By Liam Brophy, Ph.D. -- American Anti Vivisection Society (The
AV Magazine, January 1994) We have it on the highest authority
that evolution is still an on-going process. Here, in elegant
prose, are the final words of Darwin's masterpiece, On the
Origin of Species, first published in 1859: "There is a grandeur
in this view of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one;
and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to
the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless
forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being
evolved." Fearing that some of his views would shock the
religious feelings of some, he waited until 1871 to publish his
conclusions concerning our species in The Descent of Man. The
thought that evolution is still at work prompted a contemporary
naturalist to pose the question: if evolution produced offshoots
of Super Man, would they be justified in using us lesser mortals
as laboratory animals?