MCPHERSON, PIERCE, NORMAN, CASS, PARKER & HARMISON 1281 
To make a long story short, his wife, who was 
not a medical student, wanted to know whether 
I was taking good care of the dog her husband 
had operated on that evening, whether that dog 
was getting pain medicine, and whether I would 
make sure the endotracheal tube came out. Now, 
I am a surgeon and there is such a thing as a 
surgical personality, but after the first five 
minutes of the conversation which lasted about 
half an hour, I came to realize that she really 
had a certain point because we don't give some 
of our experimental animals pain medicine fol- 
lowing some of the procedures. But we do give 
the same patients, patients in the Intensive Care 
Unit, on the accident floor, on the wards, medi- 
cations around the clock. I wanted to share that 
one thought with you in terms of what our 
responsibilities should be, can be, and prob- 
ably will be as we come to realize that each 
soul is precious. 
I've got a little dog at home by the name of 
Sabrina. I usually never get home at night 
until 10:00 or 11:00. We're out in Concord 
which is about twenty-five miles outside of 
Boston, when I get there my wife is asleep, 
and the daughters are asleep of course, but 
Sabrina always meets me. I always think of 
her when I'm working on my animals who come 
through the laboratory. We also have a Great 
Dane by the name of Hither that just came 
up from Stone Mountain, Georgia, and they're 
part of the family. 
In terms of our livelihood, research is some- 
thing that drives us in terms of looking for 
innovative thoughts, new insights, and new 
approaches. Obviously we want to do the proper 
thing, and I think that our concern should be 
much more with our animals. I'm reminded 
of one occasion in our laboratory over the past 
seven years in which I felt an animal was not 
treated well, and we removed the personnel in- 
volved with that treatment. But by and large, 
I think we can speak for our laboratory in say- 
ing that our animals are treated with dignity. 
We can come to the wrong conclusion with 
the wrong model. We've been going over elec- 
tron microscopy with Carl Teplitz for a pres- 
entation wherein we might have seen pul- 
monary fibrosis and attributed interstitial 
edema to that fibrosis by electron microscopy. 
It's extremely important to look at the model. 
It is extremely important to be on solid ground. 
Obviously if our mission is to disseminate in- 
formation to the academic community and, in 
the long run, help patients, we must be on a 
firm base with our animal models. 
In terms of the worth of all this, cardiovas- 
cular surgery, my particular specialty, has bur- 
geoned over the past ten years. Perhaps all of 
you in this room may well die of myocardial in- 
farction. But 20,000 patients last year had aorto- 
coronary grafts, a procedure which didn't exist 
three years ago and was worked out in the 
laboratory. In terms of mitral valve replace- 
ment, there are now 50,000 patients in this 
country who have mitral valves of prosthetic 
types replaced in the last five years. That proce- 
dure was presented in surgical form in 1961. 
In regard to congenital heart disease, in 1938 
Dr. Robert Gross at Children's Hospital in Bos- 
ton ligated the first patent ductus, but he 
learned how to do it the year before on an 
animal that happened to have a patent ductus 
arteriostenosis in the laboratory. When Harvey 
Gushing at the time of World War I ran up 
against a very tough board of overseers and 
trustees of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, 
but convinced them that the proper study of 
man was not only mankind but the experimental 
animal and demanded that there should be a 
laboratory, he brought to Boston the expertise 
which was developing at Johns Hopkins at that 
time. 
Finally, our involvement is that of a responsi- 
bility. We have the responsibility to formulate 
policy with NIH ; our medical school work is 
vitally dependent upon this sort of situation, 
but certainly there are flaws in our current 
practices. I'm certain in ten years what we're 
doing now will be considered antediluvian. 
In closing, another quotation, for Dr. La- 
Farge who likes poetry. You must have read 
Robert Burns' "Ode to a Field Mouse," so as 
we approach our animals we might keep this in 
mind, "Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,/ 
0 what a panic's in they breastie!" You must 
remember the rest of it. Finally, from Burns 
again, "0 wad som Pow'r the giftie gie us/To 
see oursels as others (our animals) see us!" 
Dr. Harmison : We do recognize that animal 
