Comment: A Comment from a Humane Experimental Technique Perspective on the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Report on The Ethics of Research Involving Animals

W.M.S. Russell

The title of this report does not do it justice. Personally, I have been interested in the scientific problems of how to lessen the sufferings of, first, human beings, and, second, at least vertebrate animals. That this is desirable is axiomatic and selfevident to all sane persons, so I have never had the slightest interest in ethics. Since the ethical parts of the book are of no interest to me, I shall not comment on them, except for a friendly wave of the hand to Jeremy Bentham (pp. 41, 49), the only person who ever talked sense on the subject, as he sits embalmed in his glass case in University College London (1). But this book also contains a good deal of well-compiled and well-presented factual material, and this certainly does merit comment.