Man vs. Dog: a Bioethical Trade-Off : Animal Research Reflects Our Regard for Human Life

Those of us old enough to have read newspapers in 1944 still remember the excitement that surrounded the announcement of the first “blue-baby” operation in November of that year. As the result of experimental surgery on about 200 anesthetized dogs, researchers at Johns Hopkins Hospital had perfected an operation to treat a previously lethal heart disease of children. The procedure was a giant step toward the modern era of cardiac surgery that has since transformed the lives of millions of patients and their families.

As astonishing as it may seem, there were organized protests against the continuation of the life-saving research. A rapid series of dramatic advances by American medical scientists had aroused the ire of a strident group of Baltimore animal-rights advocates, or anti-vivisectionists. Over the next few years, harassment of laboratory personnel and animal vendors caused increasing difficulties in obtaining stray or pound dogs. The anti-vivisectionists demanded nothing less than the prohibition of all animal research.

Then, as now, Baltimore was one of America’s great centers of medical progress. Faced with the potential tragedy of halting vital work, the Johns Hopkins leadership brought the problem to the Baltimore City Council in 1949. Although many prominent people came to the public hearings to speak out in favor of animal experimentation, the highlight of the deliberations was the dramatic testimony of the operation’s co-inventor, Dr. Helen Taussig, the world’s first pediatric cardiologist.

This extraordinary woman, as well known for her compassion as for her brilliance, did not enter the hearing room alone. She brought with her a joyous parade of healthy, smiling, former blue babies for whom animal research had provided the gift of life. Many of the children brought along their own pet dogs. When an anti-vivisection bill came to a referendum at the next municipal election, the people of Baltimore defeated it by a majority of more than 4 to 1.

Forty years have passed, and the American public is once again being bombarded with self-righteous protests against medical progress. Once again, the obstructionists are few in number but loud in destructive clamor; once again their weapons are half-truths and a disordered perception of morality and society’s values.

The dangerous campaign being waged by the animal-rights activists is not a struggle against medical science alone, it is a struggle against humanity.

The ultimate question that Americans must answer was framed by Harvard physiologist Walter B. Cannon as long ago as 1908, during the first of the several periodic revolts against common sense that have imperiled the welfare of the sick since that time: “Shall men suffer and die to save the lives of the experimental animal, or shall the experimental animals die to mitigate pain and wide calamity among men?”

The anti-vivisectionists would have us believe that animal research is no longer necessary because it can now be replaced by artificial constructs and computer-generated methodology. They insist that this is so, even though the better-informed among them must be aware that theNational Research Council has spent three years and $315,000 studying whether such a claim has any hope of becoming a reality in the foreseeable future. The council’s recently released report comes to a succinct conclusion: “Animal experiments are still critically important to further improvements in medicine and biomedical science.”

The report describes contributions that such experiments have made to the treatment of patients with polio, AIDS, cardiovascular and kidney diseases and psychological illnesses, as well as those who require surgery of any kind, particularly organ transplantation.

Friends of scientific research were disappointed that the study could not come up with evidence that might indicate at least some potential for an early decrease in the need for animals. It is well known, anti-vivisectionists to the contrary, that most scientists avoid the use of animals whenever possible, if for no other reason than the pragmatic one that they are expensive to acquire and maintain.

The many splinter groups of anti-vivisectionists go by names as seemingly innocuous as the Animal Welfare Institute to appellations that leave no doubt about disruptive intentions, such as the Animal Liberation Front. Regardless of name or avowed motivation, virtually all the rights groups exist to stop all research on animals, whether in one direct legislative action or in a series of progressive limitations that eventually will make such studies prohibitively expensive.

All of this is undertaken in the name of some disordered concept of mercy and the purported equality of all God’s creatures. Deliberately ignored are the great gifts that have been made and will continue to be made to the health of human beings (and of domestic and farm animals) by research that involves animals. Most misguided of all, the activists mistake the Judeo-Christian ethic that is the foundation of Western morality. In that ethic, there is no higher good than the value we place on human life.