ANIMAL RESEARCH  T A K E S  LIVES
- Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer

contents | Chapter 21 index | index

DRUGS AND THE LAW

ARSL PAGE 7

ARSL 2nd Edition Pages 7, 15

An old Welsh proverb says "Truth is better than law".  The publishers of ARSL say - the law is better than the truth.

"It would be morally wrong to sell drugs, vaccines and other treatments for human or veterinary use without first testing them on laboratory animals.  This testing is requires by NZ law."

SECTION 1 - The conspiracy

The above comments are of great significance for they expose ARSL's derelict and empty case for continued vivisection, whilst inviting, even urging, the alert reader to actively oppose this erroneous law.  To wit:

1. The Morals
   That the publishers of ARSL (who profit from vivisection by peddling the incalculable suffering of animals used as test subjects, and the equally incalculable anguish of human beings who are the victims of the horrific consequences) resort to basing their case for its continuance on moral grounds reveal that case to be without substance;
    
   and
    
2. The Law
   That the publishers of ARSL, who use the law which demands medicines be tested on animals as a shield and a bulwark against public criticism and dissent, being a powerful arm of the New Zealand pro-vivisection hierarchy, and therefore directly responsible for such law, vehemently guard and contest all legitimate attempts to change it.

The author can think of no-one more qualified to rebut ARSL's foolhardy attempt to shelter behind the law of its own making, than Hans Ruesch, and does so with his kind permission by copying pages 9 and 10 of his dramatic Naked Empress as follows:

"THE LAWMAKER"

"It is not only scandalous but also tragic that the Drug Trust is permitted to flood the market with its products on the grounds that they have been thoroughly tested for effectiveness and safety on animals, and that the Health Authorities, meaning the Government, abet this deception, which is nothing but confirmed fraud.  For both sides are well aware that animal tests are fallacious and merely serve as an alibi - an insurance against the day when it is no longer possible to conceal the disastrous side effects of a drug.  Then they can say that "all the required tests have been made" - that they have obeyed the Law.  But they don't say that they themselves have imposed those laws, because the Lawmaker has no choice in all medical questions but to submit to the dictates of the 'medical experts'.  And who are they?  Agents of the Chemo-Medical Syndicate, whose links to the Health Authorities are so close that they usually overlap.  So they, and no one else, impart binding orders to the mysterious and omnipotent individual, identified anonymously as 'The Lawmaker'.

In fact, the so-called 'medical experts' that have imposed animal tests as the touchstone of medical research are among the principal participants in the greatest fraud that has ever been perpetrated, mainly for profit motives, to the detriment of mankind in all history.  To bring exhaustive proof of this assertion, with which a growing number of medical people are in full agreement, is the purpose of this expose."

In every country of the world without a single exception those who decide on the necessity of vivisection, and which way it is to be applied are ultimately the vivisectors themselves, always with the willing aid of governments and, as we have seen in New Zealand, Chapter 19 the "Protection" of Animals Used in Research, with the stamp of approval of the principal animal protection agencies.  This has been aptly described as being as absurd as allowing a thief to decide when or whether a theft is necessary and how it is to be committed.

The protection and safeguards bestowed upon the vivisector by the lawmakers is described by Professor Croce on page 114 of Vivisection or Science - a choice to make:

"Incomparable examples of legal barbarism, put forward by people who are distinguished only by a surprising inability to perceive the mood of a public whose sense of civilised values continues to grow, slowly, but irresistibly, in spite of them and in opposition to them."

