The following is a New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society (Inc.) response to the ANZCCART Position Statement on the book ANIMAL RESEARCH T A K E S LIVES - Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer.
The book was written as a direct response to the leaflet Animal Research Saves Lives and its scope was limited to responding to the claims made in that leaflet.
Better health has come through economic and social advances, as ANZCCART note and also through clinical research, as is pointed out many times in the book.
For example refer to Chapter 18 Surgical Techniques.
Supposed "cures for... smallpox, tetanus and polio" are not referred to in the ARSL leaflet, therefore they are not directly mentioned in the book. However the book has shown, with many detailed examples that the underlying principle of basing human health on animal research is flawed and dangerous. Also the book has shown that vaccination for the afore-mentioned specific diseases is not the cause of the decline in cases and can have disastrous consequences.
Details of the supposed cures for smallpox, tetanus and polio are not given, nor are details of how animal research enabled scientists to find these 'cures' given. Therefore we can only presume that with regard to tetanus, ANZCCART are referring to antibiotics such as penicillin which, as the book shows, animal research did not enable scientists to discover.
Refer Chapter 16 Antibiotics.
"Smallpox virus and yellow fever virus do not affect any known animal."
Prof. Pietro Croce MD, Vivisection or Science - a choice to make, page 32.
"In nature, the poliovirus can only multiply in humans, although some monkey species can be deliberately infected in laboratories, and it can only survive outside the body in water or sewage for limited periods of time."
Christopher J. Rutty, Ph.D., "Tell Me More About Polio", Health Heritage Research Services, http://www.accessexcellence.org/arc/polio.html
With regard to cancer the book shows that identification of the features of cancer has been severely retarded through animal research.
Refer Chapter 8, Cancer.
ANZCCART state that there are many similarities between humans and animals which validate the use of animals in research. They do not detail how the similarities validate the use of animals, whereas the book displays many examples of how species differences invalidates animal research and has caused researchers to draw wrong and dangerous conclusions.
For example refer to (chosen at random) Chapter 21, Drugs and the Law, Section 3 - Animal based medicines: Lethal yet legal, Ulcer Prescriptions.
Testing the susceptibility of different strains of rats to infections and applying the results to humans is not referred to in the ARSL leaflet and therefore not directly mentioned in the book. ANZCCART have appeared to ignore the second facet of Scientific Anti-Vivisectionism (refer chart in the book) that results of experiments on induced disease cannot be applied to spontaneous disease.
"The diseases we give or induce in animals are not natural ones. They are generally illnesses that do not affect them, artificially created. Even if we give animals a disease that is known to afflict them, the natural evolution of disease is unlike its experimental induction. It is all dissimilar and diverse."
Moneim. A. Fadali, MD, Animal Experimentation - A Harvest of Shame, page 52.
When using cells in research for application in humans, using human cells eliminates the problems of cells from different species behaving in "almost identical" (ie not the same) ways.
"To test a substance on cultures of animal cells means committing the same error as experimenting on living animals with the absurd attempt to extrapolate the results to human beings. Besides it is just as easy to cultivate human cells as those of animals."
Prof. Pietro Croce MD, Vivisection or Science - a choice to make, page 207.
To know both the similarities and differences between animals and humans, the experiment must be done in humans, thus rendering the animal data redundant.
ANZCCART offer no evidence to support their claims that "smallpox vaccine is one of the most successful preventative medicines ever used" and that it "has completely eradicated" smallpox from the world. While the book provides evidence that the eradication of smallpox was not due to vaccination and that vaccination has been followed by reactions such as leukaemia.
Refer Chapter 5 Vaccinations, Smallpox.
ANZCCART criticise doctors opposing vaccination as not being many in number. Rather than a minority they are an elite.
ANZCCART do not provide any evidence for their claim that DPT vaccination offers "very real protection" to "most children against diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus". While the book provides evidence of the toxicity of whooping cough vaccine, the failure of diphtheria vaccine and links between DPT vaccine and SIDS. Modern promotion of vaccination due to profits made by drug companies and doctors ignore the very real side effects that occur, many of which are life-threatening and debilitating.
Refer Chapter 5 Vaccination for details.
ANZCCART provide no evidence of "success of vaccination".
ANZCCART provide no evidence that "properly administered, DPT vaccine is safe to use".
It is extremely irresponsible for ANZCCART to spread scare stories which could influence parents to vaccinate their children.
The book does not contain a 'statement of belief' (paraphrased or otherwise) that AIDS is "caused and spread by an infectious contaminant in vaccines". ANZCCART do not give a reference within the book as to where this supposed statement is made. Thus the author has not put forward two conflicting reasons for the cause and spread of AIDS.
AIDS dissenters have not disappeared, as ANZCCART claims, discarding their theories. For example, The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis, http://www.virusmyth.com.
