218 HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 
of the experimenter, refusing to eat in the experimental room, and showing 
struggling, vomitting, defecation, and penile erection when placed on the con- 
ditioning stand.” (P. 252, Conditional Cardiovascular Reflexes in Dogs and 
Men, William G. Rees and Roscoe A. Dykman, Department of Psychiatry, 
University of Arkansas.) 
Again, I withhold judgment, but I disagree with those who maintain that 
all is well in laboratories. My own experience is corroborated by others with 
a greater knowledge of biology than I. I have with me their statements in de- 
fense of H.R. 1937, which I should like to submit with my own. May I read 
a brief portion of testimony by Sally Carrighar, distinguished naturalist and 
author : 
In my biological training, I have had association with many research workers 
and medical students, and the best evidence comes from within the scientific 
professions themselves. 
Some of the methods used in laboratories have changed in the last few years. 
For example, dogs are now deprived of their voices by surgery before any 
experiments are begun. In a biology building where I formerly worked at night, 
the dogs used in experiments were housed on the other side of the wall. The 
scientists had gone home — but if they had been there the whimpering and 
yelping of the dogs would have told them that drugs to relieve the pain should 
have been administered. Remembering those agonized canine voices, I re- 
cently asked a young physician how the newer medical students can judge the 
need for sedatives if a dog has been “devocalized,” as the scientists phrase it. 
His answer was startling. He said, “It is the prevalent attitude in medical 
schools now that dogs can’t feel pain — dogs do not suffer.” The prevalent at- 
titude: meaning, in the simplest terms, that medical students are encouraged 
to believe that drugs to relieve the animals’ pain are not required. 
When I expressed my surprise that such an idea could have taken hold, the 
young physician who had given me the information challenged me with 
the question, “How can you prove that animals suffer?” 
It seems to me that if you can’t prove animals suffer, then how can you 
prove anything else by them? And what kind of thinking would deny that pain 
is nature’s mechanism for self-preservation? Fortunately, all doctors do not 
share the prevalent view. Dr. Gulielma F. Alsop, long associated with the 
Woman’s Medical College of Philadelphia, has written : 
Though animals are not human beings, it is the similarity of their reactions 
that makes the results of experiments done to them transferable in part to 
human beings under like stimulation. Animals are not inanimate testing ma- 
chines. They are warm-blooded creatures filled with love, loyalty, and affection 
for their human masters, able to suffer, to be exhausted, to undergo terror and 
pain and stress, to die eventually of an inoculated human disease. In their kin- 
ship to us lies their experimental value to us. 
Yet, in spite of this value to us, experimental animals, at the present time, 
have no protection and no recourse against cruelty, caprice, callousness, or 
ignorance. Dr. Stefan Ansbacher, Scientific and Medical Consultant, Jocinah 
Farms, Marion, Indiana, cites a specific incident which he feels H.R. 1937, had 
it been law, might have prevented : 
In one institution, I experienced a scene that can hardly be described in a 
letter. Let me say that I saw the utmost cruelty inflicted upon an entire group 
of animals by a man “in charge” of them. He was so “mad” that the veterinar- 
ian who was present with me had to assist me in stopping the “game.” 
Sadly enough, such brutality is not necessarily confined to the uneducated. 
A highly respected scientist told me: “In any class of medical students, you 
can always spot a certain number with sadistic tendencies.” And, as another 
doctor has commented, medicine provides an opportunity to express these tenden- 
cies in ways that are socially acceptable. 
Certainly no conscientious scientist approves of sadism or any other form 
of cruelty or neglect. But, in many cases, the experimenter rarely goes near 
the animal quarters, and even the person in charge administers from his office. 
Not only do the animals suffer but the quality of research as well. When it is 
possible to find a marking on a cage, describing, not the current experiment, but 
a previous one ; when the man in charge of animals is not sure of how or when 
a dog has lost an eye — someone is at fault. H.R. 1937 would place the respon- 
sibility where it belongs : on the man performing the experiment. 
One of the objections raised by opponents of this bill is that the required 
recordkeeping would involve a lot of redtape. However, Prof. Dwight Ingle, 
