Yesterday's discussion in this column revealed that medical education, medical research and actual healing practice in New Orleans were being handicapped by lack of enough dogs for the furtherance of m a n's unending battle against disease. What brought these facts to light began as an effort merely to find out why it was at present impractical — impossible, really—to bring an artificial k i d-aiey to New Orleans. However, the acute shortage and high cost of dogs for experimental purposes transcends that one field of endeavor. It impairs every area of the teaching and practice of medicine.
Without dogs, medical education Would come to pretty much of a halt. I th}nk all of us can agree that it would be bad for physicians to gain their first experience on the surgical handling of living tissues from human subjects, In medical education every operation a physician might be called upon to undertake in practice is first performed by the student on an animal.
