ANIMAL RESEARCH T A K E S LIVES
- Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer
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Throughout the ages man has exploited animals. In the wild, in zoos, in warfare experiments, on the battlefield, in the pet industry, agriculture and for his entertainment and amusement. And, in vivisection laboratories.
In today's supposed enlightened and sophisticated times, the era of the greatest aggression against animals in history, three hundred million animals are imprisoned and killed every year in vivisection laboratories, many of which are State funded. In these places animals are injected with diseases unnatural to their species, driven insane, strapped immobile for years on end, electric shocked, blinded, concussed, burned, frozen, drowned, mechanically raped, dismembered, disembowelled and otherwise violated in the name of human health and well-being. "Animal lovers" worthy of the name should now be making exhaustive efforts to abolish the institution of vivisection, which we are informed by professional medics, operates for those involved in it, and not for the good of animal or human health as the vivisectors would have us believe from their advertising and propaganda which in many cases is paid for by the taxpayer.
One example of the shattered myth that vivisection is painless and humane was screened on N.Z. television on August 2 1990 when viewers of Foreign Correspondent saw Prof. Willhelm Feldberg, decorated by Her Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second for his contribution to medicine, vivisecting fully-conscious screaming rabbits at Central London's largest and most prestigious National Institute of Medical Research. Great Britain boasts the most stringent laws in the world to "protect" laboratory animals. Other countries model their legislation on that of Great Britain.
Classed as "agricultural products" animals used in intensive farming are now exploited to the point where every fundamental instinct is suppressed. Currently a Petition on the status of animals in the EEC is before the European Parliament seeking recognition of a new status which will reclassify them as "sentient animals". Manipulation of animals by genetic engineering, patenting and advanced mechanism has reduced farm animals to little more than mass-produced inanimate objects.
Farming "sentient animals" for food as currently practised is becoming increasingly inefficient as they are the victims of unseasonable environmental disasters, pollution, floods, drought, bad-management, miscalculations and carelessness. As farm animals are the victims of experiments inflicted in order to increase yields and profits, and farmers attempt to shore up their flagging industry with government subsidies (paid for by the taxpayer), carcasses and dairy products stockpile. In Australia 50 million sheep were destroyed because of overproduction (Dominion, November 1 1990). Medical experts are now warning us that vivisection performed on animals for the benefit and study of animals, if introducing the disease as distinct from studying spontaneous disease, is "unscientific", which principle also applies to human medicine.
Today there is mounting concern that the Earth's irreplaceable oxygen-producing rain-forests are being destroyed and replaced by cattle. This causes many problems including erosion.
As thirty million acres of third-world land is devoted to producing animal-feed for European livestock, two children in the third-world die every second from starvation. Experts claim that to produce one pound of beef ten pounds of grain is necessary for animal feed, grain that could be converted direct to versatile and palatable food for human consumption. Over half the world's grain is fed to animals. The Earth's diminishing water supply is soon expected to be insufficient to sustain a farming industry which is physically and economically obsolete and morally bankrupt.
| "In 1968 the amount of humanly edible protein fed to American livestock and not returned for human consumption approached the whole world's protein deficit!" - (Frances Moore Lappe, Diet for a Small Planet.) |
Giving not the slightest acknowledgement or consideration to NZAVS' comprehensive case against vivisection-based animal farming, included in the Society's Submission Supporting NZAVS Petition to Abolish Vivisection 1989, which he also ignored, that case was described, either in ignorance or fear, or both, by Ross Meurant, Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee, in Dominion, April 17 1991, as "bizarre and extreme". The Ministry of Agriculture subsequent to receiving NZAVS' submissions on July 28 1990 became a major contributor to Animal Research Saves Lives, which began circulation in November 1990 in order to bolster the image of the country's questionable primary products and stave off further criticism.
