§ 79. Sir GEORGE GREENWOODasked the Comptroller of the Household, as representing the National Health Insurance Commissioners, whether the painful experiments on living animals performed by Messrs. Noel Paton and Leonard Finlay, and described by them in the "Quarterly Journal of Experimental Physiology" for March, 1917, were paid for in whole or in part by moneys provided out of the general taxation of the country for the purposes of national insurance; if so, whether such payment was sanctioned by him; whether it is the considered policy of the National Insurance Commissioners to encourage such painful experiments and to pay for them out of moneys provided by the taxpayers of the country; and whether, in view of the fact that numbers of those taxpayers strongly disapprove of 534 such experiments, he will prohibit such application of national funds in the future?
§ The COMPTROLLER of the HOUSEHOLD (Sir Edwin Cornwall)A grant of about £50,000 per annum is made out of Parliamentary funds for the purposes of medical research, payments being made from time to time through the Chairman of the National Health Insurance Joint Committee for the purposes of approved schemes. The approval of the schemes has been limited to the general objects of the proposed research, and has not covered the methods by which such research work is carried on, but from inquiries I have made as to the experiments in question, it is clear that they have thrown very important light upon one of the most distressing and prevalent diseases affecting child life.
§ Sir G. GREENWOODAre we to take it now to be the settled policy of the National Insurance Commissioners to undertake these experiments on living animals and to pay for them out of funds contributed by the general taxpayers for national purposes?
§ Sir E. CORNWALLI do not think that any restriction should be put upon this research work that is not imposed upon any other research work.