ANIMAL RESEARCH T A K E S LIVES
- Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer
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In 1934 the Department of Physiology at the State College of Medicine at Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A., commenced experiments in which cats were drained of almost all their blood and given injections of "synthetic blood". They lived 36 hours. These "exciting" (ARSL) experiments were carried out by Dr W.R. Amberson. Simultaneously Dr A.G. Mulder in London was "working along the same lines". He used an extract of ox-blood and salt solution. "Monkeys", the vivisectors said, "are the next to be experimented upon". Both these experiments were failures, as they had to be being based on the wrong species.
(News Chronicle, July 13 1934.)
In 1966 vivisectors reported that mice could survive for extended periods totally immersed in an oxygen-rich solution of fluorocarbon chemical, with it filling their lungs. This led to batteries of experiments entailing near-total blood replacement with perfluorocarbon chemicals on frogs, mice, rats, gerbils, rabbits, cats, dogs and monkeys.
(L.R. Clark, F. Gollan, "Survival of Mammals Breathing Organic Liquids Equilibrated with Oxygen at Atmospheric Pressure", Science, Vol. 152, 1966, pages 1755-1756.)
When tried on man, in Japan, West Germany and the U.S.A. the solution only worked if the subject was breathing pure oxygen - not if he was breathing normal air.
(K. Lowe, "Artificial Blood: Fact or Fiction?", Biologist, Vol. 30, No. 2, 1983.); (Ohyangagi 1979, "Clinical Studies of Perfluorochemical Whole-Blood Substitutes: Safety of Flusol-Da (20%) in Normal Human Volunteers", Clinical Therapeutics, Vol. 2, pages 306-312.)
The only artificial blood that worked for man was Dextran. This was developed from sugar during a search for a substance which would act as a buffer-medium for the blood cells, prove harmless to the host, and remain in the system long enough to cover the first few critical days following shock from blood-loss. It owed its discovery to clinical experiment and observations by Dr Gronwell and Ingelman in Sweden, first reported in 1943.
(Beddow Bayly, Blood Transfusion, NAVS, 1960.)
Dextran was used as a transfusion medium. Clinical experiments during 1944 and 1945 soon established its safety and effectiveness. It is still used.
(British Medical Association and the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, British National Formulary, No. 5, 1983.)
More recently the Dominion Sunday Times ran an article titled "A New Brew of Blood?" which said experiments using animals to produce a human blood substitute gave so much concern about the side-effects of haemoglobin produced in this way that all new trials have been prohibited by the United States FDA.
(Dominion Sunday Times, March 10 1991.)
BLOOD TRANSFUSION: BLOOD GROUPS AND TYPING
"According to the Report of the Royal Commission on Vivisection (1912): The first human blood-transfusion was made by Andre Libavius in 1594 when, for a large reward, the blood of a young man was passed into the veins of an older man. Modern technique depends upon a careful matching of blood-types, and no animal experiments have, or could have helped in this essential particular."
(Hans Ruesch, One Thousand Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection, page 131.)
The following information is taken from Cardiac Arrest by Emil Levin, M.D. and Diane Danielson.
"The French physician, Jean Denis, transfused lambs' blood into numerous patients who all died. Not recognizing the basic differences between animals and humans, Denis did not realize why his technique failed. Yet, because of the failure of this animal experiment, no further attempts were made for more than a century."
(K. Walker, The Story of Medicine, Hutchinson, 1954. R. McGrew, Encyclopedia of Medical History, MacMillan Press, 1985. A. Gastiglioni, A History of Medicine, (1947 edition translated by E.B. Krumbhaer) Ryerson Press, 1941.)
The identification of the various blood groups by Karl Landsteiner, an Australian emigrant who was awarded a Nobel Prize for his achievement, which permitted safe blood transfusions, was a result of direct observation of humans.
(J.E. Schmidt, Medical Discoveries Who and When, Charles C. Thomas, 1959. P. Levine and R.E. Stetson, FAMA, Vol. 113, 1939, pages 126-127.)
ANTICOAGULANTS
There have been four main anticoagulants used for human medicine. None of these four were discovered through animal experiments. Two, Hirudin and Citrate, grew out of direct patient study. Hirudin is an anti-coagulant secreted by leeches that allows them to suck the blood out of animals. The observation was made that since the patient continued to bleed after a leech was removed from a site, it must have deposited the anti-coagulant in the wound before removing the blood.
(J.H. Comroe and R.D. Dripps, The Top Ten Clinical Advances in Cardiovascular-Pulmonary Medicine and Surgery 1945-1975, Washington D.C., 1977, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, DHEW Publications No. (NIH) 78-1521, page 61.)
"The use of citrates stemmed from the observation of sailors treated for scurvy in the 1700s. Physicians noted that sailors often suffered spontaneous hemorrhages from lemon and lime juices, notably high in citrates."
"The use of the anticoagulant dicumoral was developed from the observation made by veterinarians that cattle who ate the toxic plant 'sweet clover' (which contains dicumoral), suffered the same spontaneous hemorrhages as the sailors. By coincidence, this particular agent had the same effect on humans."
(J.H. Comroe and R.D. Dripps, The Top Ten Clinical Advances in Cardiovascular-Pulmonary Medicine and Surgery 1945-1975, Washington D.C., 1977, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, DHEW Publications No. (NIH) 78-1521, page 63 and page 68.)
"The last anticoagulant, heparin, was discovered when Jay McLeon tested various chemicals on blood in a test-tube."
(C.H. Best, "Preparation of Heparin and its Use in the First Clinical Cases", Circulation, Vol. XIX, January 1959, page 79.)
BLOOD PRESSURE AND HEART RATE
"These phenomena are easily observed in a non-invasive manner in most species, notably humans. The vivisectors assert advances in techniques involving blood-pressure and heart rate in animals so they can make great claims about animal research, but there is no productive data on blood-pressure and heart rate that could not have been obtained more accurately from human subjects. Also, the discovery of the circulation of blood, blood pressure, and heart rate can be credited to William Harvey's work on the corpse of a hanged man. There is no evidence that animal experiments contributed to Harvey's revolutionary discovery."
(S. Peller, Quantitative Research in Human Biology and Medicine, Bristol, John Wright and Sons Ltd, 1967, page 11.)
PUMP OXYGENATOR
"This item stands out as one of the advances that are, in most cases, a last ditch effort to save a patient whose condition has deteriorated through his own neglect. The money spent developing the pump oxygenator could have been used to save many more patients through education in prevention."
"Vivisectors had long attempted to take over the function of the lungs by putting air bubbles in the blood outside of the body and recirculating the oxygenated blood back into an animal's body. The animals usually died because the bubbles caused widespread organ damage. There were no substances known in the early part of this century, however, that could remove bubbles, until Dr Richard Lillihei of the University of Minnesota thought of using Corning Antifoam, a substance used in dairies to dissipate foam on milk. The use of Antifoam in milk production was the first proof that this substance was safe for human use. The prior animal studies were useless in the development of the bubble, or pump oxygenator."
(L. Wertenbaker, To Mend the Heart, New York, Viking Press, 1980, page 154.)
BLOOD CIRCULATION
Harvey, through the use of cadavers, and his own arm, established the theory that the blood circulates. Tying a ligature around his arm and noticing that the blood only accumulated on one side Harvey deduced that the blood must move in a circuit. Despite a lifetime of animal experiments Galen failed to figure out that the blood circulates. Dr Sigismund Peller maintains that Harvey's discovery is the earliest example of (what he calls) biostatistical reasoning in medicine. On the corpse of a hanged man Harvey forced water into the right side of the heart and then the left side taking careful note of the direction, course and volume of fluid.
"Harvey's logical quantitative reasoning led to only one conclusion; that the very same blood that was emitted from the left heart had to return a little while later to the right heart through passages that were as yet unknown... Sharp logic and simple estimates, made without the benefit of exact observational data or of new experiments, and without the use of higher mathematics, led to the hypothetical conception and provided proof both for this concept - that is, the new theory of circulation - and for the absurdity of any contrary opinion voiced by or since Galen."
(S. Peller, Quantitative Research in Human Biology and Medicine, Bristol, John Wright and Sons Ltd, 1969, page 11.)