I've participated in clinical research studies. Someone has to do it, otherwise the new stuff would never make it out. But anyway, that's really all I had to add to this conversation.
Cleanliness is not the issue. Why were you in an animal research facility? Which one was it? The same people on this board who were defending gassing are now defending live animal research. Hmmm. I thought we had made some progress.
Okay Light, I have a serious question for you... Do you think it's okay to test new potentially life-saving drugs on animals? I'm not talking hair spray and lipstick here. I'm talking about, say a cure for cancer, or AIDS. Just curious..
See Michele here is the problem: I can agree to disagree. You seem to have to have everyone support your positions fully to your extent, or they are your enemy. MPI Research in Mattawan MI. Why was I there, well it wasn't to free the animals. I support live animal research. I support to be euthanized animals to be used for Vet and Medical research. BTW I am not Pro or Anti Gas. I wish no animal had to be put to death, but it seems it won't happen. I have county employees to make certain decisions for me and my family. This happens to be one of them.
You can say anything, but exposure is not a bias. I suppose one could make assumptions and base one's position on those assumptions, but what does that prove? Yes, I support Animal Welfare. No, Animal Rights is a conflict of interest. It is a quick and painless way to euthanize an animal without affecting the chemical balance within the animal. I oppose torutingin them, but I believe you hold a very different view of what is and is not torture. I do like Mexican food sometimes, but that is not what you were asking I believe. I have no problem with gassing an animal if it is required and done correctly. If the proper anethesia is used and there is a reason to do so, yes. Have you ever heard of having to break a bone in the process of treatment? I suppose you would oppose that as well. Yes, since animals also need to be treated for cancer and thus we all can benefit from the studies. Given the number of "adoptable" animals who are euthanized every year (PeTA has done it themselves) I see nothing wrong with a more useful death. You did not invite me here from the other board?
I mean have I met you in person? Your writing is similar to someone that I know. If you think that breaking animals' necks is OK, then you have no business in animal welfare. Maybe you should visit the Mental Health Department. In what part of the county do you reside?
If injecting animals with cancer can save human lives, then go ahead. Humans > Animals And as far as medical testing, the FDA and EPA mandate pre clinical testing on animals. These are not people doing this for fun, or just to see animals die. This is for research and medical/veternarian studies.
Not to my knowledge, no I do not believe we have met in person. If there is a need for the action yes, it is acceptable and generally it is required in research applications. It is also a very quick and painless death when done correctly, since that was the basis for the capital punishment of hanging. Why? Do they need assistance of some type? LOL .. you are not a stalker or anything are you? I notice my identity and where I am has been a big issue with some of your posts.
Satan Jr., I LOVE the avatar!!!! I want a sign like that in my yard!!!! And on my car? Think I could get a bumper sticker? LOVE IT!!!!!
I wasn't sure if you'd seen this or not, as you looked to be pretty involved with the conversation you and Satan Jr. were having, so I thought I'd post it again. I am truly interested to hear your opinion on this.
"Because of vast physiological variations between species, human reactions to illnesses and drugs are completely different from those of other animals." "Animal experimentation not only is preventing us from learning more relevant information, it continues to harm and kill animals and people every year. " http://www.stopanimaltests.com/
And that is an opinion that the AR people keep Spouting. Non-Human Primates, and Pig tissue is biologically comparitive to human. Pig Hearts are remarkably similar. My mother had a pig valve in her heart. Rats life cycles are short but show toxicity as a human would. It is an opinion. Science has proved differently.
David, I have to agree with you on this one, not just because I want to, but because science has proved it. I love my furry friends, but human life is certainly more sacred. I don't agree with testing on animals for cosmetic purposes, but if it's a new drug that could save my child's life, then I would offer up my own animal.
This view is not supported by any human or animal medical research. The anecdotal evidence presented by the AR movement is contrary to the tenets of good science. If anyone doubts the similarities between humans and animals all they have to do is talk to a vet about having a prescription filled at the local pharmacy. An interesting opinion, but one based on a wish and not science. Evidence of the harm to humans would be interesting to see, if it were actually the case.
Experiment on humans? Just curious about the opinions of the forum. After a drug has been developed in the laboratory (test tubes and such), before it is released to market, do you think there should be NO animal testing? Perhaps go straight from test tube to human test volunteers? Would you volunteer? What about pediatric drugs? Would you volunteer your child? I have volunteered for pre-market studies, but the drugs were first tested in animals. Otherwise I would not have participated. Maybe prisoners can be recruited for time off their sentences. In any case, there is no way the FDA is going to let human experimentation occur before animal studies.
