To the Editor:
It is the purpose of this letter to present certain arguments in support of the proposed ordinance designed to give unclaimed dogs to the School of Medicine for teaching and research.
I shall confine my remarks to one area of experimentation. They are equally applicable to others.
It is impossible to estimate how much suffering has been relieved among children and how many children's lives have been saved as a result of animal experimentation, for the tremendous strides that have recently been made in the surgical correction of congenital and rheumatic heart disease resulted from experimentation with dogs.
Apparently there are still many persons who do not yet know that many children born with abnormalities of the heart that would otherwise condemn them to years of suffering and early death are living normal lives, getting married and having children of their own after being operated upon successfully. They owe their lives and comfort to dogs.
If the more complicated cases are to be conquered, if more suffering is to be relieved, and more children are to be saved, the experimentation upon dogs must be continued.
There is no alternative, for hardly anyone would except the notion that surgical procedures should be developed by performing them upon children instead of first perfecting them by performing them upon animals.
It should be clear that the question that is before the commission council at this time is children or dogs?
EVERYONE that I have known that has been engaged in animal experimentation has used every available method to avoid suffering on the part of the animals.
It is impossible to make a cause celebre of the minimal amount of suffering endured by experimental animals without recognizing at the same time the equal importance of the following questions:
II How much does a dove suffer when it is shot by the hunter unless he is killed instantly (as he frequently is not)?
% How much does the deer suffer when it is wounded but yet escapes?
«j How much does the rabbit or mink suffer when its leg is caught in a steel trap before the hunter again inspects his traps and finally kills him?
% How much does the fish suffer when he is thrown into the bottom of a boat to slowly suffocate for hours before death brings relief.
*h How much do crabs and crawfish suffer when they are thrown into hot water. (No experimental animal is ever so treated).
*... * *
IT SEEMS to me that if we can accept these sufferings on the part of animals for the purpose of the satisfaction of certain human needs we should also accept the use of animals for the experimentation that has contributed so much to the satisfaction of other important human needs.
In the last analysis when the question arises regarding how much animal suffering can be avoided by discontinuing animal experimentation the question that must immediately be opposed to is: How much suffering and death among our children
are we willing to permit ai the price for its avoidance?
Tfre question I beg you ta remember is: "Children or Dogs"? MANUEL GARDBERG, M.D,