ARSL's absurd statement that it would be morally wrong to sell drugs, vaccines and other treatments for human or veterinary use without first testing them on laboratory animals is strikingly at odds with the advice reverberating around the world from doctors, scientists and veterinarians, who at their scientific congresses and in their writings, which are becoming increasingly intense are warning that animal tests are guaranteed to give confusing and conflicting results which cause more medical problems than they are supposed to cure.  The doctors' evidence is strongly borne out by the increasing number of drugs being removed from the market for causing havoc.  Seemingly never a day goes by without some drug or other being criticised for causing problems or being removed from the market altogether.  One must assume that either the publishers of ARSL are oblivious of the medical challenge taking place against them, or, aware of the mounting criticism, in attempts to bolster their credibility and save their jobs, the distribution of ARSL is their way of countering it.  Either way, its publication reveals that they are determined to continue brain-washing the public through whatever blatant lies it takes to do so.

The scientific weight of evidence against the claims of ARSL is unarguable.  In the past ten years there have been a steady stream of major articles under bold headlines about the many drugs being withdrawn for the damage they cause.  In New Zealand the sagas of drug catastrophes continue in issue after issue of publications as diverse as Truth, Listener, women's magazines and the newspapers.  In addition there have been several television programmes criticising the adverse effects of drugs, like the asthma drug Fenoterol on April 24 1989 and T.V. 3's Sixty Minutes on the dangers of tranquillisers on September 23 1991, and on October 2 1991 the expose of Halcion, since removed from the market.

These programmes and articles have exposed the hundreds of thousands of people whose health has been wrecked by prescribed drugs, like Valium, Lithium, Ativan, Mogadon and Halcion, which far from helping patients quickly assume a stranglehold over them.  T.V. 3's Sixty Minutes' statement: "It is only now that we know these drugs are dangerous" reveals the censorship of NZAVS' evidence of the past 13 years as the Society has attempted, through Submissions to Parliament supporting its Petitions to Abolish Vivisection, to expose the dangers associated with legal drugs which is the consequence of formulating them on animals.  During the 13 years that the abolitionist message has been deliberately stifled in this country increasing numbers of people have been made into drug addicts through legal prescriptions, which, as Dr Vernon Coleman, Great Britain's outspoken abolitionist says in Life Without Tranquillisers, "perhaps suits the politicians and multi-national bureaucrats as well as the drug companies for it ensures an uncomplaining and docile community which is easy to administer, manage and manipulate."¹

The drugs so widely criticised today are all formulated and tested on animals.  For this reason a terrifying percentage of today's populations are hooked on mind-altering, addictive and extremely dangerous legally-prescribed medicaments.  Drug prescription is the present approach to health, not because it is successful, but because it is profitable.  ARSL wants new drugs - but the World Health Organisation warns that there are already far too many drugs.  Each new drug that appears from the pharmaceutical companies, says the WHO, is almost certainly a carbon copy of a previous drug.  It is not an exaggeration to say that drugs are doled out like chocolate drops for all our aches, pains and dis-ease.  Through these drugs millions of moderately unwell people are turned into helpless zombies.  Modern drugs are more dangerous than tobacco, and, says Dr Coleman, "more addictive than illegal drugs such as heroin"².

However doctors, and not the patients, are the worst drug addicts as thousands of them take the comfortable and easy way out, reaching for their prescription pad without investigating their patients' problems.  Several times in this work the writer has criticised doctors for shelving their responsibilities through their unswerving alignment to chemical cures which results from the take-over of medicine by the pharmaceutical giants.  Each medicine taken off the market for damaging the patient reflects the power and effectiveness of the drug-industry lobby and their public relations and marketing advisers, who, quite often using unsavoury tactics, have succeeded in persuading doctors to prescribe their products.  These drug companies expend careful strategy, cut-throat competition and millions of dollars in winning doctors over to prescribing their particular brands of poison, some here in New Zealand were recently criticised for financing struggling medical students on the understanding that when qualified they prescribe the company's products.  Again and again, from a range of motives; lack of time, lack of interest, powerful enticements and high-pressure methods of drug companies' representatives, doctors accept the glossy brochures and leaflets from agents of the pharmaceutical empire believing their claims, promises and assertions.³  But these doctors should be aware that the supporting data on the benefits of drugs is extremely unreliable as drug companies are able to entice with a fee the writers of research papers to submit opinions of this or that drug - the results of which will obviously be favourable and laudatory.  It is also extremely fortuitous for the doctors to believe that remedies for all their patients' ills are available by instant hand-outs of drugs, for in believing what they are told by the manufacturers they are absolved of the responsibility of investigating the reason for the unwellness of their patients and with consciences dulled dole out the palliatives which treat the symptoms without addressing their cause.

