228 HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 
NCSAW VIEWS ON LEGISLATION 
I should now like to state the views of the National Catholic Society for Ani- 
mal Welfare on legislation for the protection of animals. Following is a pertinent 
part of a resolution adopted by the society’s board of directors in July 1960: 
“The increasing volume and intensity of animal suffering resulting from prac- 
tices that exceed the limits of licitness in experimentation, causing it frequently 
to degenerate into a mere torturing of animals, leads the National Catholic So- 
ciety for Animal Welfare to believe that legislation governing the use of animals 
for experimental purposes is urgently needed. Laws to compel medical research- 
ers to abide by the same standards of conduct expected of private citizens toward 
animals are indicated.” 
At the same time the NCSAW board of directors expressed its stand on a bill 
that has since died but to which H.R. 1937 is almost identical. We stated that 
“existing legislation similar in many respects to [the bill] has served not to pro- 
tect animals but to lead the public mistakenly to believe that the use of animals 
for experimental purposes is controlled and cruelty and suffering are prevented. 
Such legislation serves, as it were, only to anesthetize the public conscience 
rather than to prevent animal suffering.” 
We found that we could not support a bill such as H.R. 1937 because its many 
serious weaknesses render it ineffective. 
Briefly, our objections to the bill are as follows : 
1. It calls for self -policing and self -policing will not work. 
2. It fails to make an unequivocal statement about the most basic protection 
needed for laboratory animals. For example, section 3(c) states that animals 
“shall be anesthetized so as to prevent the animals feeling the pain during and 
after the experiment” but that requirement is immediately nullified, in the same 
sentence, by an exception if anesthetics would frustrate the object of the experi- 
ment. That exception would permit the most excruciatingly painful experiments 
without anesthesia and with the blessing of the law. Similarly, section 3(c) 
states that animals which are seriously injured as a result of the experiment 
shall be painlessly killed immediately upon the conclusion of the operation inflict- 
ing the injury. But that requirement is nullified by an exception if the project 
plan specifies a longer period during which animals must be kept alive. Thus 
the two must urgently needed requirements of any bill protecting laboratory 
animals from severe and prolonged suffering are lacking in the Griffiths bill. 
The Griffiths bill has been compared to the British Cruelty to Animals Act and 
offered as a panacea for all the cruelty and suffering to which laboratory animals 
are subjected. The British act, however, has not served as a cure-all and the 
Griffiths bill is even weaker. The widely respected Royal Society for the Pre- 
vention of Cruelty to Animals calls the British act “an act that doesn’t act” and 
states : “An act to prevent cruelty to animals has been turned into an act to 
allow almost unlimited and uncontrolled experiments on animals.” 
We wish to insert in the record at this point a leaflet published by the Royal 
Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and entitled “Cruelty Within the 
Law,” in which the reasons why the British act, after which the Griffiths bill 
(H.R. 1937) is patterned, does not work are given. 
MOULDEK BILL 
The National Catholic Society for Animal Welfare considers the Moulder bill 
(H.R. 3556) to be reasonable, workable, and effective legislation in all respects 
but one. Our objection is to the phrase “unless the project plan approved by the 
Commissioner states that anesthesia would frustrate the purpose of the project” 
which will be found on lines 1, 2, and 3 of page 8, section 12(b) of the bill. The 
phrase vitiates an otherwise excellent bill and would permit the continental inflic- 
tion of intense and prolonged suffering in animals without the relief of anesthesia. 
We humans are quick to demand for ourselves the protection of anesthesia from 
the most minor discomforts of medical or dental processes. Can we, in con- 
science, withhold the basic decency of anesthesia from the sentient creatures 
exploited in growing numbers in research and subjected to every form of pain 
and fear that the human mind can conceive? 
The National Catholic Society for Animal Welfare feels so strongly about the 
need for a clear requirement for anesthesia that it can support H.R. 3556 only, 
if lines 1, 2, and 3 of page 8 are struck out. 
In all other respects we consider the Moulder bill (H.R. 3556) to be the answer 
to the need for legislation establishing humane standards for the care, housing, 
and use of animals in research. The bill provides for a sorely needed new Fed- 
eral agency to administer and enforce the humane standards. 
