70 HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 
(1) to designate the places in which experiments on living ani- 
mals may be done ; that is, the laboratories of the schools of science 
or medicine of most universities, of the independent medical 
research foundations, and of Government and industry ; 
(2) to license those who may do them, remembering that a 
license should be granted not as a status symbol but because the 
applicant demonstrates his serious intent to perform medical or 
biological research and his possession of the necessary academic 
qualifications for doing this ; and 
(3) to define the kinds of permission that would be given for 
experiments of a few different types. Thus, experiments calcu- 
lated to cause no pain could be done at any time by any licen- 
see without the administration of anesthesia ; those calculated to 
cause pain, but done under anesthesia, and in which the animal 
was destroyed when the object had been achieved and before re- 
gaining consciousness, could be done at any time by any licensee, 
without his needing to obtain specific permission. The majority 
of experiments would fall in this category; for those in which 
the animal’s survival was essential if the object of the research 
was to be achieved approval might be given for the whole of 
the research project; while for those in which the objective could 
not be achieved without inflicting pain, permission might be 
given for only one or a few repetitions of the experiment, after 
which the application would have to be renewed. 
Obviously, it would be necessary to have a secretariat to issue li- 
censes and to give permission for the performance of those experi- 
ments for which it was statutorily required. And it would be neces- 
sary to have an inspectorate to insure that the regulations were not 
flouted, and that standards of animal welfare were adequate. But 
if scientists could be assured that administration of the regulations 
would be in the hands of persons trained in biology or medicine, with 
understanding of the nature of experimental science, with sympathy 
for the aims and aspirations of medicine and science, and with a de- 
sire as great as their own to advance those aims, much of their op- 
position would, I think, disappear. 
To my mind, the best way of insuring that this should happen is to 
accept the desirability of legislation, to cooperate in the drafting of the 
legislation, and to ask for a voice in the selection of those who will 
staff the agency that administers the regulations. For these reasons, 
I have been disappointed to note that the official and semiofficial pro- 
nouncements of some of the professional societies have for the most 
part ignored the distinction that ought to be made between the un- 
desirability of any kind of legislation at all and the undesirability of 
bad legislation, or, what is more to the point, of badly administered 
legislation. Since the British Act of Parliament is regarded by many 
as the model for some of the provisions of H.R. 1937, many of the at- 
tempts to discredit this bill have taken the form of assertions that if the 
bill is made law, the medical or biological research worker will be sub- 
ject to the same kind of punitive restriction that now makes unbear- 
able the existence of his confreres in the United Kingdom. Leading 
articles in the scientific press, and letters to editors, have suggested 
that workers in the United Kingdom have their freedom to work re- 
stricted by the need to make repeated requests for permission to per- 
