ANIMAL RESEARCH T A K E S LIVES
- Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer
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"The principal cause of coronary heart disease is bad nutrition and lack of exercise."
(Prof. Beaglehole, Prof. of Community Health at the Auckland Medical School on Morning Report, Radio N.Z., February 27 1991.)
It is absolute absurdity to use dogs as models of human coronary heart disease, when meat, the diet perfect for dogs is the precise diet that contributes to heart disease in humans. Thus were the comments of Dr M.G. Marmot at the University of California, Berkeley, who found that there is an exact statistical correlation for all groups between consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol, and deaths due to coronary heart disease. Dr Marmot said the use of dogs in such studies were erroneous and only confused the issue.
(M. Marmot, "Epidemiologic Studies of Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke in Japanese Men", American Journal of Epidemiology, 102:511, 1975.)
Prof. Peter Gluckman, Director of Animal Research at the University of Auckland, member of the University's animal ethics committee has been vivisecting animals for almost twenty years. Since abolition challenges his lucrative job he was one of the greatest opposers of the Society's Petition to Abolish Vivisection 1989. (Readers are referred to Mobilise! No. 31, December 1991, the newsletter of NZAVS.) In addition to being responsible for revolting experiments on many species of animals Gluckman approves experiments on hundreds of dogs which are taken from pounds and used in simulated heart attacks.
John Gavin (Cardiac Pathology Research) also of Auckland, leads vivisection programmes using hundreds of dogs. In Sunday Times, March 25 1990 Gavin was reported to make the following astounding statement which exposes precisely the attitude these vivisectors have towards their victims: "Dogs provide an accepted model for human hearts because research showing one form of treatment was worse than another could not be done on humans since they could not be badly treated for a condition."
Research Fellow Lois Armiger uses hundreds of pound dogs in simulated heart attack experiments brought about by blocking coronary arteries for which this vivisector was awarded $68,600 from the Medical Research Council (one of ARSL's publishers and recipients of $12.5 million of the taxpayer's money in 1989.).
Prof. Robin Norris, of Auckland University says his research team at Greenlane uses about 30 dogs a year but would not divulge the research.
Michael Eade (Physiology Senior Lecturer) kills many dogs saying: "The driving force for us is a desire to know what the hell is going on. I feel strongly about that." The author could inform Eade that the experiment he does on dogs is being carried out cheaply and efficiently elsewhere with conclusive and reliable results using computer simulations, and that copies of the computer programs were supplied in 1985 to Auckland University free by NZAVS, the first receiving dismal acknowledgement because the recipients were not computer specialists, and the second receiving no acknowledgement at all!
Doctors are organising on a dramatic and substantial scale in over 30 countries in opposition to the kind of experiments being carried out by these Auckland vivisectors and it is unlikely that such procedures will survive as the blatant fraud they represent becomes recognised by the public.
ARSL claims that coronary by-pass and open heart surgery was pioneered on dogs in New Zealand, and without "their help" many New Zealanders who received heart surgery would not be here today. Were these claims backed up with evidence which could withstand scrutiny, the N.Z. Anti-Vivisection Society would concede and shift from the scientific to the ethical battleground against vivisection. However not a shred of evidence is offered and a study of the papers written by pioneers in the field of heart surgery (and all medicine) reveals a clear-cut and comprehensive case for the immediate abolition of vivisection on the grounds that it is unreliable, dangerous, and retards progress.
The writer's first witness is Dr Moneim A. Fadali, for 25 years one of America's leading cardiovascular surgeons. This highly respected doctor is also: Diplomate to the American Board of Surgery; Diplomate to the American Board of Thoracic Surgery; Certified with the Canadian Board of Surgeons; Certified with the Royal College of Surgeons, Canada; twenty-five years on the clinical staff of the University of California where he currently practises. The statements of Dr Fadali, are confirmed and supported by doctors equally impressive and prestigious in many fields of medicine who are vociferous in their agreement that abolitionists are correct in their claim that vivisection is fraudulent and that those engaged in it are scoundrels and charlatans who should be imprisoned. Of the use of the dogs for coronary by-pass and open-heart surgery Dr Fadali writes:
"Animal research was NOT responsible for the development of coronary bypass surgery. In 1961 in France, Kunlin first used a portion of a person's own vein to replace obstructed arterial segments. This gave birth to arterial bypass surgery for different parts of the body, the heart included. By contrast, Beck of Ohio and Vineburg of Canada took their theories to the animal laboratory in search of surgical answer to the complications of coronary artery disease. Each devised more than one procedure, envisioning success from their findings in animals. Not long after, their recommended operations were performed on thousands of human patients. What were the results? To say the least, unworthy. To put it bluntly; a fiasco, a total failure. I am witness to this event and the least I can do is speak out. Animal experimentation inevitably leads to human experimentation. That is the final verdict, sad as it is. And the toll mounts on both sides."
"Dogs have been extensively used in heart research, but their coronary arteries differ from those of humans - they have smaller connections with one another and the left coronary artery dominates, while in humans the right does so. In addition, the conduction system has a different pattern of blood supply, and consequently, researchers have had difficulty in producing ischemic heart blocks in dogs, which occurs frequently in humans. The blood coagulation mechanism is unlike ours, therefore using dogs to test prosthetic devices and valves is unreliable. A dog's reaction to shock is also very different to that of humans.
After massive blood loss a dog's intestines are congested, while in humans we see pallor and ischemia. No wonder conclusions from dog experiments extrapolated to human beings frequently brings about catastrophic results and regrettable failures, which occurred with the earlier models of heart valves and in the first several years of using the heart-lung machine. For the benefit of medical science vivisection should be stopped. We must put an end to the medical fraud of vivisection."
Dr Fadali's evidence is borne out by medical historian Dr M. Beddow Bayly in Clinical Medical Discoveries who writes:
"As for bypass surgery, animal research actually retarded this therapy for humans. Because a dog's clotting characteristics and coronary valves are so different from ours, the initial human patients died. The first success was Dr Kunlin's work in France. Dr Kunlin's work was clinical and had nothing to do with animal research."
Our next witness is Dr Brandon Reines at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in Boston, U.S.A. Reines has been published in the Boston Globe, Omni magazine, and Family Health and Animals. He is the acclaimed author of four recent works of major proportion:
Dr Moneim Fadali in the Foreword to the latter work writes:
"To say that the current state of medical knowledge and future advances would not be possible without live animal experiments is false: Brandon Reines discusses most of the breakthroughs in cardiovascular research; blood transfusion, asepsis, modern endotracheal anesthesia, the various cardiac medications and many more. He correctly asserts that while these developments are now at our disposal, virtually none of them were developed as a result of animal research."
In Heart Research on Animals Reines takes us through the development of drugs and surgical techniques used in the treatment of heart disease and details the history of surgery for coronary artery disease, open heart surgery, heart transplantation, artificial heart valves, artificial hearts and more. Presenting mountains of evidence from an impressive number of professionals in these fields Reines states from the onset that animal experimentation has not achieved a single advance in these areas. Like Dr Beddow Bayly he cites that it was clinical investigation that led to open heart surgery, heart transplantation and prevention of deaths from coronary artery disease. Reines says that clinical investigation should be glorified by the medical community and the mass media. That instead of continuing what he calls "the currently bankrupt animal model strategy" the medical community should begin an intensive effort to apply deep mathematical models (pioneered by Dr Irwin D. J. Bross, former director of biostatistics at Roswell Park Memorial Institute for Cancer Research in Buffalo, New York) to research heart disease and stroke. "This hard scientific strategy" says Reines "put a man on the moon and split the atom: It could also do the same for the war against cardiovascular disease. The public deserves no less." Brandon Reines also quotes Drs Kenneth L. Melmon and Howard F. Morrelli who he describes as "the most well-respected clinical pharmacologists in the world" - whose findings as below correspond with those of Dr Marmot quoted earlier in this article:
| "Animal models do not provide good mirrors of human disease. Most of the information helpful in management of coronary artery disease comes from epidemiological studies." |
There are many anatomical differences and dis-similarities between dogs and human beings which destroy all ARSL's assertions that one model can be the model for the other. These are detailed in section Differences Between Cats, Dogs and Humans, this Chapter.
Beginners in the anti-vivisection movement, the uninitiated, the naive and those who are fearful of moving from an established belief based on generations of brainwashing, could be forgiven for expressing doubt that publishers of ARSL would go to such lengths of producing and distributing their insistence that health relies on vivisection were this not true. But surely, if they were confident and correct in their claims, they would merely shrug aside dissention as one shrugs off irritating flies on a hot day, not wasting thought, much less time and money to discredit us. To consolidate and propagandize their insistence that health relies on cutting up animals merely emphasises their apprehension. For those who, in spite of all the evidence, still need convincing that vivisectors are crooks and confidence tricksters the writer quotes Reines' own words from the Introduction of Heart Research on Animals:
"With the birth of the National Institutes of Health and its vast financial resources, the battle for medical research grants encouraged laboratory physiologists to greatly exaggerate the contribution of animal research to advances against human disease. From roughly 1930 on, medical students were taught that virtually every significant advance - from the discovery of insulin to surgery for 'blue babies' - arose from 'basic' scientific research on laboratory animals. These distortions were further propagated by the corporations that flourished with the rise of animal experimentation; the laboratory animal breeders, sellers, and promoters. While occasionally a brave clinician dared to contradict the dogma of animal experimentation, he did so at grave risk to his reputation and his livelihood. Mass media stories continued to aggrandize the accomplishments of animal research and even investigative reporters failed to see that the claims of animal researchers were largely a promotional device aimed at bringing in the federal funds."
| As NZAVS, working in unison with doctors against vivisection, represents a threat to the funds and credibility of AGCARM, the Cancer Society of N.Z., the N.Z. Heart Foundation, the Medical Research Council of N.Z., and MAF, all of which uphold vivisection because of its inherent financial benefits, those bodies collaborated to produce the booklet Animal Research Saves Lives which is nothing more than a promotional device aimed at defending their interests. |
The writer recommends the following sources of medical and scientific information which demolish totally ARSL's claim that heart surgery was developed as a result of vivisection. That on the contrary, in the entire history of the treatment of heart disease, experiments on animals, though creating work for a vast industry, has clouded the issue and delayed progress whilst pouring a river of gold into a flawed system. A more comprehensive and professional chronology of the history of the heart transplant and other cardiology advances, entitled Cardiac Arrest, may be obtained from:
CIVITAS
PO Box 26
Swain
New York 14884-0026
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To whom the writer is grateful.
HEART TRANSPLANT
Covered in Chapter 14 Kidney Disease, Organ Transplants and Dialysis. Dr M.H. Pappworth, eminent London physician and internationally known teacher of clinical medicine, wrote:
"The public should know that transplant surgery never cures the original disease and never makes the recipient a healthy person... All transplant surgery is a confession of failure, of unsuccessful early diagnosis and treatment."
(Hans Ruesch, One Thousand Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection, page 98.)
Experiments on dogs to develop transplant techniques were disastrous. Hundreds of dogs were used yet the first human patients died because of complications which arose when the technique was applied to the first human patients.
(Dr Albert Iben, Stanford University cardiac surgeon reported in the Erie Daily Times, May 23 1968.)
By 1980, 65% of patients survived more than a year as a result of increased skill gained through clinical experience.
(Lancet, March 29 1980, pages 687-688.)
MONITORING EEG
The electroencephalograph is not a result of animal experimentation.
(M. Beddow Bayly, Clinical Medical Discoveries, NAVS, 1961.)
FLOATING CARDIAC CATHETER
Dr Forssman used his own forearm to develop cardiac catheterization and his technique was completed through clinical trials with human patients.
(M. Beddow Bayly, Clinical Medical Discoveries, NAVS, 1961.)
CARDIOPULMONARY RESUSCITATION
Mouth to mouth resuscitation was developed by Kouwenhoven, Jude and Knickerbocker by experimenting on cadavers in the morgue. Their technique is the standard form of cardiopulmonary resuscitation used by the American Red Cross.
(Comroe, Exploring the Heart: Discoveries in Heart Disease and High Blood Pressure, Norton and Company, 1983, page 1162.)
THE CAGED BALL VALVE
Doctors Starr and Edward almost discarded the caged ball valve as it killed all their experimental dogs. It was however successful on human beings.
(A. Starr, "Mitral Replacement: Clinical Experience with a Ball-Valve Prosthesis", Annals of Surgery, 154(4):740, 1961.)
VENTILATION OF OPEN THORAX
Doctors Ivan Magill and E.S. Rowbotham, working with World War I casualties at Sir Harold Gillie's plastic surgery hospital in Sidcup, Great Britain developed the technique of delivering anaesthetic gas through a single endotracheal tube under positive pressure controlled by the patient's breathing. They performed no animal experiments.
(R.G. Richardson, The Surgeon's Heart: A History of Cardiac Surgery, William Heinemann Medical Books Ltd, page 101.)
DEFIBRILLATION
Fibrillation of the ventricles is life-threatening. Reverend John Wesley in the 18th Century through clinical observations successfully used electrotherapy to stop fibrillation in human patients. More than a century later in 1899 Presost and Batteli "re-proved" what Wesley had developed, by using electric shock to reverse ventricular fibrillation in dogs. William B. Kouwenhoven of Johns Hopkins University is sometimes credited by pro-vivisectionists for developing a closed-chest defibrillator for dogs and then for human use in 1957. However clinician Dr P. Zoll had developed closed-chest resuscitation on patients in 1956. Once again Kouwenhoven repeated what Zoll had discovered through human observations and falsely credited animal research for the advance.
(L. Wertenbaker, To Mend the Heart, the Viking Press, 1980, page 178.); (J.H. Comroe, Exploring the Heart: Discoveries in Heart Disease and High Blood Pressure, W.W. Norton and Company, 1983, page 159.); (L.E. Meltzer, Textbook of Coronary Care, The Charles Press Publishers Inc., A Prentice Hall Company, 1980, page 4.)
ELECTIVE CARDIAC ARREST
For "restarting" the heart once again animal experiments gave misleading results. Though a technique was shown "effective" in animals, it was discarded for use in humans because of "many problems, consisting of pain, burns and inability to keep up continuous stimulation for a prolonged period".
(W. Lillihei, "The Treatment of Complete Heart Block by the Combined Use of a Myocardial Electrode and an Artificial Pacemaker", Surgical Forum, 43rd Clinical Congress, Vol. VII, American College of Surgeons, Chicago, 1957.)
VASCULAR ANASTOMOSIS
In 1935 Dr Claude S. Beck pioneered the surgical technique to increase the blood supply to the heart muscles when blood became blocked in the coronary arteries. Beck whose success was based on clinical observations said though he had conducted thousands of animal experiments they were useless, that his only useful knowledge came from clinical studies. The Beck operations were carried out for 25 years before being superseded by the clinical development of new operations.
(T. Preston, Coronary Artery Surgery: A Critical Review, Raven Press, 1977, page 9.)
MYOCARDIAL PRESERVATION TECHNIQUES
Scientists at the Middlesex Hospital and Medical School recently isolated individual heart cells from human heart muscle. These cells are useful in research into heart disease and in the preservation of heart (myocardial) tissue for cardiac surgery, with the advantage that results are directly applicable to patients because as the researchers stated: "... it is difficult and often misleading to extrapolate experimental results in animal tissues to man."
(T. Powell, et al, BMF, October 17 1981, pages 1013-1014.)
HEART TRANSPLANT OF BABY FAE AT LOMA LINDA MEDICAL SCHOOL, CALIFORNIA 1984
At the time of this operation it is reported that Bailey had no experience in human heart transplants but had experimented with many animals performing over 160 cross-species transplants. According to Dr Martin Ruff, an immunologist at University College, London, rejection of the baboon heart was inevitable because there are no antigens in common between baboons and humans. (But as Dr Fadali has told us "animal experiments inevitably lead to human experiments". The untold amount of suffering this flawed methodology caused to Baby Fae was the result of human experimentation.)
(New Scientist, November 29 1984.)
CYCLOSPORIN AND ANTI-REJECTION DRUGS
The various drugs now used to control the immune response during organ transplantation were well-known through clinical observation to be immunosuppressive in human patients long before animal tests were conducted. In 1984 when some cyclosporin-treated heart transplant patients developed kidney problems batteries of animal experiments failed to produce the same damage, except for one extremely unusual strain of Kyoto rat. There is no way to predict with accuracy that human kidneys react to cyclosporin as it does in this one specific animal.
(R. Y. Calne, "Immunosuppression for Organ Grafting", Clinical Immunosuppression, edited by J.R. Salaman, Grune and Stratton, 1980, page 11.); (W.B. Pratt, The Anticancer Drugs, Oxford University Press, 1979, page 59.); (Lancet, February 22 1986, pages 419-420.); (R.Y. Calne, et al, Lancet, June 8 1985, page 1342.)
ARTIFICIAL HEART
It is emphasised in many sources that medical progress has been delayed because of the vast difference in dogs and human beings and that dog experiments were a failure in this area. The conduction system in dogs is less likely to clot than in human blood; dogs walk on four legs, thereby placing less stress on the circulatory system than upright human beings; the ventricles in dogs are opposite to the human system; and animal recipients of artificial hearts are healthy before the operation. There are many other variables noted elsewhere in this work. The first recipient of an artificial heart, Barney Clark, survived a miserable 112 days kept alive against his wish to be allowed to die, until he expired from kidney collapse.
(C.F. Scott,"Appropriate Animal Models for Research on Blood in Contact with Artificial Surfaces", Annals N.Y. Academy of Science, 516, 1987, pages 636-637.); (C.F. Scott, The Physiologist, 31 (3), 1988, page 53.); (Hans Ruesch, One Thousand Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection, 1989, page 28.)
Elsewhere in this work it is recorded how the discovery of insulin and the success of open heart surgery, and organ transplants were developed despite confusion arising from experiments on dogs (and other animals). As revealed under the section on congenital heart defects the success of the "blue baby" operation was developed through clinical observation of human patients. Similarly the pacemaker for complete heart block was developed through investigation of those afflicted with the condition.
THE PACEMAKER
Each of the techniques made to contract or stimulate the ventricles in attempts to "pace" the human heart was tested on dogs and shown "effective", even heralded as a success, however they were "quickly discarded in patients because of the many problems, consisting of pain, burns and inability to keep up continuous stimulation for the prolonged period". Dr C. Walton Lillihei pioneer of the pacemaker, seeing his method which was developed on dogs fail to cross the species, devised, through observing his patients, a method of "stitching electrodes directly on to the heart, leading them through the chest and running a pulsed current through them".
"The development of artificial pacemakers for complete heart block grew out of direct studies of human patients suffering from ventricular septal defect."
(W. Lillihei, "The Treatment of Complete Heart Block by the Combined Use of a Myocardial Electrode and an Artificial Pacemaker", Surgical Forum, 43rd Clinical Congress, Vol. VIII, American College of Surgeons, Chicago, 1957, page 360.)
Also refer L. Wertenbaker, To Mend the Heart, The Viking Press, 1980, page 181; and R.G. Richardson, The Surgeon's Heart: A History of Cardiac Surgery, William Heinemann Medical Books Ltd, page 101.
OPEN-HEART SURGERY
The heart-lung machine was the most critical development in open-heart surgery for it takes over the function of the patient's heart and lungs during open heart operations. John H. Gibbon of Philadelphia, U.S.A. who developed a heart-lung machine on dogs abandoned his project when two patients died, admitting that it was unsafe for human beings. J.W. Kirklin of the Mayo Clinic, without the use of animals and using careful clinical trials made a heart-lung machine which was successful on human beings.
(H. McLeave, The Risk Takers, Holt, Rinehard & Winston, 1962, page 70.)
TRANSPLANTS
For a comprehensive paper on the failure of the transplant process: from the misleading results derived from animal experiments; the inability of society to sustain the massive financial burden; and the inability for a technical procedure to substitute health, refer Chapter 14 Kidney Disease, Organ Transplants and Dialysis.