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VIVISECTION IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 783 
LETTER OF DR. c. W. DABNEY, JR. 
United States Department of Agriculture, 
Office of the Secretary, 
Washington, D. C., May 16, 1896. 
Hon. James McMillan , Chairman Committee on District of Columbia , United States 
Senate : 
^ EAR tSENATOR : 1 have the honor to invite your attention to certain provisions of the 
?! ! 1 J 55 2 and of a substitute which I am informed the Committee on the District of 
Columbia has decided to report favorably. The bill is entitled “ A bill for the further 
prevention of cruelty to animals in the District of Columbia.” The principal purpose of 
the bill as disclosed by its several sections is to restrict and prohibit those experiments 
upon animals without which it is impossible to obtain the facts required for the advance¬ 
ment of the biological sciences, and particularly for understanding the nature of disease 
and discovering the best means for its prevention and cure. As the Bureau of Animal In¬ 
dustry of this Department is charged by law with the duty of investigating and controlling 
animal diseases, and as it has made and is making more extensive investigations of said 
diseases than any other institution in the United States, the work of said bureau would be 
directly and seriously affected by legislation such as is proposed in this measure. The bill, 
while ostensibly local legislation, would affect principally the work of the executive De¬ 
partments, and more particularly the scientific investigations of the Department of Agri 
•culture. 
J 1 The bill provides that hereafter no person shall perform on a living animal any ex¬ 
periment calculated to give pain to such animal, and it makes any person guilty of an 
•offense who peifoims 01 takes part in any such experiment which in any way contravenes 
the provisions of this bill, and for such offense, if the first, he is liable to the excessive 
penalty of $150 fine, or if the second offense he is liable to a fine of $300 or to imprison¬ 
ment for a period not exceeding six months. These extreme penalties would discourage 
investigatois, they would cause hesitation and delay in the perfrrmance of necessary ex¬ 
periments, for no one would enter upon a series of researches until he had satisfied himself 
that he could carry them through without even a technical violation of the act, and that 
he could satisfy even unfriendly inspectors that there was no technical violation. Such 
hesitation and delay is fatal to experimental work of the character performed in this de¬ 
partment. It often requires months, sometimes years, to find an outbreak of disease of (he 
right type, and with the affected animals at the proper stage, to yield results to the inves¬ 
tigator. If it is a contagious disease, the experimental animals must be exposed to or in¬ 
oculated with the liquid excretions or tissues of the affected individual ; and this must be 
done under a vaiiety of conditions. Such material is perishable and when found must be 
used at once ; the experiments for which it is suitable must be immediately planned and 
executed, otherwise the valuable material is lost 5 hence the desirability of leaving inves¬ 
tigators free from unnecessary restrictions and of encouraging them to their best efforts by 
recognizing their valuable contributions to the cause of humanity. The effect of this sec¬ 
tion would be to place experimentation upon animals under the ban of the law, to put a 
stigma upon it, and to cause those engaged in such researches to expend a large part of 
their energy and ability to avoid infraction of the numerous restrictions. 
2. It is provided in section 2, paragraph a, that such experiment must be performed 
with a view to the advancement by new discoveiy of physiological knowledge, or of knowl¬ 
edge which will be useful for saving or prolonging life or alleviating suffering. That is 
to say, it forbids all experimentation to confirm the results obtained by others, or to deter¬ 
mine whether their results are exactly accurate, or whether such conclusions apply under 
the conditions which obtain in this country. This provision at once prohibits a large part 
of the necessary experimental work of this department and would seriously cripple the re¬ 
mainder. Every experiment becomes an offense which does not lead to an immediate 
practical result. It so happens, however, that no one experiment can give such results 
except in extraordinary cases. Science is built up by degrees. We progress a step at a 
time, and many experiments must be made to determine the facts in the case before we 
can foresee the results. If the experimenter must stop to consider whether he can demon¬ 
strate to the satisfaction of a court that each individual experiment was 44 performed with a 
view to the advancement by new discovery of physiological knowledge, or of knowledge 
