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the view was expressed that it was desirable for such immunisation
to be effected more frequently than is generally done at
present.
Anti-vivisection societies undertake activities in no way
connected with painful experiments on animals. Animal defence
is merely the cloak of a movement directed against activities which
have nothing to do with animal experimentation, for instance,
such as:—
(u) the school medical service, (b) the maternity and child
welfare service, (c) anti-tuberculosis measures, and (d) the
pasteurisation of milk in order to diminish the incidence ot nonpulmonary
tuberculosis which slays several thousand persons
per annum, mainly children, and to prevent such epidemics as
the recent Bournemouth and Poole typhoid epidemic—
pasteurisation of milk can cause no pain to any animal—
and supports other activities equally alien to the ostensible reason
for which support and subscriptions are invited from the public.
The so-called anti-vivisection movement is said to have collected
from the public approximately half a million pounds during recent
years. As a further instance, in "Progress To-day," April/June,
1936, there is an article by a medical man on "Nakedness—its
relation to physical and moral health '' in which the congregation
together of men and women in a naked condition is extolled as an
aid to health, in fact, a public health measure of the highest order.
It is stated in the article that in England at the moment the movement
has a large and growing following with some fourteen
recognised clubs having their own grounds and residences. " The
object of the movement is to make nakedness decent and to remove
the taboos imposed on the human body by Church and State in the
interests of health." In what way does " boosting " of nudism
defend animals ? There is no way in which medical men with
unusual ideas or who are opposed in medical matters to accepted
world-wide views of medical science, or who wish to obtain a reputation
for daring originality of thought, can obtain such publicity
and circulation for their ideas than by introducing them into the
so-called animal defence movement.
If the medical profession is changing its views in the direction
approved by the President of the Clapton and District AntiVivisection
Society it is difficult to understand why he, with a few
medical supporters, should form the Medical Advisory Committee
of the so-called Health, Education and Research Council at the
headquarters of the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society
to give "encouragement and support" to herbalism, psychotherapeutics
and so forth and "insistence on the individual rights"
of those practitioners referred to as "Non-conformists in Medicine."