HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 287 
Bussell, Denver, Colo., president of the National Anti- Vivisection 
Society. 
Mr. Andrews. I would like to interpolate that this would have been 
his testimony had there been time to bring him here, and ask that 
this be included in the record for the information of the committee. 
Thank you. 
Mr. Roberts. Without objection. 
(The letter referred to follows :) 
Open Letter of Rev. Robert A. Russell, D.D., Rector, Epiphany Episcopal 
Church, Denver, Colo. 
May 15, 1962. 
Senator Gordon Allott, 
Senate Office Building, 
Washington, D.G. 
My Dear Senator Allott : In taking the position you have described to me in 
your letter of April 4, I sincerely believe that you are courageously and clear- 
sightedly protecting the interests of our country, and of every citizen in it. 
Burdened with taxes at home, facing from abroad a threat deadly and insidious 
beyond anything the world has ever known, every American owes a debt of 
gratitude to a leader like yourself, who can see through the apparently popular 
fad to the dangerous and wasteful core, and who has the courage to speak out 
plainly concerning what he sees. 
Recently, from an unexpected source, additional confirmation has been given 
to a view for which only a few of us, up to now, have cried out in the wilderness. 
Enclosed is a copy of an editorial which has just appeared in the Journal of the 
American Medical Association. It questions the usefulness of the vast sums of 
money our Government is pouring into medical research, at least some of which 
it characterizes as “doubtful, artificially blownup, occasionally ridiculous * * *.” 
The truth has many aspects, as the elephant had for the wisemen in the poem. 
An animal used in medical research is, to us of the antivivisection movement, 
primarily a living thing capable of experiencing suffering. That same animal, 
in the same laboratory, is to all of us, as taxpayers, a source of very heavy 
expense. To the men of the American Medical Association, the presence of that 
animal in a reesarch laboratory implies a threat to the standard of care the 
American patient is getting from his doctor, because it symbolizes a diversion 
of money and facilities and manpower into questionable research. ( It is chiefly 
this aspect of the problem against which the editorial in the AMA Journal 
speaks out.) To those who shape the destiny of the United States in its strug- 
gle against world communism, that animal is also a measure— a unit measure 
of the share of the total American effort, dollars and facilities and the time of 
critically needed specialists, going into an employment which must either 
strengthen our total position, or else, if wasted, weaken it in the face of the 
mounting attack by our enemies. Presently, it is reliably estimated that the 
research laboratories of this country hold 500 million such animals. 
VIVISECTION IS SHAM SCIENCE 
We antivivisectionists have always maintained that vivisection is bad morality. 
I do not think that morality, in our present struggle to win the minds of people 
all over the world, is an aspect of our way of life which we can, to put it very 
mildly, afford to ignore. But there is another aspect to this truth. We anti- 
viviseetionists have also, over the years, been of necessity the very persons 
to whom it has most shockingly been brought home that vivisection is actually 
a travesty on the name of science. Many very eminent scientists have agreed 
with us, and with us have been shouted down in the jostling for the research 
dollar. Now, the American Medical Association, the official, responsible, con- 
servative representative of the rank and file of American medicine, has found it 
necessary to join its voice to those which protest, even though that protest must 
discountenance not a few of its own members. The AMA has gone to the extent 
of saying that medical research, on the lines and scale to which it is now sub- 
sidized by our Government, may represent a blight, may work to the detriment 
of the care sick persons receive. The AMA goes further, to question seriously 
the utility and worth of the results of such research. 
