· It is time someone debunked the myth "animal research
saves human lives."
· It is time someone exposed the inherent medical and scientific
invalidity of "the animal model of human disease" and the consequent failure
of the biomedical research industry to find cures for cardiovascular diseases,
cancer, diabetes, AIDS, muscular dystrophy, Alzheimer’s Disease, birth
defects, spinal chord injury, or any of the many other diseases that have
plagued human kind for decades.
· It is time the public learned that the animal -testing of
chemical products - whether it be cosmetics, household/industrial chemicals,
agricultural pesticides, pharmaceutical drugs or vaccines - is not only
useless, but, in fact, dangerously misleading.
· It is time the public was made aware of the fact that animal-to-human
organ transplantation, genetic engineering (transgenic animals) and cloning
-the biomedical research industry’s latest "miracles" and "medical breakthroughs"
- are nothing but total fraud.
· It is time someone made the public realise that human medicine
cannot be based on veterinary medicine and that attaining health DOES NOT
DEPEND ON A CHOICE BETWEEN RATS AND BABIES.
The public want medical research to go on but without inflicting pain
and suffering on innocent animals. Consequently, they face a terrible dilemma
every time the biomedical industry proclaims that "animal research is an
indispensible part of science and medicine."
They believe that vivisection works simply because they have never
been informed about its medical and scientific invalidity.
Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Animal research doesn’t work. It is medically and scientifically invalid. The problem is that the public never gets the chance to hear cogent arguments exposing the uselessness and counter-productiveness of animal research. On the contrary, all they hear from the industry-beholden media is news about "miracle drugs" and "medical breakthroughs" that are always "just around the corner" - all thanks to animal experimentation , of course.
The tragedy of vivisection can be stopped but only when the public realises that far from saving lives, animal research is an erroneous methodology, responsible for massive damages to human health, our environment and economy.
Animal experimentation is the alibi that makes the biggest business in the world possible. A huge business euphemistically called "Health Care" which is devouring two trillion dollars a year in the United States alone.
Animal experimenters try to justify the use of animals by claiming that animals are "similar" enough to human beings to warrant experimenting on them. The fact is that in the world of true science, the word "similar" is totally meaningless. If you were told that in the room next door there is no oxygen but a gas "very similar" to oxygen, would you go in? If you needed a blood transfusion but were told that there is no human blood available but only a substance "very similar" to human blood -such as chimpanzee blood - would you go for it? If I told you that my lotto numbers are "very similar" to the winning numbers, would you congratulate me?
Acknowledgments to SUPRESS
www.animalresearch.org
*A DILEMMA?
Where drugs are helpful -and some are- this is DESPITE animal
experiments and NOT BECAUSE of them; their safety has only been proven
through use in humans.
Dr. Werner Hartinger, surgeon, President of the German League of Doctors
Against Vivisection, has stated:
"1. The fact that animal experiments have been and are still
carried out is no proof that they are necessary, for there are many other
reasons why they are performed.
Their existence also does not prove that the same or even superior
discoveries could not have been achieved by other methods.
2. If a doctor prescribes medicaments and these are used by his patient, this does not mean that he/she is in agreement with their being ‘tested’ on animals or considers such ‘testing’ meaningful or valid. The results of the animal experiments are not accepted for the purpose of issuing licences for medicines for humans; all that is recognised is the ‘clinical testing and the evidence of safety for human use, and their relative safety is not attributable to the experiments, but to the required clinical tests made on humans.
3. Doctors critical of animal experimentation in no way reject medical research. Their unbiased experience does, however, lead them to the well-founded conclusion that the use of animals does not provide the necessary knowledge about human diseases or the safety of medicaments."
Thus patients can come to terms with their conflict between conventional
treatment and their feelings about animal experiments. Increasingly, members
of the medical profession are acknowledging the invalidity of animal experimentation
in human medicine.
