252 HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 
tapeworms, roundworms, and hookworms, plus a tiny protozoan parasite called 
Coccidia that causes eventual ulceration of the intestinal tract and greatly 
debilitate an animal. This hardly seems a logical or economical way to care 
for an animal. I rid him of his parasites with a few vermiplex capsules and a 
sulfamerizine compound in his water — at a cost of only a few cents. 
I watched a student in his first year of medical school suture up a dog’s rib 
cage with a ball of actually dusty dime-store twine that he took from the shelf 
of a cabinet. His answer to my query about aseptic conditions was, “What does 
it matter? He won’t live anyhow.” 
The dog had been used for a heart-lung experiment in which the heart’s great 
vessels are severed and connected to this giant apparatus that operates as a 
heart and lungs while the real heart is worked upon. 
Money — in enormous quantities — is given by the Heart Fund, your money 
and mine, given to that school to help perfect the heart-lung operation so it will 
save lives when sufficiently developed. In 4 months at the school there was 
not one survivor of the operation, at a rate of three per week. Why? The 
animals used were received directly from a dealer who steals them (a collar 
was left on one once, and I traced the license to a man in Missouri from whom 
the dog had been stolen). The animals here are not conditioned in any way 
preoperatively ; their state of nutrition is unbelievably poor. They are so pale 
from loss of blood from hookworms and other parasites that they cannot pos- 
sibly stand the shock of major surgery — much less major butchery. 
This experiment is supposed to simulate human conditions, but a human 
in such condition is never subjected to such surgery. The results of these 
procedures are completely invalid as the conditions are terribly unfavorable. 
No postoperative care is given — no antibiotics. 
I watched a doctor, and when I say doctor I mean Ph. D., not M.D. or D.V.M. 
(none of these men were medical doctors) — I watched him take the only sur- 
vivor they ever had as long as I was there and force that weakened animal 
to get up and run — not walk but run — down a corridor not 12 hours after he was 
operated upon. 
I watched those men jam — and I mean jam (not insert as we are taught 
to)— a great trocar through the dog’s side into his pleural cavity and take at 
one time 850cc, of fluid that had accumulated. That animal was trocared 
once every 24 hours (if lucky) and he just lay in pain while that fluid gathered. 
He was killed a few days later “to see where the fluid came from.” 
The cages in which these dogs are kept have wire bottoms — heavy chicken 
wire. Can you imagine what that does to a dog’s pads? I found one dog im- 
prisoned (for 2 days, the animal-boys said) with his long toe nails caught in 
that wire people knowing of it and doing nothing. A puppy there had finally 
chewed his foot off to free it from the wire. He died 2 days later; his leg 
swelled like a balloon. 
These are only a few of my experiences — they occurred daily — at this in- 
stitution. None of the animals were housed, fed, or handled sensibly or eco- 
nomically — this, out of pure ignorance and indifference. And your money is 
helping this to continue day by day. 
When I quit this medical school, I went to work for the next 5 months for 
a pharmaceutical manufacturing company in the area. I had a colony of 30 
dogs on which I daily had to perform experiments with tranquilizing drugs 
that I injected intravenously. I then observed the animals for several hours 
to determine the effects. On the average, about twice a week, the injected drug 
caused the animal to go into immediate convulsions, screaming and gasping, 
or becoming rigid for several hours. Any drug causing such reactions was 
immediately tested on several others to determine if the same effect was always 
achieved ; then it was discarded. Some of my dogs always died, but they were 
constantly being replaced from the same dealer who also supplied the medical 
school. 
I heard the dealer tell the kennel man how he acquired some of his dogs. He 
led a bitch in season down alleys at night behind the truck, then snatched any 
male which came out after her. I watched those men unload dogs from the 
truck — a big, smelly, foul cattle truck — and I saw them beat dogs with a metal 
prod for resisting a leap from the upper deck down into a wire pen on wheels, 
a drop of fully 5 feet. 
I bought a nail clipper for $1 and once a week or so kept my dogs’ nails 
trimmed. I discovered that out of some 200 dogs kept by that company, none 
but mine had their nails taken care of. In an envelope I have some of the nails 
