HORRORS OF SCIENCE-

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 902, 20 February 1930, Page 8

HORRORS OF SCIENCE-

PRACTICE OF VIVISECTION CONDEMNED MOVEMENT IN AUCKLAND ‘'And now the vivisectors wish to perform their experiments on living human bodies.’' declared Mr. M. Walker, in a short address to the Auckland branch of the British Union for the abolition of vivisection, last evening. “They appeal for volunteers and ask what is the value of a thousand human lives compared with the elucidation of one scientific fact. This is a public and not a medical question.” the lecturer added. “Why don’t they experiment on each other,” Mr. Walker asked. “That is the only form of vivisection to which we would raise no objection.” Mr. Walker urged members of the branch to assist in overcoming public apathy and ignorance of what was a most vital question. When he was forced to discuss vivisection, the average man could find excuse for the most revolting of experiments by the mere statement that they were conducted in the name of science. In the year 1927-28, 300,000 animals had been used for experiment in the vivisection schools of Great Britain. Yet the vast majority of the tests had proved valueless, and the vivisectors were seeking to experiment on the human body, urging that it was the greatest possible honour to give one’s body to the service of the human family. The lecturer condemned the laxity of supervision of vivisection schools in Great Britain.

“The inspectors’ visits are similar to those of committees to a hospital where there lias been a great scandal,” the lecturer continued. “Everything has been prepared for them for months ” BURMED TO DEATH Mr. Walker referred to the experiments carried out .with animals as victims. A dog had been placed in a cell above a furnace so that it might be observed what heat it could withstand until relieved by death. Another dog had had a leg severed, all but the artery and the main vein. By these threads the limb was still attached to the body and the clog was left like that for some clays to observe the effect of the experiment upon the limb. Other examples were given by Mr. Walker, who salcl that rarely were the' animals put under an anaesthetic as that was held to defeat the aim of the experiment, the subject being in an abnormal state. Dangerous animals were placed under an anaesthetic and secured immovably. They were then allowed to regain consciousness and the experiments were proceeded with. Inoculation was attacked by the lecturer, who reminded the audience that., according to the law, no person need submit to inoculation against his will. The serum, which the doctors obtained from manufacturing concerns, did more harm than good. Replying to a question regarding vivisection in New Zealand, Mr. Walker stated that experiments upon animals had been conducted at a dunedin college for many years. “If they are not already being conducted in Auckland, they soon will be, as there are young medical students now at the hospital,” he added. “A young nurse I met recently was most enthusiastic about an experiment that had been conducted upon a rabbit. It should have died three days ago but it is still alive, so we are watching it closely,” she told me. “Of the many monkeys that are landed here from Bombay and Singapore, presumably for the Zoo, many are kept carefully covered until the ship has sailed and then sent South,” he said. Accounting for the prevalence of disease in the world at present, Mr. Walker expressed a belief in a universal law of compensation. “Man will not be free of these diseases until he has released his dumb friends from the sufferings to which they are now being subjected," he concluded.