Experiments On Animals Quotes

I want medical experiments on animals stopped. They don't do anything, and they don't work.

I was asked by the National Institute of Health to be their scientific discussant on the effects of these drug [Ritalin] at a big conference they held. Beforehand, I reviewed all of the important literature on the issue. Even with experiments on animals. When they're given these drugs they stop playing; they stop being curious; they stop socializing; they stop trying to escape. We make good caged animals with these drugs. And we make good caged kids by knocking their spontaneity out of them. And, Michael, the other thing is that these drugs enforce obsessive behavior.

You ask about my opinion on vivisection. I quite agree that it is justifiable for real investigations on physiology; but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.

Typically, defenders of experiments on animals do not deny that animals suffer. They cannot deny the animals' suffering, because they need to stress the similarities between humans and other animals in order to claim that their experiments may have some relevance for human purposes. The experimenter who forces rats to choose between starvation and electric shock to see if they develop ulcers (which they do) does so because the rat has a nervous system very similar to a human being's, and presumably feels an electric shock in a similar way.

Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.

An animal experiment cannot be justifiable unless the experiment is so important that the use of a brain-damaged human would be justifiable.

It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life. Towards this end, experiments on living animals in classrooms should be stopped. To encourage cruelty in the name of science can only destroy the finer emotions of affection and sympathy, and breed an unfeeling callousness in the young towards suffering in all living creatures.

Those who experiment on animals should never be able to quiet their own conscience by telling themselves that these cruelties have a worthy aim.

If experiments on animals were abandoned on grounds of compassion, mankind would have made a fundamental advance.