value of these researches, not only in enlarging our biological conceptions, but in alleviating the sufferings of mankind." Lord Rayleigh said that this statement had been drawn up, after careful consideration and debate, by the Council of the Royal Society. In reply to questions, he said that the Royal Society, acting in co-operation with the Government, had been concerned with the investigation of Mediterranean fever in Malta, and of sleeping sickness in Africa. He had always heard that the work done was excellent, and he believed that the Royal Society greatly valued the reports of these Commissions, especially the work that had lately been concluded on Malta fever. LORD JUSTICE FLETCHER MOULTON, F.R.S., The Rt. Hon. Sir John Fletcher Moulton, Member of the Privy Council, Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Lord Justice of Appeal, said that for many years he had taken a very keen interest in the progress of curative science, both from the scientific side and from the ethical side. In his long experience at the Bar, he had been an interpreter between those who were doing pioneer work in science and those who had to judge of that work, and it was from that standpoint that he now desired to give evidence.1 Some passages, from Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton's evidence, come well here at the close of all this evidence for and against experiments on animals. They present clearly the cause upheld by the Research Defence Society. "I think that in the controversy a great deal has been 1 This evidence has been published in full, for the Research Defence Society, by Macmillan and Co., price one shilling. lost by looking at it in too narrow a light. It is not a question of vivisection-that is to say, the performing of cutting experiments on living animals; that is a mere nickname, a mere catch-phrase, which was originally invented, I have not the slightest doubt, for purposes of prejudice. I am not saying that with a desire to find fault. One always likes to get a name which expresses one's own point of view without further explanation; but it is a most imperfect representative of the real issue. The real issue is whether curative science is to be an observational science or whether it is to be an experimental science. ... "Of old, cruelty was thought nothing of, whether it was to men or animals. You cannot read the history of the world down to, say, the seventeenth century, without feeling that there was an extraordinary callousness to suffering of every kind. A great change from that time has been passing over the world. First, there came the regard for the sufferings of men, and cruelty towards men gradually passed out of favour; and now the thought of human suffering and the desire to avoid it is one of the most unquestioned and influential motives that guide the action of mankind. Presently there followed the extension of the feeling to the sufferings of animals; and there is no doubt that now, with the best part of humanity, sympathy for the sufferings of animals, and the desire to lessen those sufferings, are most influential motives of action. Now that appears to me all in the right direction, and so far as my opinion goes it is not only not contested by either party to this controversy, but both of them would in words accept it as a duty to lessen so far as possible the sufferings of animals as well as of men. I do not wish to be misunderstood when I talk about the sufferings of animals in the same breath, as it were, with the sufferings of men. I must therefore point out a very broad distinction between the two, which must be borne in mind if we are to come to right conclusions in this matter. The sufferings of animals are substantially physical only. The sufferings of men are not solely physical. Almost as important a factor in that suffering is mental suffering, arising partly from a man's relations to societythat is to say, that death or sickness will cause pain and suffering and trouble and misery to those who are intimately connected with the man-and partly in the individual himself. He is capable of feeling anxiety, regret, dread, and many other things which are of the most serious importance in measuring human suffering, but which are practically absent from animal suffering. I do not say this in any way to detract from what I have said about the importance of avoiding and preventing, so far as we can, animal suffering; it is only that we may keep true our ideas of what suffering is. . . "There is an almost unanimous opinion, among those who are engaged in the practical work of the curative sciences, in favour of experimental research in connection with them. That support has been discounted by people saying, 'Oh, those who are engaged in curative science get callous to pain.' Now, in my opinion, they are more sensitive to pain, because it is perpetually appealing to them, and, if I might say so, it is the lifelong foe which they are engaged in fighting. Those with whom I range myself, who are desirous of extending and supporting experimental research in the curative sciences, consider not only the pain that is inflicted, but they consider the pain that might be prevented, and they hold themselves responsible for permitting pain which they could stop, just as much as for inflicting pain deliberately-they look at the two together. The other school consider only inflicted pain. They think it their duty to prevent pain being inflicted, even though the infliction of pain may lead to the prevention of many times that much pain in the future. "I will suppose that a ship which is plague-stricken, and has got rats on board, arrives at a port. A man with sense of his responsibility, knowing that there is a high probability that rats convey the plague, would unhesitatingly extirpate those rats, even though his only method of doing so was by putting them to a painful death, whether it was by poisoning them with phosphorus, or by stifling them, or by even more painful methods. He would not hesitate; he would feel it his duty to extirpate them. Now, supposing that a person were to come and say, 'I could not bear to see those poor creatures running for their lives and in danger, trying to save themselves from their relentless pursuers, and so I let as many as I could escape,' I have no doubt that the person who did that would think that he acted from humane motives. But what would be the consequence? It might communicate plague not only to a town, but to a whole nation. It might bring positively measureless misery. The first man would be right, because he would look at the inflicted pain which would be to the bad side of the ledger. No one would have a right to inflict that suffering merely capriciously. But he would see beyond that pain he was inflicting that in acting thus he was preventing an amount of pain which was beyond all measure greater than that which he was inflicting; and if he was a man to whom pain appealed, who had a heart which felt keenly suffering whether in men or animals, he would do it all the more unhesitatingly. The other man would think only of the inflicted pain, and say, 'I am too tenderhearted to inflict it.' He would not consider that by not doing it he was causing preventible pain on such an enormous scale. That is typical of the struggle between the two parties. I have chosen that example, not because it is an exaggerated one, or because it is an unfair one. I have chosen it because in that case there is no veil between the act and its consequences. One can see plainly that the letting free of those infected rats might produce those consequences. But now just let me take a hypothesis. I will suppose that, instead of its bringing a plague, the killing of those rats would lead to the discovery of the antiseptic treatment. That antiseptic treatment put an endsubstantially, of course, I mean-to an amount of human misery that we can scarcely realise. The suppuration of wounds, accidents leading to months of painful sickness and a recovery which was only partial and left the people maimed, the horrors of war doubled, the deaths in war enormously increased, were all consequences of sepsisit was just as bad as a plague. Now if, instead of it being a question of Either you extirpate the rats or you have the plague,' it had been 'Either you extirpate the rats or the antiseptic method will not be discovered, and the suppuration of wounds and all the horrors which follow from that must remain in the world,' you see at once that to the thoughtful man the argument in the two cases is precisely the same 'If I do not inflict this pain, I permit an unmeasured amount of pain which I could prevent.' In my opinion, when you once see clearly the causal connection between the pain you inflict and the diminution of pain which follows from it, it makes no difference in what way it follows. Your duty is to take that line which produces the minimum total pain, and whether the pain is inflicted pain, or whether it is preventible pain which is not prevented, is in my opinion one and the same thing. |