HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 251 
COLORADO STATE VETERINARY COLLEGE, VETERINARY COLLEGE OF COLORADO 
STATE UNIVERSITY 
August 1960 
Several students agreed that if medical schools thought an investigator might 
visit unexpectedly at any time, conditions would be greatly improved, not 
only on care of animals, housing, etc., but on the experiments. Very few accurate 
records are kept. 
In my opinion, there would not be any need for a big army of investigators. 
Just a few would pull the checkrein and make the schools and all labs clean 
up the animal quarters. Dogs should not be so crowded that all sizes, and 
ages and both sexes,, sick and healthy, should be caged together even for a 
short time. There should at least be State laws on regulating the housing and 
care of animals in laboratories. 
UNSIGNED LETTER FROM COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS 
August 1960 
Are you interested in the operative mortality of animals for research? You 
don’t have to go any further than Columbia University in little ol’ New York 
for the answers. The long-term studies are often unique in the suffering that 
has to be endured. Sometimes long-term dogs are housed outside — Long Island 
I think. Air conditioning and renovation of the quarters make the work easier 
for the two-legged animals but as for the four-legged creatures, you don’t know 
how right you are. 
It would be impossible to name the many fields of research on dogs (I take 
it your interest is only on dogs) and we get a lot of good thoroughbred dogs 
here. 
I do not agree that veterinarians should be the ones to investigate animal 
research. This would be like the bank president examining his own bank. 
Further, no veterinarian would publicly condemn or censor any research labo- 
ratory or fellow veterinarian. No investigator needs to be a veterinarian to 
see dirt and neglect and read the records any more than a bank examiner needs 
to understand investment banking to get the score. 
You stated editorially that you would not publish names. It is not that I 
do not believe you but I have spent a great part of my life on my career and 
I have enough worries as it is without signing this. This is just my opinion. 
I know that many in research agree with you. 
[From Popular Dogs, February 1960] 
These Things I Saw 
(By Margo Nesselrod) 
I am a student studying veterinary medicine. I was never and am not now 
in the employ of any humane society or other such organization. Neither am I 
being paid for this article. It is a cry and a plea from a young person still 
holding on to a few ideals I have grown up to believe in — and I am beginning to 
wonder if there is any real humane goodness among humans. I am not a senti- 
mentalist, a crusader, or fanatic, but I cannot, under any code or way of human 
life, condone what I, in a few short years, have seen. 
I took a year off from my education (our editor, Mrs. Wagner, knew of my 
plans) and went to work for a few months at one of Chicago’s well-known and 
wealthy medical schools. 
A Great Dane was kept in a 6- by 4-foot compartment for 8 months without 
release. He was a blood donor for the heart-lung machine that required blood 
to prime it or start it flowing. I watched that animal stagger about semi- 
conscious for hours — as long as 36 from time of anesthesia till awakening — 
because the ignorant, untrained men who care for the animals knew nothing 
about anesthesia and were allowed to inject nembutal intraperitoneally instead of 
the quick, easy intravenous method. 
This dog had had distemper at one time and was in terribly poor condition, 
certainly in no condition for donating blood in large quantities. He was not ex- 
ercised, was not fed enough nor properly, and was badly tormented by the Negro 
caretaker boys who believed it high amusement to poke at the animal to make 
him lunge at the door. I checked a stool sample microscopically and found 
91142—62 17 
