I feel sorry for the animal in question and if animal rights activists were around back then just imagine the storm of controversy and outrage that would erupt.
While I agree with you that the experiments look horrible don't forget they led to findings that made a revolution in medicine and save thousands, if not more lives every year. Dang, even today I find it hard to believe you can take an organ from a human, even dead one, transplant it in another person and it function as if it was his. Imagine how crazy that sounded 70 years ago.
Today, it seems like stem cell research is the future of medicine.