ANIMAL RESEARCH T A K E S LIVES
- Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer
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ARSL claims (page 17) that without vivisection, cures for multiple sclerosis "would be put back decades - or possibly forever". (What they of course fear is that without vivisection their evil industry would not exist.) They cite no evidence to support their statement.
"Multiple sclerosis does not occur in animals. Ultimately, therefore, definitive research on multiple sclerosis must be done with humans."
(Proceedings of the Mayo Clinic, 1985, Outrage, No. 66, February/March 1990.)
"The concept that by getting hold of millions of healthy animals medical science can extract from them through torture the answer of how to heal human diseases - the origin of which reside in man's, and not the animals' own organism, soul or lifestyle - is so absurd that some day wiser men will wonder how such an idiocy could ever have been rendered believable to the majority."
Those words come from the lead article in Hans Ruesch's CIVIS International Foundation Report, Nr. 12, Fall-Winter 1991-92. They bring to mind the words of John Stuart Mill:
"It often happens that the universal belief of one age, a belief from which no-one was free without an extraordinary effort of genius or courage, becomes to a subsequent age, so palpable an absurdity that the only difficulty is to imagine how such an idea could ever have appeared credible."
Ruesch's words reflect the author of ARTL's unshakeable conviction - before she ever became aware that vivisection is scientifically as well as morally bankrupt. Like others striving for abolition she finds it incomprehensible that the Majority can be swayed or brainwashed into believing this grotesque and glaring error. Before attempting to solve the riddle of the speed and eagerness with which the Majority tumbles over itself to believe the lie of vivisection however, it must be borne in mind, that just by chance, as a delectable bonus, the Majority is thereby absolved from shouldering the tiresome and irritating responsibility for its abolition.
Ruesch also quotes the words of Goethe:
"Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side."
The following medical statements are about the human malady of multiple sclerosis:
"Clinical studies on people worldwide have suggested that multiple sclerosis is caused by a breakdown of the blood-brain barrier which allows the penetration of inflammatory cells into the central nervous system. It was clinical observation which showed that inflammation of the brain sometimes occurs in people vaccinated with rabies vaccine prepared from infective brain tissue. This clinical observation led vivisectors to attempt to reproduce this brain inflammation artificially by repeated injection into animals. The experimental disease is called 'experimental allergic encephalomyelitis', EAE for short."
(A.N. Davison, The Encyclopaedia of Medical Ignorance, Pergamon Press, 1984, pages 62-71.)
"However, the damage caused by EAE is different and different animal species appear to differ in susceptibility to the disease."
(D.A. Hafler, et al, Encyclopaedia of Human Biology, Vol. 5, Academic Press, 1991, pages 143-158.)
The reader is asked to consider some basic procedures which take place in the vivisection laboratories in the normal daily routine, remembering that ARSL was published in order to convince you that they are essential for the alleviation of the suffering of sick people. The evidence comes from eye-witness accounts of Louise Wallis, refer Chapter 15, Arthritis and Hip Replacements.
"Young female rats are injected in the base of the spine with a mixture of mashed up guinea-pig spinal cord, an adjuvant, and bacterium, which causes an immunological response inside the brain. This is supposed to be a model for multiple sclerosis and results in most of the rats becoming totally or partially paralysed with their muscles wasting away. Some rats however, appear normal and run around as usual. The rats are divided into groups and housed four to a cage - some control groups, and some groups being dosed orally with drugs to see if this helps remedy the paralysis."
This was an on-going experiment which was (and probably still is) funded by the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
"There are always inconsistencies in this experiment, with some batches of rats taking longer to develop paralysis, and some batches are more markedly paralysed than the others. In the worst stages the rats drag themselves around the cage floor pitifully, and often become incontinent, soiling the fur around their back legs and tails. Their little bodies becoming twisted and 'hunch-back' like. At this stage they have to be fed soft diet (soaked pellets) as they cannot reach the food hopper."
"In other experiments, experimental allergic encephalomyelitis, or EAE is produced by a single injection into the animal's skin, of specially prepared material from the central nervous system of other animals. According to these researchers the disease produced in rats is 'similar' (that word again) to human multiple sclerosis. Symptoms of EAE are described as including 'weight loss, tail droop, floppiness, partial or complete hind limb paralysis which may lead to quadraparesis and in some animals incontinence'. However EAE in rodents does not follow a chronic relapsing time course as does multiple sclerosis in people."
