Mark Twain Said `No’ to Vivisection
In case you started to lose faith in historical icons after learning that Thomas Edison tortured animals, here’s an amazing animal rights letter from author Mark Twain to the London Anti-Vivisection Society on May 26, 1899:
“I believe I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn’t. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. It is so distinctly a matter of feeling with me, and is so strong and so deeply-rooted in my make and constitution, that I am sure I could not even see a vivisector vivisected with anything more than a sort of qualified satisfaction. I do not say I should not go and look on; I only mean that I should almost surely fail to get out of it the degree of contentment which it ought, of course, to be expected to furnish.”
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Vivisection is defined to varying degrees of animal dissection. The most common definition is “the scientific act of operating, cutting, or otherwise experimenting on living animals.”
To learn more about vivisection and what we can to help bring it to an end check out the American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS), an organization that has been “working to end the use of animals in science” for 125 years.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Mark Twain was a seriously cool man.