Medicine: Anti-antivivisectionist

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Yandell Henderson, professor of applied physiology at Yale, was angry. Cause: anti-vivisectionists will introduce a bill at the coming short session of Congress to prohibit the use of animals for medical purposes or scientific investigations within the District of Columbia. Such District law would be a mean blow at medical research, for the states next would be induced to imitate its restrictions, with a Constitutional Amendment in prospect.

Angry because he must sneakily buy his dogs from scamps, because Connecticut's law forces him to pay at least $5 for any sort of dog, most of all because he hates nonsensical restrictions, Professor Henderson wrote a letter (printed last week) to the American Medical Association. He urged the Association to hire shrewd lawyers to fight the anti-vivisectionists in the District of Columbia. He demanded that doctors no longer oppose such laws, as they have "in the past, merely by pious professions regarding all the good that science does." They should initiate fore-fending bills "requiring that all stray dogs taken up by any public agency or humane society . . . shall be at the disposal of medical schools, research institutes, and government bureaus that have use for dogs. . . .

"Such a bill would be analogous to the anatomic materials acts of many states. Medical schools obtain human bodies for dissection under such laws. Before there were such laws there were cases in which grave robbers were hired."