An Ethical Problem by Albert Leffingwell

Author:Albert Leffingwell [Leffingwell, Albert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, General
ISBN: 9781627936132
Google: 65xEAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2013-11-08T05:33:04+00:00

The foregoing experiments are not quoted in full; in many of them, at intervals, the animals were bled; and these observations of the effects of "burning a paw" were incidental to others. BUT WHY ALL THIS BURNING AND STIMULATION TO PROVE A PHENOMENON SO UNIFORM?

One exceptional experiment must not be overlooked. On one occasion two dogs were vivisected at the same time. At the outset a paw of each dog was burned, causing A RISE of blood-pressure in each case. A little later the sciatic nerve was stimulated:

"11.25. On stimulating the sciatic nerves of each dog, Dog A showed a rising and falling pressure, and Dog B (MORE ETHER WAS GIVEN JUST THEN) showed an initial FALL, and a rise, with a sudden second FALL and a rise.

"11.32. BOTH DOGS WERE DEEPLY ANAESTHETIZED. Dog A: Stimulation PRODUCED NO EFFECT. Dog B: On stimulating the sciatic nerve, there was A FALL OF (BLOOD)-PRESSURE, WITH SLOW RECOVERY."

Here we have recorded by the experimenter himself the difference in the effect of stimulation of nerves in an animal "deeply anaesthetized" and the results produced when the anaesthesia was light.

It has seemed necessary to examine at some length these peculiar experiments. The volumes describing them are not easily to be seen; some appear to be out of print; even Sir Victor Horsley; in whose laboratory in London some of the experiments were performed, confessed that he did not know about the vivisections made in the United States—whether or not they differed from those performed in England. In the vast number of these vivisections, so far beyond anything previously reported in our country by a single experimenters; in the ingenuity and variety of the mutilations to which the victims were subjected—mutilations and stimulations calculated to cause the extremest agony, unless the anaesthesia was perfect; in the seeming affirmation of absolute insensibility of the wretched animals, although contradicted by the only sign of suffering that in some cases could possibly be seen; in the apparent uselessness of experiments, repeated again and again simply to elicit precisely the same phenomena; above all, in the absence from criticism which some of these "investigations" have managed to secure—all this constitutes a claim for especial consideration. There can be little doubt that they merely illustrate what goes on to-day, in many a laboratory in the United States, in secret—as these were made in secret—and untouched by the criticism of the outer world.

Of the absolute uselessness of the vast majority of these experiments much might be said, but it is aside from this inquiry. The question of utility is not here raised. The one matter of inquiry is the existence of pain.

If a vast number of the experiments recorded may have involved the keenest agony of the victims, how are we to explain the repeated assertions that sensation was absolutely removed? Among antivivisectionists there are those who belive that any human being who could thus subject animals to torment would not find it impossible to deny the fact. Such explanation implies an inveracity which it is not necessary to impute.

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