The ethics of animal experimentation

Animal experimentation arouses great emotion in many people, perhaps more especially in Britain, and this has increased as more sophisticated medical and non-medical animal experiments are demanded by modern research. The Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876 is the only legal regulation of experiments in animals, and many of its clauses are ambiguous. So in 1963 a committee of enquiry - the Littlewood Committee - was set up. Dr Lane-Petter examines the emotional and factual background to the enquiry, and discusses in an ethical context the usefulness and positive advantages of animal experiments compared with those of possible substitutes and in some detail three of the questions left unanswered by the Littlewood Committee.