Animal Liberation(part 5)

It was a long time ago that I stopped writing about this topic, because of being busy at that time. Iman asked me about the issue of medical experiments then, and I promised him to address this . I write about two experiments here and ask for your judgment:

O.S. Ray and R.J. Barrett of Pittsburgh gave electric shocks to the feet of 1,042 mice. They then caused convulsions by giving more intense shocks through cup-shaped electrodes applied to the animals’ eyes or through pressure spring clips attached to their ears. Unfortunately some or the mice who “successfully completed Day One training were found sick or dead prior to testing on Day Two.”[Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 1969,vol. 67, pp. 110-116]


At the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London, w., Feldberg and S.L. Sherwood injected chemicals into the brains of cats-“with a number of widely different substances, recurrent patterns of reaction were obtained, Retching, vomiting, defaecation, increased salvation and greatly accelerated respiration leading to panting were common features.”…
The injection into the brain of a large dose of Tubocuraine caused the cat to jump “from the table to the floor and then straight into its cage, where it started calling more and more noisily whilst moving about restlessly and jerkily…finally the cat fell with legs and neck flexed , jerking in rapid clonic movements , the condition being that of a major [epileptic]convulsion… within a few seconds the cat got up, ran for a few yards at high speed and fell in another fit. The whole process was repeated several times within the next ten minutes, during which the at lost faeces and foamed at the mouth.” This animal finally died thirty-five minutes after the brain injection[Journal of Physiology, 1954,vol.123,pp. 148-167]

Do you think we can bring any argument to justify this?
(posted by Farid)
Posted:Tuesday, May 13, 2003 |