Read other letters about this article

• Monday, February 6, 2006 10:41 PM

  Vivisection

  Anonymous writes:

  This sentence reads as if the animals were under some kind of local anesthesia, like you get when you go to the dentist for a filling.

  This is never done, as it would be illegal. In the few experiments that require vivisection, animals are always under full general anesthesia. They are fully asleep and experience nothing. They are almost always given pain relief (analgesia) as well, even though it's redundant because they can't feel anything. Their anesthesia level is monitored with the same equipment used during human surgeries.

  While I have zero sympathy for extremists of any stripe who use actual or threatened violence, if you believe this you are extremely naive. First of all, there's not a single law in America which protects mice, birds, and amphibians that make up the great majority of animals experimented on in this country. If you think that every mouse is put under general anaesthesia before it is dissected alive or otherwise painfully experimented on, you have never probably never been inside a research lab. And animal welfare laws give wide latitude toward researchers. They can do anything to animals they want that they can get past the review board, and which may or may not supervise them closely. For that matter, many experiments actually depend on the animal being responsive.

  Here's an entire book on the subject which I have put online. It's from a different era, but unfortunately most of it still applies today. http://hcoop.net/~ntk/ethical.txt

  —nkennedy Read nkennedy's other letters
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel