HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 203 
Experimenters at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research have reported a 
classic example of an experiment deliberately designed to cause pain. The 
experiment is reported in Neurology for April 1962. 
In this experiment monkeys were used. Under anesthesia, wire electrodes 
were implanted surgically in pain perception areas of the brains of nine monkeys. 
Several days after the surgery the experimenters began applying electric cur- 
rents to the brains of the monkeys, which were fully conscious and restrained 
in steel chairs. The pain was sufficiently intense so that, as the report in 
Neurology says, the monkeys showed “facial grimacing, closure of both eyes, 
high-pitched vocalization, and generalized motor activity.” In other words, the 
monkeys screamed and struggled vainly to escape the pain. 
The monkeys, however, had a possibility of escape. They could, if they were 
smart enough, diminish the electric current by pressing a switch. Most monkeys 
learned to press the switch after about 6 hours of pain. But then the experi- 
menters strained the monkeys beyond endurance by continuing their tests 
uninterruptedly for 24 hours, allowing the monkeys no food, water, or rest 
during all that time. 
I cannot resist a wish to tell you about a bizarre experiment conducted at 
the Army Chemical Center, in Maryland. This is described, in the American 
Journal of Physiology, May 1950, as a study of “effects of extreme cold on 
the fasting pigeon, with a note on the survival of fasting ducks at minus 40° C.” 
And the description is accurate. The pigeons were confined in a jar, in which 
the temperature was reduced to minus 40° C. (which is also minus 40° F.). 
They had no food or water. Most of the pigeons died in about 60 hours but 
some surprised the experimenters by living 6 days. 
Ducks did even better (or perhaps worse, if the viewpoint is that of the ducks) . 
Of four ducks tested, the first to succumb died after 7 days and one duck was 
still alive after 16 days. 
At the other extreme, again, experimenters supported by the Office of Naval 
Research scalded 43 female dogs by dipping them, while anesthetized, into water 
heated to 85° C. (185° F.). The dogs received no anesthesia or sedative after 
they regained consciousness. Most of these dogs died within 24 hours but only 
after suffering intense agony. Details are reported in the Surgical Forum, 
10 :346-351, 1959. 
The experimenters do not, by any means, always use anesthesia when inflict- 
ing severe burns or other injuries on animals. The American Journal of 
Physiology reported, in October 1957, an experiment in which “in order to 
obtain plasma from burned rats, unanesthetized animals were strapped by the 
legs to a wooden board and dipped into boiling water up to the rib cage for 5 sec- 
onds.” The animals were killed 15 minutes later — but what a 15 minutes ! 
We could continue with a description of painful experiments virtually ad 
infinitum and certainly ad nauseam. The NIH alone receives more than 11,000 
reports of this kind every year. The hundreds of scientific periodicals of the Na- 
tion annually print additional thousands of such reports. A continuation is un- 
necessary, however, if the point is understood that the examples that I have 
offered are exactly that — exemplary. 
Animals do suffer intense pain in laboratories, in immense numbers. 
I have said to you, as our second argument for H.R. 3556, that much of this 
pain is avoidable — and without in any way impeding medical research. 
Commonsense alone tells us all that this is true. In such a vast activity, in 
which more than 200,000 persons are engaged in using more than 300 million 
animals every year, inevitably there is callousness, carelessness, waste, inef- 
ficiency, ignorance, and even psychopathic cruelty. Those who may argue that 
nothing evil or even inefficient ever occurs in laboratories do not, and cannot, 
really mean what they say. 
Fortunately, however, we need not rest solely on commonsense. 
Consider, for a moment, the section of H.R. 3556 requiring that laboratories 
receiving Federal funds shall use as few animals as is consistent wtih the ob- 
jectives of any experiment. I doubt that anyone will dispute that this is a rea- 
sonable proposal. But would this provision of the Moulder bill actually diminish 
the amount of pain that laboratory animals now suffer? Definitely it would. 
The Humane Society of the United States earlier this year provided a grant of 
funds, made available by the Doris Duke Foundation, to an eminent group of 
statisticians who undertook a scientific analysis of published reports of animal- 
using experiments to determine whether the number of animals used could have 
been reduced without in any way impairing the value of the experiments. All 
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