It is far from clear that "AIDS is caused by the HIV viruses (sic)". ANZCCART provides no evidence to support its claims.
ANZCCART are inconsistent by referring in one paragraph to "HIV viruses (sic)" and then in the next paragraph to "the virus".
ANZCCART refer to AIDS as "the disease", yet the definition of AIDS is comprised of the existence of one or two old diseases (out of a selection of about 25 mainly unrelated diseases) in the supposed presence of antibodies to a HIV. AIDS is not a disease in itself. Refer Chapter 9 AIDS.
With regard to scrapie, the book cites the American Journal of Digestive Disease which linked an increase in scrapie in sheep to an increased use of insecticides. The book does not refer to a "cause" of scrapie.
Refer Chapter 2 The Farming Industry, Farming and Inefficiency.
Neither ARSL nor the ANZCCART Position Statement cite any references in support of their pro-vivisection policies. The book is the only text in Australasia to do so therefore it is the authoritative text on the topic.
ARSL deals in many places with the supposed history and development of medicine, therefore it is appropriate that the book includes some historical quotes. ARSL mentions events from last century on page 19, thus it is inconsistent for ANZCCART to criticise the book for using one quote that is over one hundred years old. The use of historical quotes also shows that scientific criticism of vivisection is not restricted to the modern era and that vivisection has retarded medical progress in many instances in times past. Those, such as ANZCCART, that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. However the book not only deals with the failure of vivisection throughout history but also in the contemporary era, with many examples taking place at time of writing (for example, Chapter 21, Drugs and the Law, Section 3 - Animal based medicines: Lethal yet legal, Anti-Histamine Drugs). The book also contains contemporary criticism of vivisection, with heavy emphasis on the new abolitionist movement of doctors and scientists opposed to vivisection on scientific grounds. Further the book has not dated since publication with many topics only now being spotlighted by the mainstream media, for instance the takeover of seed companies by the chemical multinationals, and the dangers of oral contraceptives.
Weight is added to the arguments in the book by using the words of those that support vivisection. Where vivisection is being criticised as unreliable and misleading by the vivisectors themselves surely this strengthens the case against vivisection rather than weakening it.
The book uses many types of evidence from many different sources, including some outside the mainstream of opinion. The cumulative effect of such evidence adds weight to the arguments in the book. The book not only contains evidence from "like-minded people", but there is great emphasis on evidence from the vivisectors' themselves.
The author does not contend in the book that insulin causes blindness in diabetics. The passages referring to insulin and blindness read:
"In New Scientist, March 18 1982, doctors say they believe insulin could be responsible for the high levels of blindness in diabetics"
and a quote from Dr Robert Mendelsohn from the video Hidden Crimes that "Insulin, when given over a number of years, can be responsible for the late complications of diabetes - diabetic blindness and diabetic gangrene..."
Chapter 11, Diabetes and Insulin, pages 179-180.
The context in which these appear is in pointing out that insulin is neither a cure nor prevention for diabetes and was not discovered because of animal research. ANZCCART provide no evidence for their claim that insulin retards the process of blindness.
The alleged contention of the author that "all diabetes can be controlled by appropriate diet" does not occur in the book.
The book contains overwhelming evidence that vivisection has in the past, and continues to, retard medical progress and is responsible for many medical disasters. Neither ARSL nor ANZCCART's position statement contain any evidence to sustain their pro-vivisection claims.
The medical and research community are often resistant to valid methods being used. For instance, Alix Fano writes in her book Lethal Laws that:
"In its 1986 report entitled Alternatives to Animals in Research (Chapter 8, p. 190) the US Office of Technology Assessment stated that, 'the implementation of alternatives [in testing] is hindered by various forms of institutional inertia such as regulatory schemes, product liability law, and general resistance to change.'."
It is alarming that ANZCCART wish to deny anti-vivisectionists' rights to free speech and freedom to express opinions (especially when backed with overwhelming evidence). By stating that anti-vivisectionists "have no place in the world about rational debate about public policy", ANZCCART force anti-vivisectionists to use other methods such as direct action in the fight against vivisection. Should a group such as the Animal Liberation Front be seeking a group of vivisectors and pro-vivisectionists to target, then ANZCCART, and their members and affiliates have presented themselves as an immediate target.
When one considers vaccines, surgery and drug therapy, organ transplants and rehabilitation that has been based on work with animals one surely cannot but agree (after considering the evidence in the book) that not only have animal lives been lost, human lives have also been destroyed and much misery inflicted. Added to this ANZCCART's polemic distortion of the truth as it's meagre and unsubstantiated defence, the valid solution is obvious: that vivisection must be immediately and totally abolished.
Phil Clayton
National Secretary
New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society (Inc.)
September 1999
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ANIMAL RESEARCH T A K E S LIVES - Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer