An address by E.A. Schäfer ... on the case presented by anti-vivisectionists : (Annual General Meeting of the Dublin Branch of the Research Defence Society, March 24th, 1911).

  • Edward Albert Sharpey-Schäfer
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An address by E.A. Schäfer ... on the case presented by anti-vivisectionists : (Annual General Meeting of the Dublin Branch of the Research Defence Society, March 24th, 1911). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    discovered by such experiments are employed in order to procure the curative material. They then come under the head of commercial productions, and are largely used in medicine and surgery, and very largely by veterinary surgeons and agriculturists, to prevent the spread of epidemics or to cure patients and animals that may already have been attacked. By means of these experiments, chemists take advantage of natural processes of immunisation and cure, to manufacture materials which will aid in the prevention and cure of actual illness. The amount of pain inflicted is for the most part infinitesimal. The animals which are inoculated exhibit such slight symptoms of disease that it is hardly apparent. After they are immunised, blood is drawn from a superficial vein so quietly that the horse itself may be munching its oats and does not even wince at the small incision which is necessary. For it has all its life been accustomed to the infliction of a far great amount of pain from the application of the whip or spur or bearing-rein. Even were the pain greater than it is, I would still say we are justified in inflicting it in order to prevent or cure disease in man and animals. It may happen that some day, when the chemical constitution of these immunising substances is better known, the chemist will be able to make them in vitro. But until that day arrives, it is necessary that they should be procured by the application of the experimental method to animals. Those who would say that the physician or veterinary surgeon must not avail himself of the means which nature itself supplies, and would suggest that there is anything immoral in doing so, must be prepared to assert, as some do, that under no conceivable circumstances have we a right to employ animals to minister to our security or comfort, and that we are not in any event justified in taking life, even for our own protection. Indeed, one anti-vivisec- tionist witness was prepared to go so far that she would not positively draw the line even at mosquitos. If it comes to that, I am not sure that if these people understood there is no essential difference between animal and vegetable life, they would not shudder at the idea of boiling a cabbage or frying a potato. They are prepared if need be, to sacrifice their lives or the lives of their children, if they have any, to their consistency. I do not desire to condemn their views as wrong, although it is obvious that they are impracticable and impossible. But with the other class of anti-vivisectionists. who “ comoound for sins they are inclined to, by damning those, they have no mind to,” the case is different. These are neither honest nor consistent, and many of those who lend support to their proceedings are misled into doing <^o by their wilful misrepresentations. For they exageerate the suffering of animals which are used for experi- ments. and ignore that of those which are used for commercial and sporting purposes. To obtain some foundation for their incon- sistency, they are ready to deny that any useful knowledge has been obtained from animal experimentation. Such denial is, how-
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