Brandon Reines, D.V.M., now Founder and President for the Centre for Health Science Policy in the United States of America, brilliant young modern abolitionist, is challenging dogmas that are accepted without question in the upper echelons of the contemporary medical and scientific establishments.  He has been referred to several times in this work.  In a series of articles under the title "Animal Research: Behind the Facades of Consensus", Reines, in the Spring Issue of the Journal of the International Society for Animal Rights claims that contrary to popular belief the research community has never been of one mind about animal experimentation.  He writes:

"That the medical community has managed to convey the impression of unanimity on vivisection is among the lesser-known public relations miracles of the 20th Century."

Reines goes on to expose the American Medical Association's "insidious pressure on the medical professions to conform by directing social and political influence on medical researchers providing that they toe the line on vivisection".  He claims that animal researchers not only control the funding machinery at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which donates funding to vivisection laboratories in many countries including New Zealand, which in turn must follow its pro-vivisection principles⁴, but that they are "perceived as the elite in the very rigid caste structure within the research community".  This will come as no surprise to members of the N.Z. Anti-Vivisection Society who read in the December 1991 issue of the Society's journal Mobilise! that animal experimenters CONTROL the Federal agencies for health science funding.  (See "Vivisection is Big Business" in the Open Letter to the American People.)

It is apparent and extremely encouraging to those involved in the abolitionist movement that the trickle of medical professionals which a handful of years ago began actively consolidating against vivisection on the grounds of fraud and conspiracy, is becoming a torrent that will never now be dammed.  Similarly it is increasingly obvious to all but the novice that leaders of anti-vivisection societies who do not inform their members of the fast-changing state of affairs in the medical and research arena, and continue their phoney policies of seeking: accountability of numbers of animals used in experiments; better conditions in the laboratories; reduction of the numbers of animals used; introduction of animal ethics committees; funding for "alternatives"; abolition of non-medical experiments; or, like one group which the author is familiar with, funds for purchasing toys for the vivisectors to put in the cages for the animals (!), are manipulating their unwary subscribers and donors, just as those who control and dispense the lucrative vivisection tradition are manipulating the thoughts, actions and attitudes of those entering the medical professions by forcing them to place animal experimentation on a false pinnacle.

It is certainly advantageous for medical schools, research laboratories, universities and people like the producers of ARSL to perpetuate the myth that animal experiments are useful and not useless, for, as Reines says in Cancer Research on Animals (Impact and Alternatives) about such institutions:

"If truth prevailed the dollars would diminish... and though they may claim to love the truth, when it is a matter of truth versus the dollars they love the dollars more."

Or as put even more succinctly by Hans Ruesch:

"No ignorance is so stubborn as the ignorance of the learned."

An article in Time Magazine, February 28 1977, which lists the recipients of "donations" to politicians from U.S. Medical Association, may help us to understand why politicians become glassy-eyed when the word "vivisection" is as much as whispered:

Many examples of the ignorance of the learned, in the New Zealand news-media and political arena could be related, however to ensure the reader is not rendered as insensible and glassy eyed through repetition as the politicians are through conniving, their resurrection is minimised to the following which occurred in recent years, and which in the author's view are as subtle as they are convenient:

