"But how infinitely more wisely and economically would these results have come if the physiologists as a body had met public opinion half- way long ago, agreed that the situation was a genuinely ethical one, and that their corporate responsibility was involved, and had given up the preposterous claim that every scientist has an unlimited right to vivisect, for the amount or mode of which no man, not even a colleague, can call him to account.[1]
"The fear of State rules and inspectors on the part of the investigators is, I think, well founded; they would probably mean either stupid interference or become a sham. But the public demand for regulation rests on a perfectly sound ethical principle, the denial of which by the scientists speaks ill for either their moral sense or their political ability. So long as the physiologists disclaim corporate responsibility, formulate no code of vivisectional ethics for laboratories to post up and enforce, appoint no censors, pass no votes of condemnation or exclusion, propose of themselves no law, so long must the antivivisectionist agitation, with all its expensiveness, idiocy, bad temper, untruth, and vexatiousness, continue, as the only possible means of bringing home to the careless or callous individual experimenter the fact that the sufferings of HIS animals are somebody else's business as well as his own, and that there is `a God in Israel' to whom he owes account.
"WILLIAM JAMES.
"Cambridge, Mass.,
"May 5 (1909)."
[1] "Unnecessary and offensive in the highest degree would it be, … by legislation of any kind, to attempt to dictate or control how, and by whom, and for what purposes, and under what conditions and upon what animals in the laboratories, … experiments should be made. The decision in these matters SHOULD BE LEFT WHOLLY TO THOSE IN CHARGE OF THESE INSTITUTIONS."—From a memorial of Dr. Simon Flexner, Dr. W. T. Councilman, Dr. H. C. Ernst, and other members of the Association of American Physicians against Senate Bill regulating vivisection in the District of Columbia, May 4, 1896.
This is a very strong indictment. If he misunderstood the antivivisectionists, we must remember that Henry Clay in 1851 could see nothing good in William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition party. But James knew precisely what the vivisection of animals meant, for he had taught physiology, and had been engaged in experimentation for more than a quarter of a century. When he speaks of the power of "club opinion to quell independence of mind," he explains a situation which otherwise might remain obscure. When he asserts that certain groups "cannot be trusted to be truthful or moral," we have the explanation of a philosopher who was not given to over-statement.
Do we not find in this letter an outline of what Professor James would suggest as steps toward vivisection reform? In perfunctory inspection of laboratories or supervision by State inspectors, he has no confidence; such inspection would probably degenerate into a sham. A well-known experimentor once said to the rwiter: "Your inspectors of laboratories must be either well-educated and competent men, or else officials of the grade of the average policemen. If the belong to the first class, do you think they will become detectives and spies? If, on the other hand, they earn the salary of the average policeman, will they be intelligent enough to discover abuses, and invariably of such rectitude that a ten-dollar bill will not induce official blindness?"
It would seem that this objection to State inspection cannot be lightly considered. For the prevention of cruelty it may be right to permit certain persons always to have the right to enter any laboratory whatever without previous notice; the fact that they may come at any time constitutes the safeguard to a limited degree. But such men must be persons unpaid by the State, of intelligence sufficient to comprehend all peculiarities of experimentation, and of a probity that no bribe can disturb. It would be far better to allow things to go on as they are than to have cruelty protected by public confidence in a legal supervision that did not sufficiently supervise and restrian.
It appears to me, as I have said elsewhere, that first of all public opinion should be aroused, not so much to condemn all experimentation upon animals, as to know with certainty the facts about it. Of the vivisection of animals in England and America carried on in secret, the general public, even of the more intelligent class, has no more accurate inforumation than two centuries ago it had of the methods of the Spanish Inquisition in the dungeons of Madrid or Seville. How did it happen that an institution so execrated and so universally condemned to-day, managed for centuries almost unchallenged, to exist? Precisely as the closed laboratory manges to exist among us, becauseof the secrecy in which it was surrounded, and the general confidence which it claimed as its due. Reform canot make headway so long as the dungeon is dark and the laboratory is locked. The strongest line of defence is the maintenance of ignorance, even though we have the curious anomaly, existing nowhere else, of Science covering herself with darkness and hiding behind ignorance. It was one of the ablest advocates for vivisection that America has produced, who, in an address before the American Academy of Medicine, condemned the secrecy of the physiological laboratory as "a grave and profound mistake," adding that "if there be necessary secrecy, there is wrong." No more significant condemntation of present-day methods has ever been uttered.
An eminent London physician, Dr. Greville Macdonald, wrote not long ago in favour of that publicity of vivisection, or rather of that knowledge of its methods which should precede any attempt at legislation. The question of interference is one that the State must decide, though the dangers and advantages of vivisection can only be arrayed in intelligible order by one who understands the subject. "But the public, HAVING HEARD THE EVIDENCE, must decide whether or no the State shall more willingly sanction cruelty in the secret laboratory than in the highway…. I most reluctantly admit, it is almost impossible to get evidence upon such points, and for the reason THAT THE THINGS WHICH WE FEAR ARE PRACTISED IN SECRET PLACES. Nevertheless, it is just because of this secrecy that the public have a right to make trouble. But for John Howard's crusade against the horrors of the prisons, the public had never known the truth, their infamies had never been remedied; and the public have now as much right to question the physiologist's repudiations as they had then to doubt the denials of the gaolers. The evidence is sufficient to justify, in my own mind, a large measure of sympathy with the antivivisectionists, though I am not of them."
What lines of procedure in the direction of reform would Dr. Macdonald advocate? He admits that "to prohibit vivisection altogether would be to invite its performance in such secrecy as no system of espionage could unearth. Legislation can seldom do more than compromise, because it cannot essay the impossible." He admits that "no Act of Parliament can eradicate the spirit that makes cruelty possible." But there are some things that may be done, and upon four points Dr. Macdonald believes legislation is desireable. "The first is that vivisection ought to be prohibited for the purposes of teaching, because it is often misleading and always demoralizing. The second is that the inspection of the physiological laboratories should be carried out more systematically and always unexpectedly, and that the inspectors should largely be increased in number. Thirdly, I would prohibit all dissections, with or without anaesthetics, upon live horses and dogs. Fourthly, I would make the administration of curare for purposes of experiments a criminal act."