State House Is Likely To Reject 'Greyhound Bill'

A mid a recent flurry of controversy over animal rights, a Massachusetts congressional committee late last week recommended that the state vote to continue allowing the use of greyhound dogs in medical research.

A bill field by the New England Anti-Vivisection Society to prohibit such experiments will go to the State House for debate in coming weeks. If, as the committee recommended, the state rejects the bill, those opposing greyhound use in medical experiments said yesterday they will "take their case to the public."

Committee members said they expect legislators to uphold their unanimous recommendation to continue greyhound use, although state senators said they are unsure when they will vote on the bill.

The passage of a bill prohibiting greyhound use in medical experiments would be "extremely damaging" to medical study, said Jane H. Corlette, Harvard's director of government relations.

Greyhound dogs are important to medical research because of their human-like heart and large blood volume, as well as researchers' already solid understanding of their internal systems.

Several medical research experts, including Dean of the Medical School Daniel C. Tosteson; last week testified before the committee in favor of experiments with greyhounds. The University and its 12 affiliated hospitals play a critical role in medical research in Boston.

Harvard officials maintain that the greyhounds the University and in affiliated hospitals buy are too slow to race and would othearwise be killed.

But those opposing greyhound use argue that it is inhumane, that researchers sometimes acquire research animals by questionable means, and that surplus greyhounds should be used as house pets, said Elizabeth B. Stengel, a legislative analyst at Boston University Medical School.

"The research committee is prostituting the surplus-dog situation," said Aaron Medlock, a member of the New England Anti Vivisection Society, a group of citizens concerned with animal rights.

Yet bill opponents like State Senator Edward L. Burke, a committee member, milled it "a very poorly drafted place of legislation," adding that arguments of anti-vivisectionists were "very weak."