Evidence of Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton before the Royal Commission on Vivisection, Wednesday, 24th July, 1907.

  • Moulton, John Fletcher Moulton, 1st baron, 1844-1921.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Evidence of Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton before the Royal Commission on Vivisection, Wednesday, 24th July, 1907. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    What should guide the Home Office entirely is, whether or not the applicants for certificates or licences arc suitable for research. Whether or not they have taken out a medical diploma which gives them the nominal right to jiractise, when they have no intention to do so, but mean to devote their wdiole time to research, is a matter which should be quite immaterial, I am quite satisfied that there are now, and there will be yet more such in the future, men in the very first rank of research work, who do nothing in the way of the practice of medicine and deliberately abstain from it because it would interfere with their scientific research by taking their time and their attention. Those j)eople ought to be encouraged rather than discouraged. Therefore this proposed restriction would, in my opinion, be a retrograde step. So that I should strongly advise that neither of those two things should l)e adopted as a principle, 1275G. Have you studied the Act with a view to suggesting amendments ?—You see, 1 agree with a great deal of it, excepting that I think there are a certain class of men who should have these unrestricted powers of experiment, and that the practice of the Home Office with regard to non-painful experiments should not have regard to the nature of the experiment, but simply to the reliability of the person on whom is placed the responsibility of the anaesthesia. With these modifications I do not Cjuarrel with the Act, because ^ I do not think that the real worker, if he is not really hampered in his research, chafes against these res trie- tions, which are, after all, only a recognition of what I might call the fundamental principle of his action. : ] He is working that pain may be lessened. Pie is a | person whom I have always found extremely sensitive . j