HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 361 
For these reasons, the society recommends that efforts to establish a Federal 
system of compulsory regulation of laboratory animal care be resisted and that 
the demonstrated success of the voluntary system be further supported. 
Approved October 25, 1960, by executive committee, American Thoracic 
Society. 
Hearings on H.R. 1937. 
London, England, 
September 29, 1962. 
To the Honorable Kenneth Robekts. 
Dear Congkessman Roberts : May I add to the record the following com- 
ments on the testimonies of two witnesses? 
Dr. Helen Taussig’s fanciful account of the hindrances to which Dr. Blalock’s 
work would have been exposed is sufficiently refuted by the letter from Sir 
Russell Brock, which is included in my testimony. Brock originated some well- 
known improvements in the blue-baby operation and his letter shows that 
Dr. Taussig’s statements are pure inventions without any foundation of fact. 
Dr. Pfeiffer raised a valid objection to the Moulder bill, but did so in a 
manner which calls for comment. His sneer about two worms on a hook 
prompts me to compare Charles Darwin, who always killed his worms before 
using them for fishing, with Dr. Pfeiffer who set a boy of 17 to poison mice 
with the venom of the black-widow spider and to watch them die the excessively 
painful death which resulted. However, although the inclusion of invertebrates 
in the ambit of the bill is logical enough, it simply is not practical politics. If 
British experience is any guide, the time must be drawn between vertebrates and 
invertebrates, if there is to be any hope of eventually rallying enlightened 
scientific opinion behind the desired reforms. In this matter we have to be 
guided not by rigorous logic but by what is practicable of the existing level 
of ethics. 
Believe me, with repeated thanks for the honor of testifying to your 
committee, 
Yours sincerely, 
C. W. Hume. 
Animal Welfare Institute, 
New York, N.Y., October 1, 1962. 
Hon. Kenneth Roberts, 
Chairman, Subcommittee on Health and Safety, House Committee on Interstate 
and Foreign Commerce, House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 
Dear Congressman Roberts : We appreciate the opportunity to correct some 
of the misunderstandings which might arise from statements made by opponents 
of H.R. 1937 at the recent hearings. 
Dr. Maurice Visscher and Dr. Bennett Cohen both sought to convince the 
committee that legislation such as the British act of 1876 has no effect upon the 
welfare of animals. Dr. Cohen stated, it “makes not one iota of difference.” 
Yet he was seated in full view of two machines used in the United States but 
not in Britain : the Noble-Collip drum for tumbling animals such as rats and 
rabbits, the Blalock press for crushing dogs’ legs. 
Further, both Dr. Cohen and Dr. Visscher are employed by institutions where 
large numbers of dogs are caged in small cages with no provision for exercise. 
Dogs are never housed thus in British laboratories. Congress has already 
expressed its view on this question through an appropriation to get the test 
beagles of the Food and Drug Administration out of basement cages from which 
the dogs are never released for exercise. 
Dr. Cohen claims the care of animals in laboratories is improving, that there 
have been greater advances in the past few years than in the previous 150 years. 
But the buildings in the University of Michigan and University of Minnesota 
noted above where dogs are caged perpetually are both recently constructed — 
the Minnesota building with a reported 700 dogs in subbasement cages was 
completed in 1961. 
I recently went through the animal quarters of different departments of the 
University of Michigan Medical School with Dr. Cohen and Mr. Kenneth Yourd 
and was interested in the comment of the latter that it is strange that the best 
dog quarters (those of the physiology department) were constructed 40 years 
ago. These old quarters have outdoor runways connected with inside kennels 
