84 HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 
“The institute set out to investigate after seeing a newspaper report that a dog 
had fallen off the roof of the hospital, smashing through the windshield of a ear 
parked in the street below. The hospital was quoted in the paper as saying that 
the dog had squeezed through a hole in a wire fence surrounding the exercise 
area on the roof. When I arrived I found that there was no fence. The dogs 
were simply turned loose on the roof, around the edge of which there was nothing 
but an obviously inadequate knee-high concrete ledge which was part of the 
original structure of the building. No attempt had been made to adapt the roof 
for use as an exercise pen. 
“I found that the experimental dogs were kept in small, dirty, mesh-bottom 
cages with no bedding, in a dark, dirty, smelly little room that was so infested 
that not only the animals but the floor and walls were alive and crawling with 
various kinds of vermin. These vermin were breeding in a heap of excrement ; 
they were so thick on the floor that they were walking over my feet as I stood 
there. This in the same building as a supposedly sanitary hospital area. 
“The dogs were to be used for heart surgery and blood donations and some were 
sick : yet they were left without water on a hot summer day, because the water 
pans designed to fit the cages had rusted through so they would not hold water 
and nothing had been done about it. 
“Having seen these conditions, the Animal Welfare Institute complained to 
the hospital authorities. We were told that little could be done because the ticks 
and vermin had become immune to insecticides, and in any case, Dr. A., who was 
in charge of the animal quarters, was on vacation in Europe. 
“At this point a reporter on the New York Post investigated the situation and 
a very critical story about conditions in the hospital appeared. 
‘I then paid a second visit to the animal quarters and found that the heaps of 
excrement had been removed and the ‘unkillable’ vermin exterminated. I also 
saw hanging on the wall a certificate licensing these animal quarters under the 
New York State Hatch-Metcalf Act. I had not seen this certificate before and it 
is my belief that it was not in its place at the time of my first visit. The 
certificate stated that Dr. B. was in charge of the animal quarters. Dr. B. was 
not the Dr. A. we were told was on vacation in Europe : so far from that, Dr. B. 
was working in the hospital the whole time and receiving a Federal research 
grant of approximately $60,000. 
“In my opinion this laboratory was being run in an irresponsible way. It is 
doubtful whether research on animals kept in grossly insanitary conditions after 
major surgery, without sufficient drinking water, is sufficiently conclusive to 
merit the expenditure of large sums of public money on it. Furthermore, to 
allow such a heavy infestation of vermin to develop in a hospital, and to allow 
dogs to run on an open roof, seems to me to show a culpable disregard for the 
health and safety of the public. I also believe that the conditions in the hospital 
caused considerable unnecessary suffering to the experimental animals. 
“I understand that H.R. 1937 would curb such abuses as I have described, and 
I sincerely hope such legislation will be adopted.” 
That is the end of Mrs. Wilson’s statement. 
The attitude of the progressive educator has invaded research laboratories in 
a form that often paralyzes any action against cruelty by individuals. For 
example, one medical school dean assured me that cruel people “could get off in 
a corner and do it anyway.” He seemed to take the side of these sadistic char- 
acters when he spoke about the pending legislation and with apparent relish 
remarked, “If I wanted to I could hide everything away and fool the inspector 
through the whole medical center.” One wondered what he felt needed hiding 
in this institution which last year received $22 million from the U.S. Public 
Health Service. 
Another laboratory director exemplifies a different aspect of the same problem. 
He lacks the courage to stop cruel experimentation in his own institution even 
though he personally disapproves of it. All humane scientists are concerned 
about the improper use of the drug, curare, and the many synthetic substitutes 
for this paralyzing drug now available. As you know, these muscle relaxants 
cause a human being or animal to lie limp, motionless, and completely helpless 
without the power to move or cry out no matter how terrible the pain being 
suffered. So concerned did the officers of the American Physiological Society 
become over misuse of these drugs that in 1959, Dr. R. F. Pitts, in the president’s 
message published in the Physiologist, recommended that the members of the 
editorial board of the American Journal of Physiology act as arbiters of humane 
experimental design. He said this task would not be relished, but “my personal 
