HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 113 
the Society for Freedom in Science and have been the honorable secretary and 
treasurer of the society for 22 years ; but I do not consider that there should be 
freedom to carry out experiments on higher animals without control. I am a 
licensed vivisectionist under the laws of Great Britain, which seem to me to be 
reasonable and have never interfered with my work. 
I consider that experiments on all species of vertebrates should be controlled 
by law ( as in this county ) . 
Yours ever, 
( Signed ) John Baker. 
Sir Graham Wilson is director of the Public Health Laboratory 
Service, and an honorable fellow of the American Public Health 
Association. He has been, among other things, professor of bac- 
teriology in the University of London and is the author of some stand- 
ard works on bacteriology. He writes as follows : 
Public Health Laboratory Service Board, 
London, England, September 19, 1961. 
Dear Major Hume : You asked me what my opinion was of the working of 
the procedure used in Great Britain to control experiments in animals. 
I took out my first animal license in 1919. Between then and 1948 I worked 
continuously with animals, and had various certificates to enable me to under- 
take special procedures that might have been attended by pain. 
During the last 16 years, though I have not been experimenting with animals 
myself, I have been in charge of the Public Health Laboratory Service which 
comprises over 50 laboratories using animals for routine and experimental work. 
Licenses have, of course, been required not only for the workers in these labora- 
tories but for the premises themselves in which the animals are housed. 
Not once during the whole of the past 40 years or so have I had any diffi- 
culty placed in my way of obtaining the necessary licenses or certificates for 
myself or others when there has been clear justification for them. Nothing 
has been done to interfere with the experiments which I or my colleagues 
wished to make. 
Personally I have a strong regard for the feelings of animals, and either with 
or without a license I should refuse to undertake any experiment that caused 
severe or lasting pain. Not all workers, I am afraid, are so scrupulous and it 
is against these that, in my opinion, animals deserve protection. The system 
operating in this country seems to me to work well. To the conscientious investi- 
gator it offers no bar ; to the unscrupulous, of whom in Great Britain there 
must be very few, it offers a wholesome check. 
Yours sincerely, 
(Signed) G. S. Wilson, 
Sir Graham Wilson. 
Such letters from such men — and I can quote many more — show how 
fanciful is the 1STSMR contention that our law hampers legitimate 
research. I turn, then, to our critics at the opposite extreme, the anti- 
vivisectionists who say that our law does not effectively protect 
animals. 
Here I speak with the authority of the only British animal welfare 
society which is in a position to express an opinion on the subject, 
because many of our members work in laboratories and we ourselves 
maintain research for the benefit of animals at the Royal Veterinary 
College and at the Birmingham Medical School. And lest it be sup- 
posed that our sense of responsibility toward animals is not sincere, let 
me mention that the prohibition of the cruel steel trap in England was 
mainly due to our 30 years of struggle toward that end, and that we 
brought about the recent law for prohibiting the use of cruel poisons. 
Speaking with this authority, I say then that by and large our law 
does achieve its humanitarian purpose. I do not claim that it is per- 
fect. In several matters of detail I could criticize it. But on the whole 
there can be no doubt that it does afford a unique degree of protection 