1. The (almost, but not quite) incomprehensible ignorance of no less than the learned Rt Hon. Helen Clark, then N.Z. Minister of Health, now Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who, on February 7 1990, in full knowledge, through NZAVS' evidence, of the founding of strong leagues of doctors active against vivisection which are now operating in the United Kingdom, U.S.A., Switzerland, Italy, Israel, France, West Germany, Japan, Sweden - and other countries, (if not in full possession of her wits) wrote to one Isla Dight, a shrewd and professional Australian acclaimed internationally for her vast knowledge and support of the new abolitionist movement, the following words, which unfortunately dealt the good lady such a reeling blow that though the saying is that time heals all, the writer has reason to believe that her full recovery is extremely doubtful:
    
   "I am not aware of reports indicating that increasing numbers of doctors are opposed to experiments on animals."
    
   and
    
   

 

2. The ignorance resulting from a timely state of amnesia which struck Mr Jack Elder M.P. for West Auckland, member of the N.Z. Primary Production Committee and member of the Parliamentary Select Committee at the phantom "hearing" of the author's evidence in support of NZAVS Petition in the New Zealand Parliament on March 20 1991, and who, in possession of the facts emblazoned on the Prayer of the Petition and in NZAVS' Submissions to the Select Committee, was fully aware that neither document referred to the "suffering of helpless animals".  This did not however prevent Mr Elder from writing on December 18 1990 to one of his constituents thus:
    
   "You may rest assured that we will be very keen to get an honest appraisal of the situation and to recommend any changes which we see as necessary to reduce the suffering of helpless animals." (Words which before they were settled on the paper carefully swept into eternity the billions of human victims of vivisection - along with case for abolition.)

Since New Zealand has such a bad history of drug damage which has been widely publicised in the media, and aware as they are that this damage is a consequence of their own immoral and invalid business of vivisection, it is astounding that the publishers of ARSL have the temerity to talk of morals.  That the public does not vehemently challenge the law which demands drugs be tested on animals reveals the extent of brainwashing that we are unwittingly put to on an ongoing basis.  Consider the following:

In New Zealand it was reported in Dominion Sunday Times, October 15 1989 that Dr Charlotte Paul, Auckland Hospital Researcher, published in the N.Z. Medical Journal that more than 20,000 women every year had been prescribed Depo-Provera, an injectable contraceptive, many without their knowledge or consent, despite the fact that the drug had always been banned in the U.S.A. where it caused cancer of the breast and uterus, loss of bone density and anaphylacsis (an allergic reaction which causes the patient to stop breathing) and other damage.  Similar tragic effects of Depo-Provera appeared in Truth, Listener, Dominion Sunday Times as well as the dailies.  These massive front-page articles which carried bold headlines over months of that year and which continued right through to 1989 read: "Women at Risk"; "Ban These Drugs"; "N.Z. Women in Trial to Satisfy U.S. Watchdog"; "I Was a Guinea-Pig"; "Study Shows Cancer Link"; etc etc were followed by the lists of names and details of the many women whose lives were ruined by the drug.  (Other drugs have similarly been prescribed with horrifying results to New Zealanders to shatter their health, however it is on Depo-Provera the author focuses to make the point.)

The method of testing Depo-Provera carried out by its producers Upjohn (which also produced Halcion, banned in 1991 for the damage it caused) prior to prescribing it to women in hospitals, birth control clinics and doctors' surgeries, was, according to information circulated to doctors by Upjohn on Form No. A1.030.1 as follows:

"Endometrial response tests on immature and ovariectomized rabbits."

"Subcutaneous injections in experimental animals."

"Tremendous doses in chronic toxicity studies on intact female and spayed immature rats" and "beagle dogs".

The following is an extract from "Side Effects" as stated in the circular:

• "Beagle dogs treated with medroxyprogesterone-acetate developed mammary nodules, some of which were malignant.  Although nodules occasionally appeared in control animals, they were benign and intermittent in nature, whereas the nodules in drug-treated animals were larger, more numerous, persistent, and there were some breast malignancies with metastases... their significance with respect to humans has not been established."

---

• "The use of Depo-Provera for contraception is not an approved indication and such use is investigational since there are unresolved questions relating to its safety for this indication."

