DOGS IN MEDICAL RESEARCH

In various research centers throughout the United States researchers are being harassed by small vociferous groups whose activities are more apparent than their insight. These groups, at least some of which may consist essentially of well meaning if misguided persons, are hampering research and interfering with medical progress by their determined efforts to keep dogs out of medical research laboratories. These persons apparently are willing to permit stray dogs to be killed by the thousands in city pounds but are unwilling to admit that the dogs could serve humanity if used for research. Their principal protest is that research is cruel and that the animals are treated inhumanely. Sometimes they point to specific instances in which they observed inadequate care of animals. Such observations obviously strengthen the arguments of those who would remove, if possible, dogs and probably other animals eventually from the reach of researchers. Animals used for research