Letters to and from the Editor

LETTERS TO AND FROM THE EDITOR Dear Sir: Thank you for inviting me to reply to your letter and to comment on other recent letters on laboratory animal« in perspectives in biology and medicine. You refer to our correspondence as a "debate" however. I do not wish to score points against you but to try to make the facts clear. I believe in the soundness ofthe scientific method and try to apply it as much as possible in work to reduce needless animal suffering. On this basis I would liketo report onthe results ofsome ofthemany futile effortswehave made over a period ofyears to follow the suggestion you make: "Go to them [leaders in medical research] for advice. . . ." Dr. Chauncey Leake, when he was president ofthe American Association for the Advancement ofScience, advised me to invite such leaders to gather in a convenient place and have a discussion. Following with care each suggestionhe made, arrangements were made for dinner at the International Club ofthe Drake Hotel in Chicago . Appropriate representatives of the National Society for Medical Research and American Medical Association were invited and asked to extend invitations to others. Three members ofthe Animal Welfare Institute flew to Chicago for the meeting. There was a hint oftrouble whenI was informed by the Executive Secretary ofthe NSMR, Mr. Rohweder, that I must provide a tape-recorder in the private dining room so that everything everybody said would be recorded. However, the hotel rose to the occasion and by the time we stood waiting for our guests, we had all learned how to run the recorder. Dr. Leake appeared, allright, and Mr. Rohweder was there, ofcourse, bringing with him Dr. N. R. Brewer, veterinary head ofanimal care at the University ofChicago. That was the sum total ofour guests. Mr. Rohweder said it was all right not to run the tape-recorder , so it sat there throughout the oddest dinner party I can recali. Though, as you can see from the above, leaders in medical research were markedly reluctant to enter into any discussion even under the benevolent auspices ofDr. Leake, we have never failed to consult, whenever opportunity offered, with such leaders. The results have been uniformly disappointing. Another leader ofmedical research, one who wrote a letter for the Summer 1963 issue ofperspectives in biology and medictnb, Dr. I. S. Ravdin, has met with a mutual friend and me on three separate occasions to discuss the treatment ofexperimental animals. In addition other interested people have been at these meetings. It was through Dr. Ravdin's good offices that I was enabled to attend one day ofa big NSMR meeting: The National Conference on the Legal Environment ofMedical Science. (I was placed in the section on use ofanimals by high school students and urged that pain not be inflicted on these animal« by teen-age boys and girls, but there was not even one individual present who would support a move to prevent such pain-infliction.) I believed for a long time that 253 Dr. Ravdin was genuinely interested in the welfare of experimental animals. He introduced me to a series ofindividuals, who were responsible for planning and equipping his new animal tower, urged me to send them the AWI manuals, "Basic Care ofExperimental Animals" and "Comfortable Quarters for Laboratory Animals," and assured me the quarters, especially for large animals, would be vastly superior to existing ones. I did everything he told me to do, but when I came back a couple ofyears later and saw the tower, it was the same old story—windowless rooms with big dogs in cages too small for them even to lie down in normally, no outdoor runways—in fact, it was far less comfortable for the experimental dogs than the old quarters where they were kept in roomy pens and had shavings or resting boards to lie on. Dr. Ravdin's constant reiteration ofthe word "improvement" in respect to animal housing is clearly contradicted in the very building standing now on the campus ofthe University ofPennsylvania. The tower is a grandiose edifice calculated to make the viewer crane his neck in awe, but unless major changes have been made since I visited it, it is illdesigned forthehousing...