The following is an extract from "Cautions" on the same circular:

"Large doses have been found to produce some instances of female foetal masculinization in animals.  Although this has not occurred in human beings, the possibility of such an effect, particularly with large doses over a long period of time, should be considered."

At the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Public Board of Enquiry into Depo-Provera in 1983 which unsuccessfully attempted to lift the U.S. ban on the drug, in questioning the relevance of beagle dog trials to human users of the contraceptive, Upjohn argued as follows:

Obviously the public should be asking:

Interestingly at time of writing this paper a report in Wellington's Evening Post, May 15 1992, from the researchers responsible for investigation and restriction of the asthma drug Fenoterol, claims that since the restriction was placed, the asthma epidemic which gave New Zealand the highest death-rate in the world appears to be over.  Says the group:

"A halving of the death-rate since restrictions were placed on the drug has taken place."

All the evidence reveals that animal tests, far from being carried out to protect the health of the people in reality protect the profits of the drug companies, who, with the complicity of governments who are subservient to them can market drugs the safety of which is based on an animal alibi, the very inconclusivenes of which is the vital factor essential to getting the product marketed.  For, were valid methods of testing used the products would be revealed for what they are, worthless at best, or at worst killers like Depo-Provera, Fenoterol (including all the asthma aerosol inhalers), and Debendox, the latter, an anti-nausea drug which caused birth defects all over the world including New Zealand until it was taken from the market in 1983, produced by Merrell Dow who also ironically produced the deadly spray 2,4,5-T which had the same devastating effect.⁵

To return to the Upjohn enquiry into Depo-Provera, the company stated:

"New Zealand was an ideal place for research because of its long-term Depo-Provera use adequate data collection should be feasible and the incidence of neoplasias (cancers) of the breast and endometrium (lining of the uterus) are comparable to those in the United States."

And so, the New Zealand Government, which ARSL claims requires animal testing to protect its population, allowed New Zealand women to be prescribed regular doses of an extremely harmful drug in full knowledge that the drug was banned in the U.S.A. - thus allowing the company to use New Zealand women as test subjects.

There are many indictments against vivisection, the most damning coming, as it did in the Depo-Provera trial, from its champions and not from its challengers.  For example:

The British Committee for the Safety of Medicines (which advises the Government on the granting of licenses to new drugs and circulates information to doctors), in its December 1990 Publication Report No. 30 titled Current Problems, under section "Advice About Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting: What to Report", requests doctors to report adverse effects thus:

"There is often some debate on what constitutes a serious reaction.  For this reason we hope the list below will provide guidance on serious reactions for which we would hope to receive reports."

Thereafter follows a list of no less than 84 "serious" reactions to drugs, which include: cardiac failure and arrest, drug fever, abortion, congenital abnormalities, uterine haemorrhage, perforation, cataract, hearing loss, visual loss, circulatory failure, coma, epilepsy - and many more "current problems" including sudden death!

Prof. Bill Inman who heads the Drug Safety Research Unit at Southampton University (hardly an advocate of abolition), is critical of the above committee for he wrote:

"The committee relies heavily on the drug companies for safety information and most of its members are linked to the industry as consultants or receivers of research grants.  In a move to make the committee independent, that is without links with the industry - THERE WOULD BE NO-ONE TO SIT ON THE COMMITTEE!"

A revealing article in the U.K. Independent, December 15 1988, written by Health Services Correspondent Nicholas Timmins headed "Drug Firms' Links With Watchdogs" disclosed that "more than half the members of the two key committees which oversee drug safety and licensing have direct interests in the pharmaceutical industry".  That "nearly 40 drug companies pay members of the Medicines Commission and the Committee on Safety of Medicines for consultancies, work on particular drugs and advice, whilst other members hold shares in companies such as ICI, Boots and Wellcome".  Dr J. Collier, consultant pharmacologist at St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London, who has campaigned for the interests to be published, said the information "confirms our worst fears... There always has been a question of whether the members who advise on drugs can be impartial and this report indicates they are not".  Robin Cook, Labour's health spokesman, said:

"Where a body has a policing and regulatory job it should be independent in a financial sense from the people they are monitoring... Until impartiality is established, the drugs that we use and the information doctors get will remain tainted."

