ARE LAWS REGULATING VIVISECTION NECESSARY?
We will now briefly consider an interesting and highly practical side of
the question. In certain countries, as in England, there are laws
regulating vivisection. In other countries, as in France, Germany, and
Italy, there is nothing analogous; consequently public opinion on this
point is uncertain.
In the beginning of this book, I acknowledged that, in spite of the
exaggeration of their complaints, anti-vivisectionists had rendered real
service to general morality by calling attention to the excesses committed
by a few vivisectionists in the past. No one recognises this benefit more
than I, and I willingly grant that their preaching has, on the whole, had a
happy result. Is it however, expedient to go further, and to prohibit or
simply to regulate vivisection?
For reasons given above, it seems to me that prohibition would be absurd
and injurious, as well in the land of Harvey and Hunter as in the lands of
Bernard and Pasteur, of Galvani and Spallanzani, of Johannes Mueller and
Helmholtz. Prohibition would mean closing the book of science, stemming all
progress, condemning humanity eternally to the same miseries, to writhe,
powerless, in the same old track. Fortunately, no one thinks seriously of
suppressing physiological experimentation; and, therefore, we have no need
to dwell on this point.
But regulation is quite a different thing from prohibition. Now, I showed
that certain practices should be condemned. Should they, however, be
condemned by law? Why should the law be substituted for the exigencies of
science? Here is a physiologist, fully conscious of the magnitude of his
task, to whom the government or a university has confided the direction of
a laboratory, who finds himself face to face with a problem needing to be
solved. It is impossible to limit his efforts and to lay down principles
from which he could not turn aside. Just as he is referred to for the
purchase of his instruments and the nomination of his staff, so must he be
left full latitude in the arrangement of his experiments. Nothing is so
pernicious in matters of science as official regulation; it takes away all
initiative, and does not allow the genius of the inventor to have full
play.
As a matter of fact, even in England, the only country where up to the
present the conditions of vivisection have been regulated by law, no one
has ventured to confine the initiative of the experimenter within narrow
regulations. And it is fortunate that no one has ventured to define the
limits of experimental investigation, for most excellent work is due to
contemporary English Physiologists--Schaefer, Horsley, Sherrington, Langley,
Bayliss, Starling, Stirling, etc. They have been able to pursue their
researches freely, to the very great advantage of our science.
One should not, then, think of prohibiting such or such a proceeding in
vivisection. It may even be dangerous to absolutely prohibit vivisections
without anaesthesia. I make no mystery of my opinion on this point, since I
have distinctly declared further back that no sensitive animal should ever
be operated upon. I regard as a moral error all vivisection made on an
animal capable of suffering. But I would leave the physiologist to be the
judge in the matter. I do not believe the law should take his place; for
perhaps cases will occur where anaesthesia is impossible, and he cannot be
placed under the hard alternative of not making an experiment which his
conscience as a _savant_ judges to be useful, or of disobeying the law.
Moreover, how are the many possible conditions of an experiment to be
precisely laid down? Is the law to indicate the kind of anaesthetic to be
used, and the degree of anaesthesia to be attained? Is it to prohibit all
experiments on toxic actions? Many insoluble difficulties would be
encountered, the sole result of which would be to paralyse the _savant_ in
his researches or to cause him to break the laws of his country.
And yet I recognise that regulation is indispensable, but it ought not to
bear on the nature of the experiment; it should deal solely with the
person experimenting.
I believe the right of practising vivisection should not be accorded to
every citizen, to every medical student; it should not be permissible for
any chance person to take a dog, to fasten him down on the operating table,
and to experiment on the brain, the glands, the muscles of that unfortunate
animal, for that chance person is, in all probability, a clumsy and
ignorant man. Vivisection may not be undertaken in a light-hearted fashion.
After all, science would lose nothing if such an experiment were not made,
and I see no advantage in encouraging attempts of this sort which are
condemned beforehand to be fruitless.
But in a laboratory of physiology, under the direction of the professor and
his assistants, under their moral responsibility, vivisection should not be
prohibited; the number of vivisections should not be limited, and no
restrictions ought to be imposed.
As I have no intention of formulating or drawing up regulations or enacting
laws, I shall not indicate the penalties to which those who violate the
law should be liable. I shall content myself with enunciating this double
principle: entire liberty in vivisection for professors of physiology and
their assistants; prohibition of vivisection for all others.