In the following pages the author gives evidence, not only that animal herds of superior quality can be maintained without vivisection-based interferences and tamperings, chemicals and vaccines, but that animal-based farming, whether in the field or in the factory, will inevitably collapse due to its gross inefficiency, its inability to cater for future world population increases,1 the growing incidence of world famine (to which animal farming is a major contributor) and for the lack of resources, especially water, to maintain the industry. The incomprehensible and outrageous bungling of animal farming, which is dealt with substantially in Chapter 2, The Farming Industry, in this work, is brought to mind once again as this Foreword is written in August 1992, coincidentally as the Government appeals for public donations to shore-up the farmers' tremendous losses of well over one million sheep and lambs, incurred in the current environmental disaster the like of which has never been known in the history of New Zealand farming. Where, in other areas of the business community is the taxpayer called upon to assist failed enterprises, especially when they are based, like animal-farming, on risk, uncertainties and, in many areas of the business, the inability to make accurate predictions?
As the end product of much of today's vivisection-based farming is harmful, even rejected by the purchaser because of the inherent danger to the consumer, so vivisection-based medicine is constantly being exposed in the media as hazardous to human health. Fearless dissenters from the established vivisection-based "official medicine" are bound by a unified policy of scientific anti-vivisectionism. A chart shows this policy which outlines the methodological error and flaw involved in extrapolating results of vivisection across the species. Whilst the reader will be anxious therefore to assume that extrapolations between the same species are possible, the chart shows this occurs only where the dis-ease or situation under study is spontaneous and not artificially-induced. Doctors, including many who are not involved in anti-vivisectionism, agree that a naturally-evolved malady, having no erroneous factors, can be studied and information carried between the same species. However, in the case of deliberately-induced sickness or injury which is beset with variables, the results are nothing more than hit and miss assumptions, like a lottery, often ending in disaster. Everyone will agree that there are plenty of models for the study of human sickness in the hospitals and accident casualty wards, this however promises no profits to the vivisectors, whilst there are rich pickings to be made from mutilating animals.
Vivisection directly involves all people in all walks of life. There can be no exception. Doctors working for abolition forecast decades ago that experiments on animals inevitably lead to experiments on humans. This is now happening on large scale, in drug testing, in surgical operations, and in trials of preventative vaccines. Vivisection undoubtedly now means experimentation on animals and human beings. Examples of this are revealed in Chapter 21, Drugs and the Law, Section 3. There are many aspects of vivisection to consider, social, economic, religious, moral and scientific. This book deals solely with the latter rebutting the statements made in ARSL, using not only the evidence of doctors against vivisection but of fully-fledged vivisectors and others involved in the industry.
The following chart shows the reported number of animals used in vivisection in New Zealand for the period 1987-1990. NZAVS' concern is not however in numbers, but in the principle that vivisection, in all its forms, is scientifically invalid. Certainly it will never come to an end by reducing the number of animals, which conversely could increase vivisection. Neither will it be abolished by imposing regulations or tighter controls on the vivisectors for this merely sanitises, legalises and entrenches a method, which, morally bankrupt, and without logic, other than its inherent profits, should not exist. (These profits are dealt with under The Vivisection Industry, this Chapter.)
| Group | Year | Hamsters, rats, mice, guinea-pigs, rabbits | Sheep, cattle, goats | Other domestic animals3 | Birds | Fish and fish eggs | All other species4 | Total |
| Universities |
1987-88 1989 1990 |
66211 45253 40647 |
7415 6668 5832 |
1197 1633 1071 |
7324 4365 4818 |
14625 4014 5741 |
4116 4433 3214 |
100888 66366 61323 |
| Schools |
1987-88 1989 1990 |
- 20 - |
- - - |
- - - |
- - - |
- 3 3 |
- - - |
- 23 3 |
| Polytechnics |
1987-88 1989 1990 |
1923 967 193 |
- 150 20 |
2 - 2 |
1 - 20 |
345 180 - |
130 20 12 |
2401 1317 247 |
| Commercial1 |
1987-88 1989 1990 |
74569 48155 57558 |
22968 42569 65695 |
562 846 5477 |
- - - |
- - - |
- - - |
98099 91570 128730 |
| MAF |
1987-88 1989 1990 |
7534 2810 8212 |
45905 19570 47625 |
1774 1386 3325 |
22 - 21 |
474 300 485 |
170 923 76 |
55879 24989 59744 |
| DSIR |
1987-88 1989 1990 |
582 352 1386 |
2560 1322 434 |
15 7 20 |
1064 293 83 |
- - - |
2716 852 1012 |
6397 2826 2935 |
| Department of Conservation |
1987-88 1989 1990 |
- - 91 |
- - - |
- - - |
268 1726 4533 |
- 99476 - |
54 403 1905 |
322 101605 6529 |
| Other2 |
1987-88 1989 1990 |
2013 2939 951 |
225 305 71 |
55 71 174 |
182 3 13 |
- - - |
558 94 58 |
3033 3412 1267 |
| Total |
1987-88 1989 1990 |
152832 100496 109038 |
79073 70584 119677 |
3605 3943 10069 |
8861 6387 9488 |
15444 103973 6229 |
7204 6725 6277 |
267019 292108 260778 |
| Group | Year | Hamsters, rats, mice, guinea-pigs, rabbits | Sheep, cattle, goats | Other domestic animals3 | Birds | Fish and fish eggs | All other species4 | Total |
Notes:
1. "Commercial" embraces those organisations that manipulate animals for testing chemical and biological products, or for the production of such substances for commercial use.
(National Animal Ethics Advisory Committee, August 20 1992.)
| "For over a century thousands of medical doctors have opposed animal experimentation. Doctors in Britain Against Animal Experiments have now taken up the challenge to abolish animal experimentation on medical and scientific grounds. Our aim is the total, immediate abolition of all animal experiments." (Written into the agenda of an International Scientific Congress of Doctors, being hosted in London, September 24 1992, by the organisation Doctors in Britain Against Animal Experiments, founded March 22 1990.) |
| "Vivisection is rooted in error, and when the truth becomes known it will disappear." (Dr Max Mader, G.P., 1908, published in the Agenda of Doctors in Britain Against Animal Experiments.) |
| "I cannot name one single case in which experiments on animals may have led to a useful result." (Dr med. Philippe Grin, G.P., Video Interview with CIVIS, July 1 1986. Hans Ruesch, One Thousand Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection.) |
| "I am of the opinion that all experiments on animals should be abolished because they only lead us to error." (Dr Marie-Louise Griboval, April 1987. Hans Ruesch, One Thousand Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection.) |
| "As a physician, I am definitely opposed to animal experiments. They are totally useless, they don't contribute in any way to progress of medicine." (Dr med. Jurg Kym, Physicians Have the Word, ATRA, December 1986. Hans Ruesch, One Thousand Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection.) |
| "My own conviction is that the study of human physiology by way of experiments on animals is the most grotesque and fantastic error ever committed in the whole range of human intellectual activity." (Dr G. F. Walker, Medical World, December 1933.) |
In New Zealand, and most other countries, vivisection procedures are decided by the peer review system, which means quite simply that the necessity for the experiments to be carried out is decided by the vivisectors who interpret and apply the law according to their requirements. This is as absurd as giving thieves the authority to decide when thefts are necessary and how they are to be committed. Corrupt and lopsided this system is the reason for the springing up, in the last two decades, of the active ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT. Things as they are, in this unsatisfactory situation where petitions to the Government are meaningless, and legal channels non-existent for anti-vivisectionists, activism is likely to continue, even increase. Many people, including the writer, agree that when a law is blatantly unethical it merits disobedience.
Medical giants in the abolitionist movement have long forecast that should the vivisection industry be forced, either through successful petitions to abolish vivisection, or by boycott of their products, to come up with valid methods or go out of business, those methods would be surprisingly and quickly be "discovered", approved and put into use. An example of the truth in this statement is the number of cosmetic companies against which NZAVS organised boycotts, for claiming their products MUST be tested on animals. Many of these firms, in order to keep up with their competitors who have never tested on animals, now declare that they have "discovered" new methods therefore no longer carry out animal testing - and capitalise from that valuable label.
In section The Vivisection Industry this Chapter, a chart from Doctor R. Kupsinel of U.S.A. reveals the 22 major differences between rats and mice, and human beings. Rodents are substantially used as models for the human circumstance. A frightening example is shown in Chapter 5, Vaccination - DPT. Pertussis vaccine is tested on the brains and abdomens of mice and has been for 40 years in full knowledge of the authorities that the mouse toxicity test is invalid. Sixty million infants were vaccinated with pertussis vaccine in a twenty-year period. In U.S.A. alone $US12.7 million has been paid out in claims against vaccine companies for children that have died or are permanently injured by this single vaccine. Rats and mice are the favourite tool of the vivisectors, not because they give valid results but because they are cheap, easy to produce and not aggressive. Perhaps more importantly because they are big business to the breeding firms which "manufacture" them. Refer to section The Vivisection Industry, this Chapter.
The chart provided by Prof. Croce reveals that whatever result sought by the vivisectors can be achieved by selecting the appropriate animal species. One glance at this chart exposes the fraud of vivisection.
| CORTISONE "There is a profound species difference in response to cortisone. Man, monkey and guinea-pig are resistant, and the rat, mouse, rabbit and ferret are sensitive, to its action. Clinical and experimental evidence suggest that the concept of the adaption syndrome is based on a false analogy and may BE MISLEADING WHEN APPLIED TO MAN." (D.A. Long, M.D. from the Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London, Lancet, March 13 1954, page 537.) |
| ASPIRIN "Would not be licensed for use in humans today because it CAUSES birth defects in rats, mice, monkeys, guinea-pigs, cats and dogs... BUT NOT IN HUMANS." (Tony Ortzen, "From Here to Beyond", Psychic News, London, July 11 1987.) |
| ATOMIC RADIATION (From atom-bombs) In Clinical Experts, Vol. XXIII, Nos. 9-10, Sept-Oct 1948, Under "The Effects of Irradiation". "These depend on the species. Thus the pigs, goats and guinea-pigs exposed on the vessels of Bikini were not affected in the same way, and different experimental animals tolerate greatly different quantities of radiation without death. THIS IS UNFORTUNATE FROM THE RESEARCH WORKER'S POINT OF VIEW, SINCE IT PREVENTS THE APPLICATION TO MAN OF CONCLUSIONS FROM ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS... I am also quite sure that the research on mice which our Government proposes to sponsor will not give the answer. The genes of mice may be more or less sensitive to radiation than those of men. Nobody knows, and nobody will know as the result of this research, which seems to me to be a waste of public money. The answer could be given by other methods." (Prof. J.B.S. Haldane, F.R.S., Picture Post, April 23 1955, page 12.) |
| Do you want to prove that the deadly amanita is a delicacy fit for humans?... Just feed it to a rabbit, morning, noon and night. They will thrive on it. |
| Do you want to ruin the citrus fruit growers? Then feed their lemons to cats, who will die from it. |
| Do you want to prove that prussic acid, the mere smell of which can kill a human being, makes a fine aperitif? Then let's feed it to toads and sheep. |
| Do you want to stop cooks from using parsley? Let's give it to the parrot, and you will find him stone dead the next morning. |
| Do you want Penicillin to disappear from all the chemist shops? Let's give guinea-pigs a taste of it, and they will promptly die from it. |
| Do you want to prove opium is harmless?... Then feed it to the porcupine which can swallow in one lump with no trouble at all what would keep a human addict groggy for two weeks if he just smoked it, let alone what it would do to him if he swallowed it. |
| Do you want to prove that botulin is harmless, just add a bit of this poison to your cat's food and he will happily lick its lips. BUT THE MOUSE WILL DIE FROM IT AS IF STRUCK BY LIGHTNING. |
| Do you want to test the safety of Methyl Alcohol?... This doesn't affect the eyes of most laboratory animals, but it is responsible for blinding thousands of people owing to the amount moonshiners have put in their booze. |
| Do you want to prove arsenic is safe?... Then feed it to the sheep who can tolerate a considerable quantity. |
| Do you want to prove aspirin deadly?... Then give it to your pussycat when she has the sniffle, and it will surely kill her. |
| Do you want to demonstrate the uselessness of vitamin C? Then remove it entirely from the diet of some animal that's close at hand - a dog, cat, rat, mouse, hamster. They will nevertheless stay healthy, because their organisms produce their own vitamin C. But we may not withold it from guinea-pigs, primates, or humans. Deprived of all vitamin C they would eventually all die from scurvy. |
| Do you want to prove the killer Strychnine safe to humans?... Then feed it to guinea-pigs, chickens and monkeys. |
| Do you want to prove deadly Hemlock as SAFE?... Then feed it to your goats, sheep and horses. |
| Do you want to prove Scopolamine SAFE?... One hundred milligrams leaves dogs and cats unaffected... but five milligrams is sufficient to kill a human being. |
| Amylnitrate dangerously raises the internal pressure of the eyes of a dog, but lowers the pressure within the human eye. |
| The Foxglove (digitalis) was formerly considered to be dangerous for the heart because, when tested on dogs, it raised their bloodpressure. For this reason the use of this medicament, which is of undisputed value for the human heart, was delayed by many years. |