"Tainted" is perhaps a delicate if not bizarre choice of word to describe legal medicaments which maim and kill.  The British Daily Mail, February 13 1992, in an article "Secrecy Over Drugs for Doctors Helps Put 10,000 in Hospital" exposes just how "tainted" they are:

"Thousands of people are made so ill by the side-effects of drugs prescribed by doctors they need hospital treatment... At any one time they occupy around 10,000 hospital beds."

Charles Medawar, an expert on drug safety policy and director of the research group Social Audit says in the above article that "more than 12,000 people are claiming compensation through the courts for problems linked to prescription drugs".  He goes on to say: "The secrecy about drug damage protects the product more than it protects the conscientious prescriber or the patient."  He also makes the staggering confession that "the law makes it illegal for drug companies to release some information that would help patients".  "It aids and abets misrepresentation and misunderstanding and lack of accountability.  It is as dangerous as it is pervasive."

As we have learned in Chapter 19, The "Protection" of Animals Used in Research, the same situation thrives in N.Z. where the country's leading vivisectors, through the ethics (and other) committee systems, monitor, regulate, perpetuate, protect and congratulate their own activities with the benevolent approval of the RNZSPCA.  That prestigious society, which, when submitting to Parliament that it seeks no change to the present rotten state of affairs, sanitised them with a veil of respectability purchased by public donations from those who think they are helping animals, thus demonstrating its complicity.

Another excellent parallel of the phoney British CSM which is taking place under our noses in New Zealand is the N.Z. Pesticides Board, shown in Chapter 22 Living 25 Years Longer Than our Great Grand Parents.

A further accusation against the validity of animal experiments comes from the very bastion of vivisection, the British Toxicology Society, in a submission to the British House of Commons Agriculture Committee enquiry into pesticides and human health.  Chaired by Sir Richard Body M.P. on July 23 1987:

"There is no reliable method to extrapolate data between different laboratory animal species and man.  Animal testing can produce misleading results."

In New Zealand, which was the last country to produce the chemical 2,4,5-T, when the product was found to have the same deleterious effects on people as it did on rabbits in Dow vivisection laboratories, the firm was publicly chastised for continuing its distribution, upon which, like its relative the British Toxicology Society, it did an about-face and defended continued production of 2,4,5-T arguing that animal experiments were not conclusive!

"There is no known means of extrapolating between rabbits and humans."
(Mr J. Plunkett, Agricultural Products Manager for Dow Chemicals (Australia), Wellington's Dominion, September 4 1987.)

Thus the vivisectors, time after time, promote animal experiments to their advantage when they wish to continue production of material which is harmful - yet this is the precise system they use to create the alibi that a product is SAFE.

The same double-standard principle applies in the following conclusions taken from Pesticides: Issues and Options for N.Z., 1989, which resulted from a one-year investigation of environmental pollution in New Zealand commissioned by the Ministry for the Environment and conducted by Lincoln College.  (Which partially financed by the U.S. National Institute of Health is reputed to be one of the largest agricultural animal experimental laboratories in the world.)

Footnotes

1. Five hundred and seventy-eight million dollars of the taxpayers' money is spent every year on pharmaceuticals in N.Z.
(M. Williamson, Associate Minister of Health, in a letter to NZAVS.)

2. "Drug induced illness has become a public health hazard of alarming proportions, 25 percent of all hospital admissions are due to medicines."
(Dr Vernon Coleman, then President of the International League of Doctors Against Vivisection.)

3. "It is estimated that each GP in New Zealand receives 13 kilograms of high-gloss unsolicited advertising from drug companies every year."
(Evening Post, May 1 1992, page 5.)

