An Ethical Problem | Page 4

it is now carried on in closed laboratories, with every possible precaution against the disclosure of anything liable to criticism. Quite apart from any questions of usefulness, it is a pursuit involving problems of the utmost fascination for the investigating mind--questions pertaining to Life and Death--the deepest mysteries which can engage the intellect of mankind. We find it made especially attractive to young men at that period of life when their encouraged and cultivated enthusiasm for experimentation is not liable to be adequately controlled by any deep consideration for the "material" upon which they work. Sometimes animal experimentation is painless, and sometimes it involves suffering which may vary in degree from distress which is slight to torments which a great surgeon has compared to burning alive, "the utmost degree of prolonged and excruciating agony." By some, its utility to humanity is constantly asserted, and by others as earnestly and emphatically and categorically denied. Confronted by contradictory assertions of antagonists and defenders, how is the average man to make up his mind? Both opinions, he reasons, cannot possibly be true, and he generally ranges himself under the banner of the Laboratory or of its enemies, according to his degree of confidence in their assertions, or his preference for the ideals which they represent.
Now, the object of all controversy should be to enable us to see facts as they are--to get at the truth. That difference of opinion will exist may be inevitable; for opinions largely depend upon our ideals, and these of no two individuals are precisely the same. But so far as facts are concerned, we should be able to make some approach to agreement, and especially as regards the ethical supremacy of certain ideals.
But first of all we need to define Vivisection. What is it?
Originally implying merely the cutting of a living animal in way of experiment, it has come by general consent to include all scientific investigations upon animals whatsoever, even when such researches or demonstrations involve no cutting operation of any kind. It has been authoritatively defined as "experiments upon animals calculated to cause pain." But this would seem to exclude all experimentation of a kind which is not calculated to cause pain; experiments regarding which all the "calculation" is to avoid pain; as, for example, an experiment made to determine the exact quantity of chloroform necessary to produce death without return of consciousness. The British Royal Commission of 1875 defined it as "the practice of subjecting live animals to experiments for scientific purposes," avoiding any reference to the infliction of pain; yet, so far as pertains to the justification of vivisection, the whole controversy may turn on that. Any complete definition should at least contain reference to those investigations to which little or no objection would be raised, were they not part of the "system." It should not omit reference, also, to those refinements of pain-infliction for inadequate purposes--also a part of a "system," and which, to very distinguished leaders in the medical profession, have seemed to be inexcusable and wrong.
Suppose, then, we attempt a definition that shall be inclusive of all phases of the practice.
"Vivisection is the exploitation of living animals for experiments concerning the phenomena of life. Such experiments are made, FIRST, for the demonstration, before students, of facts already known and established; or, SECOND, as a method of investigation of some theory or problem, which may be with or without relation to the treatment of human ailments. Such experiments may range from procedures which are practically painless, to those involving distress, exhaustion, starvation, baking, burning, suffocation, poisoning, inoculation with disease, every kind of mutilation, and long-protracted agony and death."
A definition of this kind will cover 99 per cent. of all experiments. The extreme pro-vivisectionist may protest that the definition brings into prominence the more painful operations; yet for the majority of us the only ground for challenging the practice at all is the pain, amounting to torment in some cases, which vivisection may involve. They are rare, some one says. But how do we know? The doors of the laboratory are closed. Of practices secretly carried on, what can we know? That every form of imaginable torment has at some time been practised in the name of Science, we may learn from the reports of experimenters themselves, and from the writings of men who have denounced them. It was Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, of Harvard University, the most eminent surgeon of his day, who declared that vivisection sometimes meant the infliction of "the severest conceivable pain, of indefinite duration," and that it was "a torture of helpless animals, more terrible, by reason of its refinement, than burning at the stake." Is the above definition of vivisection stronger than is implied by this assertion of Dr. Bigelow?
We need constantly to remember that vivisection is