(D. Howat, et al, Agents & Actions, Vol. 27, 1989, pages 473-476.)
An editorial comment in Scientific American pointed out in 1990:
"There are crucial differences between MS and EAE. MS is a naturally occurring human illness caused by as yet unidentified genetic and environmental factors. EAE is an artificial disorder that researchers induce in laboratory animals by injecting them with a major protein constituent of myelin."
(Scientific American, July 1990, page 12.)
In 1989 the vivisectors at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London described one such experiment on rats. Some animals were killed by ether overdose and their spinal cords removed. These were prepared into a mixture which was then injected into the skin at the base of the tails of seven groups of six rats. The effects of a range of drugs on the developing EAE were studied. Symptoms were scored numerically: 1 for an animal with partial tail droop; 2 for complete tail droop; 3 for partial hindlimb paralysis; 4 for complete hindlimb paralysis.
(D. Howat, et al, Agents & Actions, Vol. 27, 1989, pages 473-476.)
The above project was funded by the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The researchers' description of EAE describes paralysis and implies some degree of suffering. Video footage taken secretly at St Bart's shows conscious and crippled animals suffering from EAE.
Two further papers published in 1989 were also funded by the MS Society. These concerned experiments of chronic-relapsing EAE on young guinea-pigs, and concluded that guinea pigs were different from other species, including people; in fact, one of the papers cites clinical studies on people, making the guinea pig experiments irrelevant.
(C. Wilcox, et al, Cellular Immunology, Vol. 120, 1989, pages 82-91.)
Researchers at the University Hospital in Gottingen, Germany pointed out that:
"In the variable, chronic-progressive course of MS in the adult, it is very difficult to show that immunopathological features are the same as those in animal models. In childhood MS, an earlier and more rapid sequence of events may help to answer unsolved questions."
(H.J. Bauer, et al, Lancet, Vol. 336, 1990, page 1190.)
An editorial in the British Medical Journal, emphasises that clinical research must be the way forward in such a disease. It reviews the vast amount of useful information gained from purely clinical studies of MS patients, including geographical distribution, genetic susceptibility, histocompatibility antigens and viral infection. It concludes:
"Instead of pitting genes against geography, the attack on multiple sclerosis should use the classic epidemiological model of agent, host and environment. Research that allows for interplay among these factors is likely to be most productive. We already know much about the environments in which multiple sclerosis is common and about relevant host factors (including those with a genetic base). The agent(s) remains a mystery although an infectious agent has long been suspected. Another lesson from the history of epidemiology is that diseases may be preventable before their causes are properly understood."
(D.C.G. Skegg, British Medical Journal, Vol. 302, 1991, pages 247-248.)
And thus, the cruelty aside, it is repeated for the umpteenth time how different animal species react differently to laboratory procedures. Procedures, it must be added, that are artificial, irrelevant and contrary to what the animals would develop naturally.
MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS AND VACCINATION - THE CONNECTION
The link between multiple sclerosis and vaccination has been well established and documented. This is emphasised in Chapter 5, Vaccination General and Polio Vaccination. In the 1960s when two and a half million New Zealanders were vaccinated with contaminated monkey-based vaccine the (then) Minister of Health Dr A. Malcolme said it could, in time, result in the onset of multiple sclerosis in those vaccinated.
"Leukemia, encephalitis, multiple sclerosis - and now I believe the smallpox vaccine theory is the explanation to the explosion of AIDS."
(World Health Organisation, advisor, Times, May 11 1987, Hans Ruesch, One Thousand Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection, page 39.)
The vivisection lie:
"Formerly it was the lie under the guise of religion that deceived mankind; now it is the same lie under the guise of science that is deceiving the whole world, and there is no weapon against it other than reason. Reason teaches us that the true healing of diseases and the maintenance of health consists in freeing the body of impurities and keeping it clean."
(Dr med. Franz Hartmann, Hallein in Tirol: (Lotusblueten, 1895) From Hans Ruesch's One Thousand Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection.)
Refer also to Chapter 17, Blood, High Blood Pressure.
A full report of Louise Wallis's investigation can be obtained from:
NAVS
Ravenside
261 Goldhawk Road
London W12 9PE
ENGLAND.