One final point, Mr. Chairman. I would hope that this committee would consider limiting the interest rate on the student loans provided to the flat 3 percent in effect with the National Defense Education Act loan program and the broader program of federally guaranteed loans for all students with family incomes below $15,000. I realize that the ongoing Federal rate authorized by the bill agrees with the rate established for the loan program in the other medical and health fields, and I am aware of the argument that the student benefits personally from the degree he earns and can, therefore, with a certain amount of logic be expected to pay the full cost to the Government of his loan. But, as I have tried to point out, the "production" of veterinarians is in the highest national interest. The student does participate materially in the cost of his education through the payment of tuition and fees. I would hope that, for these reasons, we would reduce to the bare minimum the "extra" money that we require from the impecunious student, as contrasted with the student whose family is more fortunate, as a result of the interest he must pay on his loan: I would hope that the members of this committee would agree with me that we do not wish to penalize a student because he elects to become a veterinarian rather than, say, a historian or because he is poor rather than rich. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity of presenting these statements to the committee. Mr. JARMAN. Thank you, President Aderhold, for your contribution to our hearings. Mr. Nelsen? Mr. NELSEN. With reference to the interest rate, I gather that you are suggesting the rate of interest be 3 percent mainly because the rate is 3 percent in other areas. However, I would assume if the rates were to be increased across the board, you would have no objections. Dr. ADERHOLD. I think in our institution, for instance, it ought to be the same. Mr. NELSEN. I would agree with you. I I want to thank you gentlemen for the very fine statement. think it is very well done and well presented. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. JARMAN. Thank you, President Aderhold. It is our understanding that Dr. Harrell and Dr. Wolf will not be able to be present beyond the hearing this morning, so the committee will try to accommodate them. We will hear these gentlemen next in order of witnesses. I would like to say this. We do have a number of witnesses still to be heard. A number have come a long distance and it certainly is the objective of the committee to try and finish the hearing today. To sit this afternoon, we will have to have authorization from the House of Representatives because we go into session at 12. Our objective will be to continue the hearing at 2 o'clock if we can get the authorization to continue. But I will say to you, one difficulty is that if we are not able to sit this afternoon, this hearing room is scheduled for another committee tomorrow morning. I think it emphasizes the necessity, if at all possi ble for the submitting of a written statement for the record, and then extemporaneously, if you will, or if you feel in a position to do so, emphasize the highlights of your testimony that have not been covered in the hearing so far this morning. Our next witness will be Dr. George T. Harrell, dean, Hershey School of Medicine, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, Pa. Dr. Harrell, it is a pleasure to have you here. Dr. HARRELL. Thank you. STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE T. HARRELL, DEAN, PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, AND DIRECTOR, MILTON S. HERSHEY MEDICAL CENTER Dr. HARRELL. Mr. Chairman, I have a prepared statement which I can submit for the record. (The prepared statement of Dr. Harrell follows:) STATEMENT of Dr. GEORGE T. HARRELL, DEAN, THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AND DIRECTOR, THE MILTON S. HERSHEY MEDICAL CENTER As dean of a college of medicine, I have responsibility for the education of medical students, for the care of human patients in a teaching hospital, and for overall supervision of the research of faculty and students. The students are both those in the medical curriculum and those working for graduate degrees in the physical and biological sciences as they apply to medicine. The research in medical schools ranges from the most basic phenomena concerned with life processes at the subcellular level through applied studies pointing toward the improvement of the care of human diseases. Medical schools also give training in research methods to students, house officers at the intern and resident level who are planning to practice a specialty within the field of medicine, and postdoctoral fellows who have completed formal training but are pointing toward an academic or research career. In the course of the teaching and the research continuously going on in a medical school, large use is made of animals. The detailed scientific knowledge increasingly accumulated through research requires animals of known background. Often the requirement is for specific genetic strains. Animals for medical teaching and research should be free of infectious agents which can cause disease in the animal. Indeed on many occasions the animal should be free of germs of any type in order to obtain the best scientific results from experiments. These specifications increasingly are requiring medical schools and other research institutions to have breeding colonies in which the genetic strain is precisely known. In addition, stock animals must be maintained in a situation where they can be stabilized as far as nutrition and environment are concerned. A wide variety of species of animals are used in medical schools and research institutions. Increasingly, medical teaching and research is turning to the use of primates, those animals which are closest to the human being in many aspects of their bodily processes. Animals are being observed over longer periods of time as increasing emphasis is placed on the study of aging and chronic illness. The chronic illnesses, particularly heart disease, diseases of blood vessels which may result in stroke, and cancer are becoming more and more frequent causes of death. Other chronic illnesses are the cause of disability and interference with the ability to perform productive work. Teaching and research increasingly are emphasizing the importance of behavior as a basis for understanding symptoms with which patients present to the physician. The stresses of living in our society often produce effects which mimic disease. Behavioral reactions also exaggerate symptoms which are produced by existing organic disease. These requirements for both teaching and research require skilled professional people trained in the handling of animals and the understanding of their bodily processes. The doctor of veterinary medicine with his trained technical assistants is the person who specifically seeks a career in the understanding of animals and their diseases. A veterinarian should be in charge of the facilities in a medical school or research institution where animals are housed, cared for, prepared for experimentation and observed afterward. These facilities usually include a central animal quarter specifically designed for a variety of species of animals. Many medical schools are establishing animal farms for breeding, quarantine, and long-term observations on animals. The farm type facilities more and more are including units specifically designed for work with primates. The primate units are the most costly to construct and operate, but they do permit observations which could not be done on other species of animals in other types of facilities. In this country at this time only 18 colleges of veterinary medicine are training the professional people needed effectively to implement animal care programs. Many states do not have veterinary schools and regional deficiencies in training facilities are marked. Increasingly. medical schools are adding graduates of veterinary schools to their faculties and support staffs so that the demand for trained professional personnel may be expected to increase. Public Health departments have always had veterinarians on their staffs who are concerned with the maintenance of high standards for control of water and food supplies which are derived from animal sources. The military services use veterinarians in the control of quality of food and in the protection of the service men from diseases of animals which might be transmitted to them. The training of veterinarians requires physical facilities for teaching in the basic sciences which are comparable to those found in a medical school. These facilities are more costly to construct than those needed for the training of the average college student in the liberal arts, but are essential for an adequate scientific base for the practice of high-quality veterinary medicine. Increasingly, the curricula are emphasizing the comparative medical approach to the study of animals and the relation of animal processes to those found in the human being. I do not feel competent to comment on the types of facilities needed for clinical training in a college of veterinary medicine. The facilities needed for research training, particularly as it relates to the species of animals which are used in medical research laboratories, would be comparable to those found in a college of medicine or research institution. I urge your support of legislation to improve both in quantity and quality the facilities needed for the training of these professional people, who will ultimately have an impact on human health. Dr. HARRELL. I am organizing a new medical center for Pennsylvania State University. We will, of course, use animals, particularly in the teaching of the basic medical sciences. We will use a variety of species of animals, both for physiologic and behavioral studies. We anticipate a considerable program in medical research and for this purpose we need stabilized animals who are disease free. We are constructing at Hershey, in the medical sciences building, a central animal facility and also plan to build there an animal farm, which will be essential for both our teaching and research programs. For the operation of these animal facilities, we need trained veterinarians and have appointed, as one of the first people on the faculty, a veterinarian to be in charge. He will supervise construction from the ground up and supervise the installation of equipment. The field of laboratory animal care opens an opportunity for veterinarians apart from domestic animals, which have been described here this morning. Especially, I would like to call attention to the increasing use of primates in medical research and teaching. Medical schools increasingly are needing trained veterinarians for their teaching and research programs and I urge your consideration of this bill. I will be happy to answer any questions. Mr. JARMAN. Thank you, Dr. Harrell. Mr. Nelsen? Mr. NELSEN. I have no questions. But I would like to say thank you to the gentlemen. Mr. JARMAN. We appreciate your being with us this morning, Dr. Harrell. Dr. George A. Wolf, Jr. Dr. Wolf is vice president for medical and dental affairs at Tufts University, and executive director of the TuftsNew England Medical Center in Boston, Mass. STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE A. WOLF, JR., VICE PRESIDENT FOR MEDICAL AND DENTAL AFFAIRS AT TUFTS UNIVERSITY, AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE TUFTS-NEW ENGLAND MEDICAL CENTER, BOSTON, MASS. Dr. WOLF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, have prepared a written statement which I hope you will see fit to include in the record. Mr. JARMAN. Without objection. (The prepared statement of Dr. Wolf follows:) STATEMENT OF Dr. George A. WOLF, Jr., VICE PRESIDENT FOR MEDICAL AND DENTAL AFFAIRS AT TUFTS UNIVERSITY, AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, TUFTS-NEW ENGLAND MEDICAL CENTER, BOSTON, MASS. I am Dr. George A. Wolf, Jr., vice president for medical