| Novalgin is an anaesthetic for humans, but in cats it causes excitement and salivation, similar to what occurs in an animal suffering from rabies. |
| Cycloserin is used for tuberculous patients, but has no effect on guinea-pigs and rats which have been made tuberculous artificially. |
| The Anti-Inflammatory Phenylbutazone can be administered to dogs and other animals in high doses, for it quickly loses its effect in their bodies. But IF SIMILAR DOSES WERE GIVEN TO HUMANS, POISONING WOULD SOON SET IN, BECAUSE THIS MEDICAMENT NEEDS 100 TO 150 TIMES LONGER TO BECOME INACTIVE AND CHECKED IN ITS EFFECTS. |
| Chloramphenicol often seriously damages the blood-producing bone marrow of humans, but not the marrow of animals. |
| Acidum oroticum has a healing influence on the human liver, but causes fattiness in the liver of rats. |
| Chlorpromazine damages the human liver, but not the livers of laboratory animals. |
| METHYL FLUORACETATE has a toxic effect on mammals, but the rat can tolerate a dosage forty times higher than the dose that kills a dog... ...AND MAN!... WILL HE REACT LIKE THE RAT... OR THE DOG? |
Courtesy: Prof. Croce
For the reader who believes that "alternatives" could replace vivisection it must be emphasised that there are no alternatives. To an abolitionist there is nothing more erroneous. What, for instance, would the reader give his child as an "alternative" to a drip-feed of arsenic? None of course. Similarly a great proportion of today's populations are being damaged through continuous drip-feeds of pollutants and poisons through their vivisection-based diet and medicaments.
Thousands of non-animal methods are available and have been for years, but never used, and many others are stock-piled. Meanwhile the Italian Anti-Vivisection Doctors are organising. The first all-Italian Scientific Anti-Vivisection Committee has been formed for the purpose of reforming medical research to protect the health of human beings. Prof. Croce is President. The organisation opposes the subordination of the abolition of animal experimentation whilst awaiting "alternative" methods claiming that "a fallacious scientific method cannot be either regulated or reduced, but must be eradicated". It also "denounces vivisection as a methodological error leading to experimentation on man and corruption of the culture and behaviour of the physician".
(Civil Abolitionist, Vol. IV, No. 2, Spring 1992.)
In conclusion, most people agree that vivisection is "cruel and immoral", and there is now increasing awareness of the obvious harmful "side-effects" of vivisection-based medicaments. Not so obvious or recognised however, though critically important, is the incidence of animal tests failing to reveal damage to which human beings are highly susceptible. For example the reader is asked to consider the terrible dilemma and tragedy, reported in the last few years in the New Zealand media, of the 70-odd electricity workers at this country's thermal and hydro power stations who developed asbestos-related, extremely severe health problems. The case history of the identification of asbestos as a deadly carcinogen is yet another demonstration of the failure of vivisection. British clinical studies linked asbestos to lung cancer as far back as 1935. Despite massive animal testing carried out in many countries the harmful effects of asbestos could not be reproduced in the animals. Governments therefore did nothing to clean up the asbestos mines or control the use of asbestos until the late 1960s. The animal tests failed because asbestos-related diseases have latency periods of from 20 to 40 years, far longer than the lifespan of animals used in the trials. One of the world's leading asbestos researchers, Dr Irving Selikoff of Mt Sinai Hospital, New York estimated that the eventual toll from asbestos, and the failure of animal tests to protect the public, could exceed one million human beings.
(There are those who may also like to consider the sufferings of the hundreds of thousands of animals poisoned and mutilated to death in the brutal and unscientific asbestos experiments, and yet another thought for the animal breeders and others in the industry to whom such phoney "trials" represent a bonanza of profit.) There are many other examples of set-backs and catastrophes resulting from the inability of vivisection to predict the effect of a substance on human beings.
Footnote
1. The World News Service, September 14 1992, reported a current world population increase of 92 million per year.