‘On Behalf of Medical Science’

This is in answer to your editorial “On Behalf of Medical Science (Sept. 9), on the use of animals in research. The editorial is wrong in many ways.

--It should not be necessary to point out the obvious moral implications. Medical research could be man’s greatest endeavor. The use and abuse of animals has degraded it into an exercise in barbarism, an infamy that outrages anyone with a conscience. That the shameful practice of vivisection is widespread, tolerated and even praised by people who should know better shows how far we have yet to go before becoming civilized.

--Despite the many claims of those who find it profitable, it delays the advent of much needed medical cures by sidetracking most of the available time and money into useless, repetitive experiments that serve no useful purpose and contribute nothing whatsoever to the welfare of man.

--It fosters among those engaged in the medical profession an attitude of callousness and indifference to suffering, with the patients being regarded as mere subjects to be experimented upon, and the physicians mainly concerned with their own careers and financial rewards.

--It encourages cruelty to animals among the young, sanctioned by educators who teach them that compassion and respect for other forms of life are to be stifled in the name of “science.”

ARLETTE ROSS THOMAS

Redondo Beach