Vivisection
Sir: Your correspondent, Lillie Houghton (November 25) has produced an emotive and misleading letter concerning animal experimentation, or as she obviously prefers to term it 'vivisection.' In particular, she has seized upon the well-known fact that results obtained in one species cannot, with certainty, be transferred to another, and has concluded that animal experimentation to test drugs for teratogenicity (effects on the developing foetus) or for 'anything else' are 'just a waste of time and money and suffering, and it is high time they were made illegal.'
This is nonsense, and the fact that she herself has selected teratogenicity should make it clear that testing of drugs in animals is, at least so far, essential in order to minimise the chance of another thalidomide disaster. Thalidomide's notorious effects can .be seen in pregnant laboratory animals, and although it can never be certain that all potential hazards in man will be demonstrable in animals, most such effects will emerge before placing humans at risk.
Do anti-vivisectionists like Miss Houghton really ask that drugs should be tested only in systems such as tissue-culture before being tested in humans? Would they really wish that testing drugs for teratogenicity should be done on pregnant women without the preliminary screening in animals, which would eliminate the vast majority of drugs which produce malformation of the foetus? Such practice would, I suggest, be inhumanity of the highest order.
R. J. Bywater
18 Swanston View, Edinburgh
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