ANIMAL RESEARCH  T A K E S  LIVES
- Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer

contents | index

THE "PROTECTION" OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH

ARSL PAGES 1, 11, 12, 13, 18, 19

ARSL 2nd Edition Pages 1, 2, 13, 14, 15, 20

Animals used in research are not "protected".  The title is a contradiction in terms.  This lack of protection also extends to the human victims of vivisection as an ever-increasing number of doctors are warning that results extrapolated from animal trials to human beings seriously jeopardises human health.  ARSL asks "why do some people want to have animal research abolished?".  That this question can only be asked by the unscrupulous is as self-evident as the answer:  Vivisection tragically damages mankind by its physical fraud on the one hand as it irrevocably damages its moral and spiritual fibre on the other.  The author asks a far more important question:  Why do some people NOT want to have animal research abolished?  This answer is found by taking a glance at the line of business pursued by those who took a hand in the ARSL publication.

But first it is important to emphasise that those who struggle relentlessly to clean up the suppurating scab of vivisection, which contaminates everything it touches, have nothing to gain from their input of time, money and energy.  On the contrary opposers of vivisection, spanning decades of effort and sacrifice inevitably pay the price both physically and financially.  These pioneers are not to be compared with the publishers of ARSL who defend vivisection with a fervour and ferocity which must be regarded with suspicion.  Currently, on massive scale around the world pro-vivisectionists, fearful of the up-and-coming challenge taking place against them, are speaking out from their profitable positions to white-wash and defend their sordid occupation.

It is obvious that institutions like MAF, government and private-sponsored vivisectors and their satellites, and veterinarians, who have not yet embraced the abolitionist principle, oppose abolition because vivisection is their life support system.  They are the principal beneficiaries of a self-serving, self-perpetuating fraud, a conspiracy spewing rivers of gold which would be dammed at the source should funds diverted from phoney but lucrative experiments on animals, to the study of man, his circumstance, the improvement of his social conditions, prevention of disease and the reinstatement of his environment from its polluted state.  To this end they are aided by animal welfare groups, notably the RNZSPCA, which, placing their representatives on the animal ethics committees, sanitises and elevates vivisection, the future of which hinges on public acceptance that it is both respectable and necessary.  ARSL poured money and resources, much of which belonged to the taxpayer, into propping up, with false and deceitful illusion, that which is in reality a gruesome and cruel swindle.  That it went to such lengths to do so suggests that despite media censorship rife against the new abolitionist movement the truth about the fraud of vivisection is seeping through to the public.

The New Zealand populace would indeed need to beseech God in his heaven for intervention were those listed in ARSL as being "monitors of the welfare of animals", their only "protectors".  Scrutiny of their composition, and of the composition of the animal ethics committees they espouse is spine-chilling.  Members of these phoney committees have the right background, are profiteers from vivisection, some are established vivisectors.  Their single claim to respectability, and the pillar upon which their credibility is propped, comes from the presence on the committees of nominees from "animal welfare groups like the RNZSPCA", which history has revealed, runs with the hare, hunts with the hounds, has a foot in both camps and can always, without exception be relied upon to uphold vivisection in New Zealand.

In 1983, the most critical time in history for those working to bring abolition in New Zealand, animal ethics committees were being set up to contain and stem the rising tide of public concern about the free rein bestowed on vivisectors who could manipulate animals at their pleasure provided they did it "in the spirit of the [Animal Protection] Act".  Until the late 1970s vivisection in New Zealand had not been seriously challenged and the RNZSPCA, though operating for fifty years, had posed no threat.  The sparks however that began to fly through the campaigns of the new abolitionists ignited and threatened to become a blaze.  The revered RNZSPCA, financed and operating through the generosity of its well-meaning and unsuspecting subscribers, in failing to expose the ethics committee system as a phoney self-administering device designed to mollify and reassure the public whilst legalising and establishing vivisection, thus ensured ongoing funds for vivisecting animals free from interference - and insodoing betrayed its supporters.

In its Submission to Parliament on the Animal Protection Amendment Bill which dealt with the establishing of ethics committees, it was noticeable that the RNZSPCA made no reference to the growing number of eminent scientists and medical professionals who were criticising the validity of vivisection on the medical and scientific premise.  If this Society of animal lovers could be forgiven by the magnanimous for neglecting to oppose vivisection on scientific grounds they could NOT forgive it for omitting to condemn it on the ethical.  It did not, as can be seen from the following extract from its Submission:

"There are fanatics who oppose vivisection purely on emotional grounds... these fringe elements are fortunately few."

Thus this prestigious and powerful Society ridiculed and patronised the fringe element who campaign at such cost for the cessation of animal and human suffering, as the prestigious and powerful before them in history had ridiculed and patronised the fringe element who claimed in defiance of established opinion - that the world is round and not flat.

