Madam, - I write to you on the desperate issue of vivisection at Trinity College, Dublin, of which I have the privilege of being an honorand.
I am not qualified to judge of technical claims on behalf of the therapeutic benefits to be gained from vivisection. Eminent medical colleagues here tell me that these are marginal at best and that other means of research are largely available.
The issue is also an ethical one. What right have we, ourselves a primate to torture other animals for our (presumed) ends? Vivisection is a hideous abuse of the hominid capacity to inflict pain and death on the defenceless.
It is my ardent hope that TCD will give a lead in dissociating itself from the abuse. - Yours, etc,