§ SIR JOHN ROLLESTON () LeicesterTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, in view of the 14,906 experiments upon living animals in 1902, he can obtain from the institutions or persons to whom certificates were granted, a statement of the practical results in scientific knowledge or in the improvement of medical treatment which can be traced to those experiments.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) Certificates are not granted under the Cruelty to Animals Act, 1876, to institutions. Persons holding certificates under the Act publish in considerable numbers in books, journals, and the proceedings of learned societies, reports of the experiments performed by them. I think that these reports enable those who are interested and qualified to judge as to the results which the experiments have yielded, or are likely to yield, in the advancement of scientific knowledge or the improvement of medical treatment. I may point out that by far the most of the experiments quoted in the Question are inoculations, many of which are performed either for diagnosis or in connection with the preparation and standardising of drugs and curative sera, of which the practical utility is well known.