Once again the RNZSPCA came to the assistance of the vivisectors when it failed to address or acknowledge the growing medical opposition to vivisection in its Submission against NZAVS Petition 1989.  Examination of the following extracts from that Submission clearly reveals that the aforesaid Society is merely an extension of the government - and an integral part of the conspiracy of vivisection:

"Submission (of the RNZSPCA representing 53 local societies)¹ to the Primary Production Select Committee on the Petition of Bette Overall and others that all forms of vivisection must be abolished."

If the slipshod and careless incorrect spelling of the Principal Petitioner's name in the introduction to its Submission could be excused as an accidental oversight the author believes that the glaring omission of any reference to the scientific factor in the body of the Submission is neither accidental nor careless, but carefully contrived.  The RNZSPCA's evasion of the important scientific criticism of vivisection indicates that its deliberations are drawn solely from ethical considerations.  That a growing number of people have long believed that the ethics of vivisection requires neither consideration nor debate but are self-evident has apparently not occurred to this "animal protection society", or do the ethical considerations of the RNZSPCA, like those of the British RSPCA, as revealed to the British public in May 1985 take second place to considerations of expediency?

It is difficult to believe that the RNZSPCA, which is respected even worshipped by the public and the media, does not have evidence of the scientific and medical uprising against vivisection.  Carefully omitting to mention them the Society outlines in the Submission the policy of the global pro-vivisection alliance, (which includes the British RSPCA) namely the 3-Rs principle:

1. Refinement of scientific techniques
2. Reduction in the numbers of animals used
3. Replacement of animal procedures with non-animal procedures

It then concludes its Submission with the following words:

"The RNZSPCA does not seek any change to the basic law on the control of animals in research and teaching.  Any minor adjustments required will undoubtedly arise from the current review of Animal Protection Law which will probably come before Parliament in 1992."

Thus trotting true to form the RNZSPCA springs smartly to a canter to defend the institution of vivisection and goes into a gallop to protect the law which legalises unethical and immoral procedures.  That it expresses neither doubt nor criticism of the law could be seen as puzzling coming from the country's leading "animal protection society".  Yet another teaser crops up as the RNZSPCA tumbled over itself to please the pro-vivisection syndicate in 1990 by prostituting its name for the purpose of sanitising the booklet Animal Research Saves Lives, without which dubious endorsement the booklet visibly lacks logic and credibility.  Fortunately, given time, life's most irritating puzzles have a habit of unravelling and the puzzle of the love-affair between the RNZSPCA and its battery of unsavoury and distasteful bedfellows becomes less of a mystery as one reads on.

The RNZSPCA, along with its relative the RSPCA in Great Britain, is perfectly aware that the biomedical empire can live quite comfortably with the 3-Rs principle which does not examine or challenge the flawed method of vivisection.  The 3-Rs principle poses no threat whatsoever to the vivisection community because it keeps the public in the dark about the fraud of which they are victim, whilst encouraging it to believe that animal research saves lives.  The following may help us understand why the RNZSPCA's kin in the United Kingdom is enthusiastic to perpetuate the myth.

In 1985 Lazard Securities Ltd exposed the British RSPCA for collaborating with the vivisection syndicate, thus maintaining double standards.  To the Society's extreme embarrassment and detriment, and to the announcement from the combined animal societies that it was "absolutely outrageous" it was exposed that the RSPCA has massive investments in companies which undertake vivisection programmes using hundreds of thousands of animals.  Two of these companies the RSPCA itself had criticised in a report to the Home Office for conducting experiments which run counter to all the Society stands for!  In possession of over eight million pounds sterling collected in public donations and legacies the RSPCA has secretly invested the following amounts in vivisection laboratories:

(Note: ICI (Crop Care Rural Division) is a member of the Agricultural Chemical and Animals Remedies Manufacturers Association of N.Z. (AGCARM)... CO-PUBLISHERS OF ANIMAL RESEARCH SAVES LIVES).

The British RSPCA was also exposed as having, as at September 1983, thirtyfour thousand pounds sterling invested in South African gold mines, and large holdings in a controversial British-based mining giant Rio Tinto Inc.

Though the above may shock the novice it reveals only the tip of the iceberg.  Time Out, May 23 1985, exposed that the collaboration between the RSPCA animal-lovers and the biomedical community was epitomised at a House of Commons cocktail party organised by the Society to which were invited the bastions of the commercial animal trade (those who supply animals to laboratories).  This included the man who had designed the infamous monkey cage which figured prominently in a successful and historic cruelty case against the prestigious Royal College of Surgeons.  (Comprehensive report of which is seen in NZAVS Mobilise! No. 11, March 1985.)  It also revealed with outspoken criticism that the RSPCA Animal Experimentation Advisory Committee was composed of:

• Dr D.B. Morton: Research Defence Society (promoter of the "animal model").
• Terrence Hornett: Animal Superintendent of the infamous Glaxo vivisection laboratories.
• Prof. Patrick Wall: Head of the Cerebral Functions Unit at University College, London.
• A research consultant with a background in testing drugs, cosmetics and toiletries.
• And other vivisectors.

It was around this time that the New Zealand Animal Ethics Advisory Committee was established.  (The composition of which was published in Mobilise! No. 15, July 1986.)  For the benefit of the reader who believes that the British situation should not be dredged up because of geographics, the glaring similarities of the unlikely candidates chosen to advise on animal ethics in New Zealand is predictably repeated:

• Mr I.L. Baumgart: (ex Senior Scientist DSIR) (Chairman Toxic Substances Board 1980).
• Dr P.J. O'Hara: (Animal Health Division MAF).
• Dr C.H. MacLaurin: School of Medicine, University of Auckland (Representing the Royal Society of N.Z.).
• Dr C.S.W. Reid: Applied Biochemistry Division, DSIR, Wellington.
• Prof. A.R. McGiven: Dept of Pathology, Christchurch Clinical School of Medicine, Christchurch Hospital.
• Mrs C.H.B. Smith: (Representing N.Z. Veterinary Assn) Hamilton.
  
  And
   
• Mr N.E. Wells: RNZSPCA Auckland.
• Mrs P.N. Loague: RNZSPCA Taupo.

The RNZSPCA, soliciting support for the vivisectors, with whom this article has revealed it is so blatantly aligned, wrote to NZAVS on August 10 1987 inviting the N.Z. Anti-Vivisection Society to nominate applicants to be appointed to the newly-formed Animal Ethics Committees which were set up to decide which experiments are ethical and which are unethical.  On August 23 1987 the Society declined this dubious honour.  In a letter from John Blincoe, M.P. for Nelson, which resulted from a Parliamentary Question in the House we learn that the $8,130.35 of the taxpayers' money poured into the booklet ARSL by MAF was done so "on the recommendation of the National Animal Ethics Advisory Committee"... on which the RNZSPCA had two representatives!  Demonstrating yet again that instead of dis-associating itself from the vivisectors the respected RNZSPCA working hand in glove with them set its stamp of approval on the publication and distribution of ARSL.

Back to Great Britain and Judith Hampson, "Chief Animal Experimentation Research Officer" for seven years with the RSPCA, and now one of the Society's consultants, was a key figure in defending vivisection in Great Britain by helping draft the infamous Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which received the Royal Assent on May 20 1986 and came into force on January 1 1987.  The Act controls all experiments carried out on animals in Great Britain which now permits by law, animals to be subjected to micro (experimental) surgery, the LD50 Test, repeated experiments on individual animals... and anesthetics to be used "whenever practicable"!  Consequently, this supporter and promoter of vivisection was in 1984 invited to Australia, her fare paid by the Australia and New Zealand Federation of Animal Societies to write the Submission to the Australian Senate Inquiry into Animal Experimentation.  This policy is now being used by the New Zealand Government to combat advocates of abolition.

The collective writers of ARSL are of course perfectly aware that the intensifying opposition to vivisection originates with medical doctors and is brought to the streets by the "fringe element" in the new abolitionist movement with whom these doctors work in tandem.  They are also aware that the abolition of vivisection is about human rights as much as animal rights.  But they focus on the "animals or humans" principle in order to get public support.  Abolitionist doctors claim that the greatest weapon used by the pro-vivisection community, which includes the formidable and experienced meat producers (MAF), in collaboration with their political, scientific and industrial allies is the concept of animal rights.  Championed by the infiltrated animal welfare groups this opposition holds no threat whatsoever to the vivisection industry for it is a platform which will never bring abolition.  The louder the battlecry of animal rights the softer the cry against the medical fraud - and the more complacent and confident the vivisectors, who sympathise, even agree with the concept knowing that under this agenda, the BABY WILL TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER THE DOG!

The ARSL syndicate use the deliberate and calculated smokescreen of animal rights in the knowledge that the new abolitionist movement opposes vivisection because of the devastation it brings to human health, and that it opposes vivisection-based farming because it is responsible for sixty million people starving to death every year.  Using the deliberate ploy of "animal rights" they steadfastly refuse to debate the issue from the legitimate platform of scientific fraud.  For they know it is a debate they can never win.

Footnote

1. These could be called the 53 "phantom" animal protection societies as exhaustive attempts to obtain their names from the RNZSPCA have been refused!

<< previous page | next page >>

contents | index