§ Mr. Peter FreemanI beg to present a humble Petition. The Petition sheweth that there have been 23 million experiments on living animals during the present half century. More than one million of these have been for the purpose of cancer research alone, yet the actual number of deaths, as well as the percentage of mortality, from this dread disease have increased every year during the same period of 50 years, and are now 156 more than double the number at the beginning of the century. Your petitioners therefore pray:
Believing vivisection, with or without anaesthetics, to be morally unjustifiable, scientifically useless, dangerous and demoralising to the community, earnestly pray this Honourable House to pass a Bill withdrawing the sanction of the law from this practice.This Petition has been presented to this House every year for over 20 years, and I now ask that some further inquiry into the usefulness or otherwise of such experiments as are carried on behind closed doors, with no public report, information or accounts available, even to Members of this House, be now made.
§ To lie upon the Table.