Louise Lind-af-Hageby - Ideas - Anti-vivisection

Anti-vivisection

Lind af Hageby was opposed to vivisection both for the sake of the animals and because she regarded it as bad science, though she told a Royal Commission on Vivisection that she had "no objection to vivisection, provided that the vivisectors experiment on themselves." She argued that it was not enough to vilify vivisection; activists had to educate themselves so they understood the science well enough to be able to argue their case.

She continued throughout her life to advocate social reform and economic equality as the main way to overcome human disease, living as a strict vegetarian and becoming a board member of the London Vegetarian Society. She was also active in Henry Stephens Salt's Humanitarian League. Leah Leneman writes that Lind af Hageby saw Darwin's theory of natural selection – the Origin of Species had been published in 1859 – as essential to the cause of animals, because it "brought about the decay of the old anthropocentric idea of man ... It taught that if there is this kinship physically between all living creatures, surely a responsibility rests upon us to see that these creatures, who have nerves as we have, who are made of the same flesh and blood as we are, who have minds differing from ours not in kind but in degree, should be protected ..."