The Rural Voice, 1987-04, Page 6THE GREY & BRUCE MUTUAL
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4 THE RURAL VOICE
FEEDBACK
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ANIMAL RESEARCH AND
HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY
I am a new subscriber to The Rural
Voice, have always lived on the fringe
of the rural area, and admired the com-
mon sense of farming friends. What a
disappointment it was to encounter a
column by Adrian Vos, titled Animal
Welfare and Common Sense, which
appeared to be totally lacking in that
commodity.
The sensible way to ensure that
our dogs do not end up in research
laboratories is not to allow seizure of
those whose owners are slow or neg-
ligent in searching for them when lost,
but to require researchers to apply their
ingenuity to finding altemative meth-
ods which do not involve unreliable
animal "models" of human disease.
This argument is endorsed by the
.American Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine. I agree that
irresponsible dog owners should be
disciplined too.
No one knows what medical treat-
ment might have been possible with-
out animal research; many Oriental
methods are slowly receiving scientific
Western recognition of their efficacy
now. Surgeons admit that major ad-
vances in plastic surgery resulted from
World War II, and that trauma and
cardiovascular surgery owe much to
the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts.
Is this a common-sense justification
for more war?
Did the Environics poll show
how many people are aware that most
animal experiments do not lead to any
useful medical conclusion, or how
many actually know anything about
the treatment of research animals
which gives grounds for believing that
it is fair to excellent? We are all good
at believing what we want to believe;
is that common sense?
R. M. Kesteven
R. R. 1, Sydenham