Wilhelm Siegmund Feldberg
Biography
Feldberg was born in
Hamburg to a wealthy middle class
Jewish family. He studied
medicine at
Heidelberg,
Munich and
Berlin, graduating in 1925. He was the brother of the painter Lore Feldberg-Eber
Nazi purge of Jewish scientists. With the aid of Archibald Hill's Academic Assistance Council, Feldberg was relocated to Britain's National Institute for Medical Research in 1934–36. Here, he worked with Henry Hallett Dale, providing a significant impetus for Dale's Nobel Prize winning research into chemical neurotransmission. Feldberg was subsequently offered a place in Australia, at the behest of Charles Kellaway, director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. He spent two years (1936–38) in Melbourne, joining Kellaway's snake venom research programme. This work developed into a study of tissue responses to direct and indirect insult, focusing particularly on the liberation of histamine and other endogenous mediators. A finding of lasting pharmacological interest from these studies was the identification and partial isolation of the slow-reacting substance of anaphylaxis. Although Feldberg had earned a fellowship supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, in 1938 he was offered a readership in physiology at Cambridge University. He returned to England to take up this post, remaining there throughout World War II until 1949. Feldberg's subsequent appointments include: Head of Physiology and Pharmacology Division, National Institute for Medical Research, London, 1949–65 (Honorary Head of Division, 1965–66); Head, Laboratory of Neuropharmacology, National Institute for Medical Research, 1966–74. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1947 and made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1963.
Wilhelm Feldberg assisted many research workers who came to England as a part of their Commonwealth Medical Fellowship and Wellcome Research Fellowship. Under this Fellowships, Professor PN Saxena
Controversy
Feldberg's career was ended in 1990 when two animal rights activists gained access to his lab on the pretence of writing a biography and filming an educational video. Their claims were printed in The Independent. An investigation by the Medical Research Council found that some breaches of regulations had occurred. While these may not have been Feldberg's fault, he was deemed responsible and his Home Office Project Licence was revoked. One of the animal rights activists involved, Melody MacDonald, detailed her claims in her 1994 book Caught in the Act: The Feldberg Investigation ().
Feldberg became infamous, as MacDonald puts it, for his severe cruelty during animal research experiments. In the year of 1990, an investigation by the animal welfare group Advocates for Animals revealed experiments in which rabbits were regularly burned and operated on without adequate anaesthesia, or even at all, and sometimes even without being covered by a licence.
These revelations came when Feldberg was 89 years old. These experiments took place at the National Institute for Medical Research laboratories, Mill Hill, in London, which relate to the functions and decisions of the Home Department. These experiments took place between 1989 and 1990.
Along with Feldberg's technician Mr. Stean, the Medical Research Council Inquiry found that he caused both unnecessary suffering to animals.
MacDonald reports that Feldberg experimented by pouring various chemicals into the brains of cats while alive and fully conscious. However, as MacDonald and the inquiry found, it was his experiments on rabbits that brought about his downfall and subsequent sacking in 1990. This was just four months after he was awarded the Wellcome Gold Medal in Pharmacology by the British Pharmacological Society.[ Stop 2. Animalliberationfront.com. Retrieved on 23 June 2014.][ House of Commons Hansard Debates for 11 Mar 1991. Publications.parliament.uk. Retrieved on 23 June 2014.][ Tierschutz Dortmund. Vivisection-absurd.org.uk. Retrieved on 23 June 2014.]
On 26 May 1994 the book Caught in the Act: The Feldberg Investigation by Melody MacDonald exposed his alleged malpractice to the world. (1994). 189776605X, Jon Carpenter. 189776605X
External links
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Autobiography – Fifty Years On: Looking back on some Developments in Neurohumoral Physiology, Feldberg, Wilhelm; Liverpool University Press, 1982, pl
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Professor Feldberg by the Animal Cruelty Investigation Group
