MORAL ISSUE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In regard to your editorial (or whatever) The Moral Issue in today's copy of the CRIMSON, I would like to inquire of your young reporter if he is aware that there is a moral issue in the attitude of the Anti-Vivisection Society, which he lampoons. Does he know of the reflections on this subject by Albert Schweitzer in Reverence for Life or by Carl von Weizsacker (who gave a course on Scientific Method at Harvard in Summer, 1952), in The World View of Physics or by Martin Buber in I and Thou? Is he prepared to reject all philosophical slantings from Hinduism on the dangers of the development of power by the exploitation of lower by higher intelligences or in the regarding of living beings as "things"?

This is not to "take sides" with the Anti-Vivisection Society, or with either opposition in the recent legal breaching of the Animal Rescue Societies by the Medical Laboratories in Massachusetts. It is to say that some of the profoundest thinkers on the troubles of our times have pointed out a peril involved in scientific animal experimentation which does not clearly face the meaning of the physical torture it is based upon, and that such residual indifference to suffering is a breeder for the gas chamber and human lamp-shade.

My own answer to The Moral Issue would be a suggestion that the Soviet Government raise a monument to Laika, where the school children can come with flowers and tears for the death of a friend, and joy, admiration and gratitude for the heroism of the first space traveller. Such emotions would contribute much more to the bettering of international relations than the panic of hysterical fear and hostility now evident.

And may I remind your clever caricaturist that the old lady in the funny hat who is a member of the Anti-Vivisectionist Society, or any other protesting minority group, historically gives as valid and essential a contribution to Americanism as the research workers who have developed Salk vaccine?