and dental affairs at Tufts University and executive director of the Tufts-New England Medical Center. I'm speaking in favor of H.R. 4809 and related bills. It has been for sometime a mystery to me why much of the research on animal physiology, basic to the understanding of human physiology, has been done by M.D.'s and Ph. D.'s in fields other than veterinary medicine. I've often wondered why the image of the veterinary physician in the public mind was someone to take care of somebody's pet Pekingese, when much progress has been made in understanding the biology of the farm and wild animals. Incidentally. I can claim a certain amount of expertise in this area, as I am probably the only dean of a medical college who raised pigs, chickens, dogs, and horses while in office. The dogs were the most trouble. I also wondered why, inasmuch as medical schools and other health related research and teaching institutions are using a large number and variety of animals, veterinary physicians have not been more common on the staffs of these organizations. These groups are quite careful to have qualified people supervise other areas of their activity. Being involved in the operations of university medical centers, I determined to find the answers to some of these questions. In medical school animal laboratories I found people who were fond of animals in charge of the operations, but I'm sure that none of you gentlemen would delegate the teaching of your children to nice ladies whose only qualification is that they are fond of children. In spite of the obvious evidence that research activity enhances medical schools and other teaching programs, I found veterinary schools in which the teaching programs were so time consuming, in view of the limited staff, that there was no time or space for research in spite of grants available for the purpose. In animal quarters of various medical institutions, I found wooden cages which absorb odors, inadequate plumbing, drains poorly designed so that they become easily clogged by animal hair, quarters poorly designed to prevent transmission of infection, and no provision for quarantine of potentially infected animals. My most shocking experience was when an investigator reported to me that he had lost nine animals on which he had performed a painstaking and timeconsuming operation. These animals, which were to be used later for metabolic experiments, had died of distemper which could have been prevented with adequate facilities and know-how. Imagine the cost of this tragedy. It, thus, became evident to me that, although there was an enormous need for the services of veterinary physicians in this country to direct and supervise and investigate areas important to the health field both from the educational and research standpoints, an adequate number of these physicians were unavailable. It is extremely difficult to elucidate these needs on a statistical basis. Most of the figures relate veterinary physicians and number of animals, but, considering the wide variety of animals important to our economy and our research needs, it is obvious that such ratios became meaningless. I am prepared to say from the experiences described above that veterinary physicians are important to the health needs of this nation and that the bill under consideration is an important first step towards training more of these physicians and towards attracting more young people to enter this field. Cer tainly the facilities needed to study the biology of animals are equivalent in many ways to those needed to study and teach similar biological processes in man. I, therefore, urge your support of this bill. Dr. WOLF. New England has not been represented here today and it may be of interest to you that there is no veterinary school at all in New England, despite the fact that it has been euphemistically said that there are more cows than people in the State of Vermont. Also, of the reportable diseases in the State of Massachusetts, there are more animal bites than practically any other disease, including things like chickenpox, measles, et cetera, which means there are either a lot of animals in Massachusetts and that the dogs and cats are fighting back. I would like to focus on one thing and that is the use of veterinary physicians in the medical and dental schools. It is obvious that animals which are in poor shape physically or which have a high mortality rate have no use at all for teaching and research. In the whole health field, there is a great deal of need, for additional research on animals so that applying results of research to the patient can be accomplished more readily. I think animals, as you are well aware, are very important to this and therefore important to the medical school operations. For humane as well as practical reasons, the development, the maintenance and planning and design of animal quarters for use by institutions involved in doing teaching, drug testing, and research in the health field has become of increasing importance and I would like to quote briefly from a statement that came from the Committee on Public Health of the New York Academy of Medicine. It says: Healthy laboratory animals are a necessity for research, training and testing, which in turn are vital to the health of the people. They go on to say the most effective system for improving animal care would be, and after mentioning some other things, "ideally, a veterinarian would be appointed to insure the proper care and treatment of the animals." This reflects the fact that the majority of the medical schools in this country today-this has only happened in the past decade-employ one or more veterinarians to supervise their animals. I think those are my comments, sir. Thank you. Mr. NELSEN. No questions. Thank you very much. Dr. THORP. Mr. Chairman, if I may, the letters that I mentioned to you in answer to the question about title II and higher educational facilities for graduate education-with your permission, I would like to enter this in the record. I have permission from the president |