ANIMAL RESEARCH T A K E S LIVES
- Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer
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The author wrote in her Society's newsletter Mobilise! No. 30, August 1991:
Ten witnesses, each with a specialised carefully prepared and substantiated unrepetitive case on ten crucial aspects of vivisection were tricked into believing they would be "Heard" by the Primary Production Select Committee. It had taken a whole year to receive this assurance. Of the group Bette Overell and Lawrence O'Halloran were "Heard" under duress with constant interruptions from the Chairman Ross Meurant, who visibly antagonistic from the onset, said he had "matters more pressing". In the meagre time allotted Bette Overell, principal petitioner gave an overview of the case for abolition emphasising the medical catastrophes resulting from the vivisection-based health service, the activities of the leagues of doctors campaigning for abolition under the policy of "scientific anti-vivisectionism" and the inadequacies of the peer-review system. She introduced the nine witnesses to the Committee and the aspects of the cases they would present. Of these Lawrence O'Halloran presented his evidence on the obsolescence of vivisection-based farming. The remaining eight witnesses, one of whom was a drug-damaged victim of animal research, were ignored along with their submissions. None of these knowledgeable abolitionists have been "Heard" to this day. Hundreds of public submissions were never registered. A series of hearings were held for representatives of the pro-vivisection community to discuss the Petition. Neither Overell nor her Society were informed, much less invited to these meetings and were unaware of them until after the event.
Despite numerous enquiries to the Primary Production Select Committee and to the Prime Minister the Society never received a report of the outcome of the Petition. Despite correspondence between Bette Overell and the politicians which lies in files feet thick. Despite the politicians being in possession of medical proof that the established health service is based on error. Despite the Government being informed of the growing movement of doctors against vivisection-based medicine. And despite 13 years' bitter struggle for the legitimate case against vivisection to be heard through the Parliamentary system, it was made crystal clear (by their contrived silence, their hostility and their determination not to expose their shaky ground by asking questions that would be easily answered and expounded upon), that politicians, including four consecutive Prime Ministers and two Ministers of Health, are a key factor in the vivisection conspiracy.
With their respective cases gathering cobwebs in files they were never allowed to open, and in possession of answers to questions that were deliberately never put to them, these pioneers of abolition are pictured outside the New Zealand Parliament on 20 March 1991 prior to the "Hearing". The farce at which all hopes to effect change through legal channels were shattered for decades to come, when inevitably others will rise to overthrow along with its profiteers, this greatest, most evil and calculated fraud of our times.
Photo: Dominic Hammond
Left to right: Fiona Tait, Deborah Garrett, Sandra Mattiassi, Vivienne Sands, Lawrence O'Halloran, Ross Gardiner, Bette Overell, Dean Golding, Anita Spencer, Simon Cottle.
Holding Banner: Paula Feehan and Zane Hookham.
Photo: Wellington Dominion
At the N.Z. Parliament 20 March 1991. The frustration clearly visible on the faces of anti-vivisectionists, who, being constantly advised to "go through the proper channels", systematically have every legal channel closed to them when attempting to do so.