184 HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 
(The prepared statement referred to follows:) 
Testimony of Maurice B. Visscher, Ph. D., M.D., 1 Regarding H.R. 3556 and 
H.R. 1937 
I have been engaged in scientific research and teaching involving the use of 
experimental animals for 40 years in the United States and England. In 
England, there was an elaborate law regulating animal experimentation. I can 
testify to the fact that the general level of attention to the welfare of experi- 
mental animals is at least as great in the United States where there are no 
special regulatory laws at the Federal level as in Great Britain. There is no 
objective evidence that the British law has improved the care of experimental 
animals over the situation in the United States. To the contrary, there is 
much evidence that the redtape and the regulations have impeded scientific, 
especially medical scientific, progress. It is not being jingoistic to point out 
that the great advances in surgery in our time, for example open heart surgery, 
have come from America and not from Britain. If H.R. 3556 or H.R. 1937 
were enacted into law, it may be predicted with confidence that the quality of 
American surgery would decline. It happens that several of the innovators of 
open heart surgery were graduate students in my laboratories. C. Walton 
Lillehei, Richard H. Varco, and Clarence Dennis were among this group. The 
provisions of the above-mentioned bills would certainly have impeded, and 
might even have prevented them from doing their work. Both of these bills 
stipulate (H.R. 3556, sec. 12(g) and H.R. 1937, sec. 4(f) ) that animals employed 
in practice surgery must be killed before coming out of anesthesia. It is 
patently absurd to expect a student surgeon to be able to learn surgery if he 
cannot ascertain whether his patient will be able to survive the surgical pro- 
cedures. We have all heard the old sour joke about the operation being a 
success while the patient died. We in the United States do not want to have 
our young surgeons acquire their skills at the expense of human death or 
damage. 
To substantiate my statement that the British Laboratory Animals Act of 
1876 has been an impediment to the progress of medical and other science I 
wish to read into the record as appendix A relevant excerpts of a personal letter 
to me from one of Britain’s outstanding medical scientists, the Nobel Laureate, 
Lord Adrian. He states that Britain has “certainly been a good deal behind 
other countries” in certain fields of work of great importance to human wel- 
fare. He further says that current standards of animal care are not different 
in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Obviously, this 
must be due to the fact that in the United States of America the humane stand- 
ards of scientists themselves are at least as influential in promoting high 
standards of care as any laws would be. 
I wish to make it very plain that I oppose the Griffiths and Moulder bills, 
not on the grounds of any personal or professional aversion to proper laws 
regarding humane treatment of animals, but rather because these bills are 
contrary to the general public interest in that they will impede teaching and 
research in biological science including medicine, and because they would be 
entirely futile as to the promotion of humane treatment of animals. 
It happens that in 1949 I had a part in the drafting and presentation to the 
Legislature of the State of Minnesota the first State act regulating the disposal 
and use of unclaimed impounded animals for scientific research. A copy of this 
act as amended is attached as appendix B. I wish to call special attention to 
the fact that scientists have played a major role in obtaining the passage of 
similar acts in many other States and that these acts specifically provide for 
State regulation and inspection of facilities for and methods of caring for 
experimental animals. Scientists are in entire agreement that the lawful use 
of animals in research and teaching should be limited to institutions which have 
proper facilities and personnel for their humane care. We prefer State to Federal 
control of such regulation and inspection, partly for reasons of economy. In 
Minnesota, the State livestock sanitary board, which deals with all other regu- 
lation of animal care, deals with facilities for animal experimentation as part 
1 Distinguished service professor and head of the Department of Physiology, University 
of Minnesota. Member : UJB. National Academy of Sciences, Minnesota Society for the 
Prevention of Cruelty. Offices held : president of the general assembly of the Council of 
International Organizations of Medical Sciences ; secretary general of the International 
Union of Physiological Sciences ; president of the American Physiological Society. 
