98 HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 
mallet, or by means of a tourniquet, the animal being allowed to recover from 
the anesthetic and to live under observation for long periods or until death. 
The foregoing instances could be multiplied many times over, 3 4 * but should be 
sufficient to indicate how ineffective the British Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876 
has proved in preventing severe suffering in animals under experiment. The 
American bill, based upon similar principles, would be equally futile. 
It will now be well to compare more precisely bill S. 3570 with the British act 
of 1876, in order that we may evaluate correctly the provisions of the former. 
In the first place, it may be pointed out, in confirmation of what has already 
been said, that the bill, in its opening sentences, refers to its being “the declared 
policy of the United States that living vertebrate animals used for scientific 
experiments and tests shall be spared unnecessary pain and fear.” (My italics, 
M.B.B.) In the British act there is no mention of the terms “unnecessary” or 
“avoidable” suffering. This may be explained by the fact that in Great Britain 
scientists have always assumed, and maintained, that all of those conditions 
such as ordinary care and comfort, proper food and quarters, were automatically 
observed * — not primarily for humanitarian reasons, but because their lack 
would invalidate the results of their investigations. As Mrs. Grace Eggleton, 
the physiologist and licensed vivisector already quoted, 6 7 declared : “little of 
physiological value could be obtained from experiments on animals in acute 
emotional distress.” No responsible scientist would dispute this, yet the prin- 
ciple it embodies appears to be ignored and positively flouted by American 
research workers. If this were not so, we should not have had our sensibilities 
shocked by the disclosure that hundreds of beagles undergoing tests of drugs 
and chemical additives to their diet were housed in small cages without exercise 
or daylight for periods up to 3 years by the Food and Drug Administration. 6 
LICENSES AND CERTIFICATES 
In Britain, licenses, with their accompanying certificates to exempt the ex- 
perimenter from the main provisions of the act, are granted by the Home 
Secretary, and application for them has to be endorsed by a president of one 
of the royal societies or of the royal colleges as well as by a professor in a univer- 
sity — usually a physiologist. But under the bill S. 3570 the whole procedure is 
vested in the Secretary of the Department of Health and Education who has 
sole power to accept or reject an applicant for a license. No provision is made 
for any control by medical or scientific authorities. This in itself is a most 
obnoxious state of affairs. 
ANESTHETICS 
In bill S. 3570 (sec. 4) it is laid down that in any experiment which could 
result in pain the animal must be anesthetized so that the pain shall be pre- 
vented from being felt either during or after 1 the experiment, with the proviso 
that exceptions may be made if the use of anesthetics would frustrate the object 
of the experiment. Any animal suffering severe and prolonged pain shall be 
painlessly killed. 
Under the British act of 1876 there is a similar provision regarding the 
use of anesthetics; it is also stipulated that the animal shall be killed before 
recovery from the anesthetic. But both these restrictions can be removed by 
obtaining the appropriate certificate from the Home Secretary. It is also laid 
down in a pain clause of the regulations that an animal suffering severe and 
prolonged pain shall be painlessly destroyed. In both the American bill and the 
British act it is clear that provision is made for legally keeping an animal alive 
in severe pain that is not likely to endure or in prolonged pain that is not severe. 
In the British act there is an additional stipulation which, no doubt, impresses 
the uninstructed, that, after the main object of the experiment has been at- 
tained, the animal must be put out of its misery if the pain is either severe 
or likely to endure. How meaningless and futile these pain conditions are now 
3 For further examples see “Vivisection Under the Cruelty to Animals Act, 1876, pub- 
lished by the NAVS, 21, Palace Street, London SW. 1. (Price, 6 pence.) 
4 Mrs. Christine Stevens, a sponsor of the American bill, has herself admitted that her 
persona] experience when visiting laboratories in both countries convinced her that animals 
are better treated in British laboratories than in the United States. 
B British Medical Journal, Nov. 19, 1949. p. 1174. 
6 See Information Report (Animal Welfare Institute, New York, vol. 9, No. 1, 1960. 
7 How this could be implemented during the often long periods of observation which fol- 
low the initial operation or injury Is not made clear. 