"Drug companies in N.Z. spend 30 million dollars a year on advertising... They own the health service."
(Sarah Boyd, National Radio, April 10 1989.)

4. The prescription in New Zealand of drugs banned in the U.S. is not the sole extent of the U.S. drug companies' manipulation of New Zealanders.  In 1986 the N.Z. Veterinary School, Palmerston North reported receiving "more than half a million dollars from overseas".  The only overseas institution mentioned on the list of those giving grants to Massey is the U.S. National Institute of Health, which is described as a major funding body.

By coincidence, in 1986 a series of major articles began appearing in Wellington's Dominion and other papers, and the radio reported widely that controversial agricultural experiments banned in the U.S. were taking place at the N.Z. Veterinary School (otherwise known as Massey), Palmerston North, and Wallaceville.  Funded by the American drug companies and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, researchers from Oregon State University were carrying out procedures, which were not allowed in the U.S., under N.Z. MAF "supervision" though no N.Z. guidelines had been obtained for field testing of genetically-engineered organisms.  (The author again emphasises that N.Z. MAF is co-producer of ARSL.)

In interviews with the Dominion the Oregon researchers said they were attracted to New Zealand as a testing ground for their products "because they perceived fewer problems with red tape than in the U.S. where health, environment and agricultural agencies would not approve the trials".

The issue was reintroduced by N.Z. Listener on June 17 1991 which commented on an article in the New Internationalist by journalist Carol Grunewald thus:

"At an agricultural research station in New Zealand in 1986 American researchers inoculated cows, chickens and sheep with live genetically-engineered vaccine against the sindbis virus, an insect-borne virus which causes flu-like symptoms.  One of the members of the U.S. team bluntly stated the reason for conducting the experiments so far from home as follows:
'In the U.S. these tests have been held up by inadequate regulations, lack of government agency coordination, court injunction and public protests'."

The Listener commented thus: "He might as well have said that the lack of public awareness and government regulation of bio-technology in New Zealand made this country an ideal open-air laboratory."

Page 90 of Naked Empress by Hans Ruesch reveals that U.S. NIH funds of $600,000 were spent sending an American scientist, Dr Peter Adam, professor of pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University and Director of Pediatric Metabolism at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, to Finland to conduct experiments on live human fetuses.  The fetuses were kept alive in incubators and transported to a hospital in Finland where they were cut open whilst alive and their livers removed.  Other experiments involved chopping off the heads of the fetuses.  The brain matter along with the liver was then processed into nutrients "to help premature babies".

5. Known in the U.S. as Bendectin, in Great Britain and Australasia as Debendox, and in other countries as Lenotan and Merbental, this drug was prescribed widely from before 1960 to 1983, in all a period of 27 years, to alleviate morning sickness in pregnant women.  In New Zealand doctors prescribed 1.5 MILLION Debendox tablets every year, 30 for each pregnancy.   Debendox caused cleft palates, congenital heart disease, bowel abnormalities, club feet, lack of limbs, deformed limbs and other extremely severe congenital abnormalities.  The damage caused by Debendox was widely reported in 1983.  That year production of the drug was halted and all remaining stocks destroyed.

In 1987 an American District Court found Merell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Cincinatti, Ohio, a subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company "negligent in marketing and testing the drug" and so began an avalanche of applications for damages.  At the trial the company stated:

"This drug had the most thorough animal tests of its kind."

