224 HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 
provides that a search warrant may not he granted to investigate cruelties 
in laboratories. The effect of such exemptions is that a private citizen may 
be prosecuted for housing an animal under inhumane conditions or for such a 
flagrant cruelty as burning, beating, starving, or crushing an animal but 
any one carrying out the same act in the name of science may do so with 
the full protection of the law. Professional status thus protects the per- 
son who cruelly treats an animal but it in no way lessens the suffering of the 
animal which knows the same degree of pain whether it is burned, beaten, or 
otherwise abused by a layman or by a scientist. 
Even in the States in which the anticruelty laws contain no exemption for 
experimentation, the laws are hopelessly inadequate to grant any protection 
to laboratory animals. The number of humane agents (representatives of 
humane organizations having the power to arrest) is not sufficient to inspect 
the hundreds of laboratories across the country. Unannounced inspection of 
laboratories is rarely possible. Having no guide to the humane treatment of 
animals in laboratories, the courts are unlikely or unwilling to convict a re- 
searcher under the State anticruelty laws. 
2. A parallel to the need of laboratory animals for protection by Federal law 
was the condition that led to enactment in 1958 of a Federal humane slaughter 
law. The State anticruelty laws were ineffective to achieve the protection of 
meat animals from inhumane, archaic slaughter methods. In the case of labora- 
tory animals, the need is even greater for a separate, unambiguous, definitive, 
and enforceable law. When hundreds of millions of animals are used by an 
industry or a profession each year and there is evidence of wholesale abuse, 
as there is in the case of laboratory animals, the reasons are obvious why 
remedial legislation with adequate enforcement provisions should be enacted by 
the Congress. 
As the most telling evidence of the need of laboratory animals for protective 
legislation that will prevent their abuse and suffering, I wish to provide the 
committee with a few examples of the experiments to which animals are sub- 
jected in modern day research. This material, fully documented, is from the 
researchers’ own reports in medical journals : 
Conclusion induced in conscious or partially conscious animals in a variety 
of ways. At the University of Michigan Medical Center and the Aero Space 
Medical Laboratories at Wright Field, 1 “cats were struck * * * by a pneumatic 
hammer driven by compressed nitrogen” after receiving Dial in “a dosage which 
reduced the motor activity and facilitated handling of the cats, but did not 
render them unconscious.” 
At the St. Louis University 2 concussion was produced “by one of the following 
methods: (a) multiple blows to the head with a 16-ounce hammer; (b) the 
electrical detonation of a DuPont number 6 blasting cap taped to the surface 
of the animal’s scalp.” Only “light Nembutal anesthesia” was used. “Ball peen 
hammers of various weights were used for the administration of blows” to the 
heads of dogs at Wayne University. 3 4 
The Blalock Press is one of the many methods and devices for causing 
traumatic shock and excruciating pain in animals. As used at Johns Hopkins, 1 
“the pressure which was transmitted to the thigh was approximately 500 pounds.” 
In a typical experiment “* * * the press was applied for 5 hours and no form 
of therapy was carried out after its removal.” In other experiments the 
press was applied for 15 hours. The Blalock Press, which has also been used 
at the University of Rochester, 5 among other institutions, is illustrated here 
(illustration A.). This ingenious device consists of ridged jaw boards con- 
taining a central groove corresponding to the position of the animal’s femur, 
so that complete muscle crushing can be obtained. Pressures as great as 4,000 
pounds have been used. 
At Columbia University, 6 as many as 1,000 blows on each leg of dogs were 
administered by a rawhide mallet to induce shock. Nervous depression, gasping, 
thirst, and vomiting — not to mention the agonizing pain of crushed muscles, 
nerves, and bones — were some of the effects of the beatings. The researchers who 
performed this experiment stated that three dogs which survived shock resulting 
from the beating suddenly expired “the following day when they were again 
placed upon the animal board.” 
1 Archives of Neurology, 4 : 449-462, April 1961. 
a Journal of Neurosurgery, 172 : 669-676, 1960. 
s Neurology, 3 : 417^123, 1953. 
4 Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics, vol. 75, 4 : 401, October 1942. 
5 Journal of Clinical Investigation, vol. 24, 2 : 127, March 1945. 
6 American Journal of Physiology, 148 : 98-123, January 1947. 