The major medical discoveries over the last 150 years or so were made despite, and not because of, animal experimentation. As Dr. Brandon Reines, ( Doctor of Veterinary Medicine; Graduate Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, Boston; Specialist in the History of Medical Science & author of "History of Scientific Discovery") points out, animal experiments WERE carried out in the course of these major medical discoveries, as was human clinical observation and later clinical trials, BUT the animal experiments were not a part of the scientific process which led to the discovery.
Pro-vivisectionists such as the Research Defence Society use medical history to support animal experimentation, while medical historians such as Dr. Reines use it to denounce animal experimentation. So WHO do you think is more accurate?
Let us for a moment play devil’s advocate and assume that we cannot know WHO is telling the true version of things as they happened 50 years ago. Consider the following argument, then decide for yourself:
Animal experiments of themselves can be used to prove, or to disprove,
almost anything, depending on the species of laboratory animal selected,
the prevailing laboratory conditions, and of course, depending on the funding
source. One very good example illustrates this point clearly. The injectable
contraceptive Depo-provera has been used in several countries around the
world over the last few decades. It was, however, banned in the USA by
the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) on the strength of animal tests
which showed that the drug caused mammary cancer in Beagle dogs and uterine
cancer in baboons. Yet, a few years ago the FDA unbanned the
drug and now allows it to be marketed in the USA, on the strength of 20
years’ human experience in those countries which used Depo-provera
during that time, with apparently no ill-effects in all those women.
Conversely, Cyclosporin, a powerful anti-rejection drug causes severe
kidney, liver and even nerve damage in man, but not in dogs and cats.
Some of the best arguments against relying on animal tests actually come from the research scientists themselves. Professor Gerhard Zbinden, a world-renowned toxicologist and former consultant to the World Health Organisation , stated: "most adverse reactions which occur in man cannot be demonstrated, anticipated or avoided by the routine subacute and chronic (animal) toxicity experiment".
Dr. Ralph Heywood, past scientific director of the Huntingdon Research Centre (UK) admitted in 1989 that : "the best guess for the correlation of adverse reactions in man and animal toxicity data is somewhere between 5% and 25%."
It is the vivisectors who are telling each other constantly of the extrapolative difficulties due to species differences. This is no myth . it is fact.
The main point is that there are similarities between animals and humans,
but there are also innumerable differences, so that one cannot know whether
one’s animal data wil be relevant to humans until the human is effectively
experimented upon. It is all guesswork (as vivisector Dr. F. Coulston has
admitted). How can mutilating, diseasing and killing animals be justified
when the results of these experiments are always inconclusive and meaningless?
THE ANIMAL TESTS ARE MEANINGLESS BECAUSE OF COUNTLESS GENETIC, PHYSIOLOGICAL
AND ANATOMICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HUMANS AND ANIMALS RENDERING ANIMAL
DATA FOR HUMAN MEDICAL RESEARCH UTTERLY UNRELIABLE.
Animal experimentation does not produce reliable results for human beings. On the few occasions where the animal tests give the same result as in man, it occurs in RETROSPECT, i.e. after the human damage has been done.
The fact that animal experiments are so "flexible" (i.e. can be used
to prove or to disprove almost anything), lends considerable weight to
the idea that historically, they could have been used to "prove" what was
already known from human clinical observation. There is no shortage of
modern-day examples to show how some scientists "cook" their results in
order to gain scientific prestige, or in order to obtain research grants.
Acknowledgments to Dr. Andre Menache, B.Sc (Hons), BVSc, MRCVS
President of Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible Medicine
www.dlrm.org
& Dr. Tony Page, UKAVIS, PO BOX 4746,
LONDON SE11 4XF
Do we continue to do things the way we always have ‘because that’s the
way things have been done’? Or do we look for new, scientific, more humane
approaches?
When Einstein developed the theory of relativity, all physics changed
and could never be the same again. We now need to make our own quantum
leap in our thought processes with regards to health and disease and our
methods of investigating them.
This won’t be easy, because all change brings uncertainty and discomfort,
but it is blatantly clear that the old methods have made no significant
impression on the chronic diseases which continue to bring suffering to
humanity.
"It often happens that the universal belief of one age, a belief from which no one was free or could be 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."
John Stuart Mill