$US 120 million were paid out in damages to the victims in the U.S..  Thousands of women in the U.K., 800 in Australia, and thirty in New Zealand gave birth to severely malformed babies for which they received damages.  Though some were approached, the mothers of the drug damaged babies in New Zealand would not communicate with the N.Z. Anti-Vivisection Society who sought their cooperation in exposing the dangers of drugs declared safe after animal trials.  (Perhaps it would be fair to assume that the victims' collaboration with an active anti-vivisection organisation could jeopardise their dealing with the company from whom they sought their redress.)  That year, on July 23, T.V. Eye Witness News screened a programme on the victims of Debendox and again widely reported the damage caused by the drug.  The Auckland Sunday News and most daily papers published leading articles and radio stations reported the issue widely, these included Christchurch's The Press, August 27 1986; Wellington Dominion, July 16 1987; and Sydney Morning Herald, July 25 1987.  Sadly as with the Thalidomide malformations, in some countries women would not claim compensation at all believing the deformities were acts of God, or afflictions sent by the Devil in punishment for their sins.

Readers are directed to Chapter 6 Thalidomide, which records the unhappy saga of Australian Dr William McBride, who discovered the link between Thalidomide and birth deformities, and who, a key figure in its subsequent removal from the market, went on, using money he was awarded in Paris (along with a gold medal for excellence in medicine), to form a company he named Foundation 41.  Through his Foundation Dr McBride investigated the effects of prescribed medicaments on the first 41 weeks of life.  It was Dr McBride, as a result of these investigations who found the link between Debendox and the malformations.  Dr McBride was the principal accuser of Merrell Dow and representing the victims at the trial he assessed and gave evidence on their behalf.  After the trial Dr McBride stated his intention of furthering his investigations, through Foundation 41, of the dangers he claimed were inherent in other drugs being doled out to pregnant women.

The insistence of this outspoken dissenter of the vivisection establishment's insistence that animal trials are authentic, and which cost Merrell Dow so dearly in compensation, also cost Dr William McBride his career and proved his downfall.  Readers are referred to the section on Thalidomide if they wish to follow-up the sorry end to Dr McBride's brilliant medical career, which was the inevitable result of speaking out against the official system of basing human safety on animal trials.  (N.B. Dr McBride regularly conducted animal tests, was not an anti-vivisectionist and to the writer's knowledge had no link with any anti-vivisection society.  The writer makes this point to emphasise that once again the critic of vivisection is the vivisector himself who having such little faith in its principle ignores or challenges its results.)

NOTA BENE

As far back as 1979, before the public became as knowledgeable as they are today about the great dangers associated with prescribed drugs, the N.Z. Anti-Vivisection Society commenced attempts to inform New Zealanders of the malformations being caused by Depo-Provera and Debendox.  Over a period of 14 years all the Society's campaigns have been consistently trivialised, distorted or ignored altogether by a media, which relying for its life-blood on advertising revenue from the vivisection industry, must of necessity work in complicity with it.  The New Zealand Government which co-produced ARSL, did not conduct legitimate hearings for the Society's two massive petitions, did not read the Society's submissions, refused to hear its witnesses.

These days, owing to the increasing number of drug tragedies, it is difficult for the pharmaceutical companies, in collusion with their government relatives, to continue sweeping the wrecks of people's shattered lives under the carpet.  Further, the public, now beginning to realise that the pill for every ill is nothing more than a money-making myth is more inclined to take its dis-ease to the valid medical practitioner who does not poison them with drugs, than to fall into the clutches of those dishonest and irresponsible puppets of the pharmaceutical giants, the legal pill-pushers.  Owing to the relentless censorship of the truth by the media and the government, and the latter's attempts to reassure and mollify the people about the sanctity of vivisection by publishing and distributing widely the flimsy and worthless Animal Research Saves Lives, the public, though aware that drugs cause damage, has not yet recognised that the reason for that damage lies in the fact that by government decree all drugs being "tested" on animals for an inconclusive alibi prior to marketing, it is the human being (as the vivisectors themselves have pointed out time and time again in their defence when tragedy strikes) who is the ultimate test subject.

The writer wonders, as the reader who has persevered thus far surely must, how the bitter pill of realisation will be swallowed and digested by the public when it eventually learns, as it inevitably must, that in placing its health and well-being second place to profits, the government, hand-in-glove with the pharmaceutical empire, has made it the victim of the greatest hoax in modern history.

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