Prisoners and the military can no longer be used in Pre-Clinical trials. They did some LSD testing on Military Prisoners back in the 50's. It is considered Cruel and Unusual punishment. See, animals so not have constitutional rights, so it does not apply.
Re: Experiment on humans? No, there should probably be more testing than we see now. Not if I had a say. The risk would be too great. No. No. The question is would you volunteer your unborn child since one of the concerns is the effect on the reproductive system and offspring. That is why Thalidomide was not approved in the US, there was not suffficient testing for the new application and we all know who suffered for that mistake. The use of prisoners even if completely voluntary woudl be a from fo coercion. The other aspect is finding prisoners who were willing but had the correct requirements and were not in any other studies that may cause a problem with the resutls of the latest study. No, unless there were some dire emergency as in the entoer population being threatened with extinction as in the movies ... :shock:
"A CONCISE OVERVIEW OF VIVISECTION" Civilised persons innately are repulsed by vivisection and find it repugnant. Vivisection -- or animal experimentation or animal research -- is cruel, causes pain, suffering and torment, and is a self-evident atrocity. Science itself has proven vivisection does not and can not work. Science is empirical. It deals with what can be demonstrated physically, and with what may be inferred logically from the empirically demonstrable: Sound reasoning applied to verifiable, and verified, premisses. Vivisection fails in all these respects, and is scientifically disreputable and disrespectful. Experimental biomedical research, especially that realm of it employing the so-called animal model system, is inherently, irreparably, fundamentally and fatally flawed. The animal model system is the study of anatomy, physiology or pathology in non-human animals with respect to applying the information obtained to human function and disease. The animal model system is an erroneous methodology. All scientific enquiry must use a research method. A correct method of scientific enquiry is one that is known, prior to the commencement of actual research, to yield results applicable to the purpose of the enquiry. The procedure selected must predict reliably that the results obtained will be both relevant and pertinent to the investigation generally and to the subject of the investigation specifically. Results need not necessarily be precise, yet they must be accurate. At best, the results also will be helpful or constructive. (Not all research is successful. If the end product were known in advance, research and scientific enquiry would be unnecessary.) Vivisection lacks any reliable predictive features, which features are the hallmark of all true science, making vivisection scientifically invalid. Only after enquiries are made of human subjects can results culled from animal experimentation be evaluated accurately. This makes vivisection useless at best. The medical dangers of vivisection emerge from the false predictive value vivisectors assume. One medical disaster follows another because the controlling medical establishment relies, preponderantly and often exclusively, upon the grossly unreliable, to the detriment of both humans and animals. All beneficial advances in medical science come from clinical human research. Beneficial medical treatments are not developed on animals. A medical treatment becomes beneficial by being developed, refined and -- finally, to the extent possible -- perfected on human patients clinically in need of the specific treatment. This process, of clinical human research, must occur sooner or later, regardless of on how many animals the treatment first is tried or tested. The underscoring guideline of clinical human research may be expressed, to paraphrase, as, "A patient in need is a patient in deed, and vice versa." It is both a co-operative and a voluntary endeavour, between the subject patient and the research physician -- always a reciprocal relationship, a two-way street. That there are biological similarities among animals and people does not legitimatise vivisection. Such similarities do not exist to the degree of biological complexity and consistency required for vivisection to work; they do not exist to the extent of being useful. Inter-species similarities, in the context of and in terms of the amazingly complex and complicated nature of an integrated, whole organism, are spectacularly superficial. Further obscuring the meaningfulness of similarities, both real and apparent, is the knowledge --which was not obtained from animal experimentation -- that the same end may be achieved by differing means and that differing ends may be achieved by the same means. Both initially and ultimately, particular knowledge of a subject is attainable only by studying that subject, using a scientifically correct study method. Vivisection fails on both counts. Indeed, true science and vivisection contravene each other. Vivisection is a false science, a pseudo-science. To medical science it is what astrology is to astronomy. One derives a broad, general body of knowledge not by enquiring broadly or generally, but by narrowing the field of enquiry while enquiring variously and often, then assimilating and correlating the results of those many enquiries. This is the fundamental difference between the gross and the refined, and it is a profound difference. The realization of generalized principles invariably results from inspired, intuitive leaps from a thorough comprehension of constituent special case instances. Vivisection portrays a static fixation upon the gross. Thus, medical progress and understanding are so slow, so diminished and so lacking, and the medical progress that is made and the medical understanding that is attained occur in spite of, not because of, vivisection. Animal experimentation intrinsically is a scientific failure. This is not to state vivisection would be acceptable if it did work, but that moral or ethical considerations, however legitimate, are somewhat superfluous. It is redundant to ruminate or to speculate further on what already has been established by irrefutable proof. Yet because of the powerful emotional appeal of ethics and of morality, the more productive and conclusive scientific arguments opposing vivisection are eclipsed. This in turn permits what the vast body of incontrovertible evidence against vivisection reveals to be evaded, avoided or ignored: Vivisection is completely devoid of even so much as a vestige of scientific value or merit. Also arguing overwhelmingly against vivisection is biological diversity, better known by its shortened, combined form as biodiversity, an important force of natural law. The premisses and principles of biodiversity are incompatible with and again contravene the faulty concept of the animal model system in human biomedical research. These premisses and principles are rational. They have been verified empirically. They have been proven to be true. The great genetic variability biodiversity displays, being both essential to and fundamental to the ecological integrity of planetary life, negates assertions of validity to extrapolating data between or amongst species. Both mechanically and dynamically, profound differences amongst profuse species of biological organisms are the foundation of the existence of ecologically stable life and of its enduring continuation in the global environment. Such is science. When the results of animal experiments do coincide with those of legitimate research, it is just that -- a coincidence. Coincidence, chance, fate, the luck of the draw, these indeed do exist, and often are a part of daily life, yet never of science. They neither can be anticipated nor predicted, and the results they yield are extraneous to any scientific research method employed. Scientific methods proceed in such a way as to establish reliably the relationships between causes and their effects, and the potentials of those relationships. Coincidences or chance events have no such reliable causal or potential value. The only way in which vivisection helps advance scientific discovery, knowledge and application is by its total absence.
Animal Experimentation and Human Medicine Presented by People for Reason in Science and Medicine (PRISM) a nonprofit health and environmental organization People for Reason in Science and Medicine c/o Dr. Deborah Goldsmith 3801 Bee Ridge Rd. Ste #3 Sarasota, FL 34233 Library of Congress #94-74005 ISBN #1-886605-00-9 Table of Contents Preface Foreword, by Emil Levin, MD Chapter 1 Vivisection Animal Testing Experimental Research on Animals Dissection and Practice Surgery Chapter 2 The Damage to Human Health Animal Tests and Dangerous Drugs Animal Tests and Environmental Dangers Vivisection and Funding Priorities Vivisection and the Delay of Valuable Therapies Vivisectors and False Claims Animal Experiments vs Health Care Chapter 3 The Vivisection Industry Big Business Alibi Tests The Status Quo Confusing the Issue The Ivory Tower References -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Preface In this booklet, we expose the enormous damage to human health that has been caused by animal experimentation, also known as vivisection. Unfortunately, the discussions of vivisection that appear in newspapers and on television do not address the medical disasters for which it is responsible. Rather than discussing vivisection in terms of its effect on human health, the media continually present it as an "animal rights" issue. These endless debates revolving around the philosophical concept of "animal rights" have created a smokescreen which has diverted attention from the human damage caused by vivisection. It is the objective of this booklet to cut through this smokescreen and provide the public with the facts about animal research and the human suffering for which it is responsible. In the following pages you will learn how pharmaceutical companies use animal tests to conceal the dangers posed by the drugs they sell. You will learn how vivisectors receive billions of tax dollars to conduct experiments that only serve to hinder and prevent medical progress. You will hear the expert opinion of doctors, surgeons and scientists who have for years denounced vivisection as scientifically invalid, fraudulent and responsible for enormous damage to human health. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Foreward by Emil Levin, MD 1995 In my twenty-five years as a practicing physician, I have become acutely aware of the negative impact on medical science caused by vivisection. I am fully aware that many people will find this statement surprising - even shocking - given the generally-held belief in the necessity of animal experimentation [vivisection]. I must state that an objective and careful examination of the facts can lead to only one conclusion, one that more and more of my colleagues in medical practice and research are joining me in reaching. I am confident that after reading ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION AND HUMAN MEDICINE you will have reached this same conclusion: that for the benefit of human health, and for the sake of medical and scientific progress, vivisection must be abolished. For years it has been my fervent hope that this important issue would become the subject of open public debate. It is therefore with pleasure that I introduce ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION AND HUMAN MEDICINE, a work I am sure will contribute greatly in opening up that debate. Its thorough research and organized presentation of the information will prove thought-provoking and convincing to professionals and laypersons alike. As a doctor, I am troubled by the one-sidedness of the medical dialogue in our society. We should not have a system where medical information is simply dictated to the public, who are expected to not question it. This system does not engender the level of trust and mutual respect that should exist between health care providers and patients. Nor does it encourage the exchange of open ideas and debate that is necessary for good science. Fortunately, for the last several years, you have seen the emergence of health advocacy organizations such as People for Reason In Science and Medicine (PRISM). Through their publications, newsletters and events, PRISM educates people about such topics as natural therapies, health freedom, the environment, nutrition, vaccines and vivisection. They provide a flow of health-related information not available in print or television news - information to which this booklet is a valuable addition. ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION AND HUMAN MEDICINE will change forever the way you regard vivisection and modern medicine. I hope it will lead you to join the ever-growing group of doctors, researchers and health advocates who are actively working to end the scientific mistake of vivisection. About Dr. Levin... Dr. Emil Levin began practicing medicine in Russia in 1969. He has practiced in the United States since 1980. In addition, he has also studied homeopathic medicine in Germany. He is co-author, with Diane Danielson, of Cardiac Arrest. Dr. Levin currently practices in Hollywood, CA. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter One Vivisection Vivisection experiments fall into three general categories: attempts to test the toxicity of drugs and substances (Animal Testing); attempts to study human disease (Experimental Research on Animals); and attempts to teach medical students human anatomy and surgical techniques (Dissection and Practice Surgery). In order to fully demonstrate vivisection's complete lack of scientific validity, it is necessary to discuss each of these three areas separately. Animal Testing Animals are used by pharmaceutical/chemical companies to test the toxicity of drugs and other substances including cosmetics, household cleaners and pesticides. This practice has been regularly criticized by doctors and scientists, who insist that animal testing is unscientific, erroneous and a danger to human health. According to Dr. Arie Brecher, M.D., head pediatrician in Holon, Israel, "Animals are completely different from humans, and no animal species can serve as an experimental model for man. Each animal has a genetic code of its own, which is a fixed datum, and characteristically unique in each species. For this reason, a method that is based on the similarity between the species, while there are differences, and different genetic codes, can only lead medical science into error." [Brecher, 1989] Animal tests do not protect the consumer from the sale of dangerous drugs and substances because it is impossible to reliably predict human reactions in animals. There are countless biological variations between all species of animals. These biological variations exist in terms of anatomy, genetics, physiology, cell makeup, life span, nutritional needs, etc. As a result, all species of animals react uniquely to each and every drug and every substance. Strychnine, one of the deadliest poisons to humans, is harmless to monkeys, chickens, and guinea pigs. A dose of belladonna that would kill a person is harmless to rabbits and goats. Sheep can consume enormous quantities of arsenic, which is fatal to humans in small amounts. What we consider poisonous mushrooms (Amanita Phalloides) are commonly eaten by rabbits. Hemlock is a deadly poison for humans, but is consumed without ill effect by mice, sheep, goats and horses. PCP, or "angel dust", which drives humans into a frenzy, is used as a sedative for horses. These examples are typical of the wide range of reactions that occur between species, and they clearly demonstrate the danger of using animals to "safety test" drugs intended for human use. According to Gianni Tamino, medical researcher at the University of Padua and Member of the Italian Parliament: "It has been demonstrated that results from animal experiments are in no way applicable to human beings. There is a natural law connected with metabolism (the aggregate of all physical and chemical processes constantly taking place in living organisms), according to which a biomedical reaction that has been established for one species is valid only for that particular species and for no other. Often times two closely related species such as rat and mouse may react in entirely differing ways." A Few of the Thousands of Drugs With Side-Effects Not Predicted by Animal Tests DRUG PROMOTED AS RESULTS[1] Clioquinol anti-diarrhea 2,000+ deaths [2]; 30,000+ blinded, paralyzed Isoproterenol anti-asthma 3,500+ deaths Thalidomide sleeping pill anti-nausea 10,000+ birth defects; 3,000+ stillbirths DES anti-miscarriage cancer, birth defects Cigarettes social drug 420,000 deaths/year [3] Phenylbutazone anti-inflammatory 10,000+ deaths Chloramphenicol antibiotic aplastic anemia, 42+ deaths Opren anti-arthritic liver damage, 61+ deaths Fialuridine anti-hepatitis liver damage, 5+ deaths Clofibrate anti-cholesterol fatal heart attacks up 37% Eraldin cardiotonic blindness, 23+ deaths Parlodel stops breast milk production heart attacks, seizures, 13 deaths (as of 1993) [1] Death, while a common reaction to drugs, is by no means the only problem. More often, temporary or permanent damage of varying degrees occurs. This, too, is often under-reported, as it may take months or years to develop, and may be the result of the patient taking several prescribed drugs whose interactions in humans are not yet catalogued. [2] Death rates followed by a "+" include deaths from First World nations only. Pharmaceuticals are often sold in Second-and Third-World nations after being banned in their nations of origin. Having poorer record-keeping and haphazard distribution of pharamaceuticals - many being sold over-the-counter - the deaths and other problems often go unrecorded in those nations. Moreover, as physicians are often reluctant to admit that a drug they prescribed harmed a patient, such deaths are less likely to be reported, even in first-world nations. [3] Estimated yearly death rate, USA only. The New York Times, December 6, 1993, quoted sworn testimony of William Campbell, President and CEO of cigarette manufacturer Phillip Morris USA: Q. Does cigarette smoking cause cancer? A. To my knowledge, it has not been proven that cigarette smoking causes cancer. Q. What do you base that on? A. I base that on the fact that traditionally, there is, you know, in scientific terms, there are hurdles related to causation, and at this time there is no evidence that - they have not been able to reproduce cancer in animals from cigarette smoking. Experimental Research on Animals Experimental research on animals is the attempt to recreate human disease in animals in order to study it. Vivisectors receive billions of tax dollars every year to conduct experimental research on animals despite the criticisms of clinical doctors and researchers who insist that no human disease can ever be understood or cured by vivisection. According to Dr. Emil Levin, M.D., "The biological variations between species make the results of experiments done in one species are inapplicable to any other species, including humans. In addition to this, the various diseases which plague human beings either do not occur naturally in non-humans or they take on a very different form. Put simply, animals can never have human disease due to the basic biological fact that they are not human. "Experimental research on animals contains an even deeper flaw than the biological variations between species. Vivisectors attempt to inflict diseases on animals using unnatural laboratory conditions that bear no resemblance to the complex variety of conditions which lead to human disease, such as diet, lifestyle, genetics, environment and stress." [Levin, 1994] As Professor Pietro Croce, M.D., of the Milan Institute explains, "A disease caused artificially is not the same disease as one born spontaneously." [Croce, 1990] When we realize this basic biological fact, it becomes clear that experimental research on animals can never lead to an understanding of human disease. Dr. Bernhard Rambeck, M.D. is Director of the Biochemical Laboratory of the Institute for Research on Epilepsy in Bielefeld, Germany. In a 1989 speech he explains how vivisection experiments have prevented progress in the understanding and treatment of evilepsy: "Epilepsy artificially produced in an animal with mechanical and violent means is in no way comparable to human epilepsy, which arises from within, spontaneously, and has usually more than one cause, usually including psychic reasons, that can not be reproduced in an animal. This explains why the various substances with which we can sedate or diminish "epileptic attacks" in animals - of course, after provoking them artificially - not only don't obtain similar results in man, but are on the contrary total failures." [Rambeck, 1989] The situation that Dr. Rambeck describes in the case of epilepsy is identical in all areas of disease research where experimental research on animals is employed. Cancers that spontaneously arise in humans out of an individual's particular lifestyle, environment, genetics, diet, state of mind and countless other variables cannot be understood by artificially inducing tumors in animals under unnatural laboratory conditions. Human arthritis cannot be understood by vivisection experiments, which attempt to artificially "recreate" arthritis by crushing or hammering the joints of animals. Obviously, people who have arthritis have not had their joints crushed in this way, but have developed the condition spontaneously from within. In each of these cases, as in all experimental research on animals, vivisectors do not succeed in giving the experimental animals the disease - they merely give them symptoms that only superficially resemble it. Experimental research on animals can never work - because it is based on two scientifically invalid premises. It takes the false premise of using animals as experimental models for humans and adds to it the false premise of artificially "recreating" disease. As a result it can tell us nothing about human health and disease. It can only give incorrect and misleading results that hinder and delay medical progress. Eminent surgeons have for years denounced the practice of using animals to teach medical students human anatomy and surgical techniques, insisting that it can only mislead students and produce dangerous surgeons. Professor Bruno Fedi, M.D., Director of the Institute of Pathological Anatomy at the General Hospital in Terni, Italy, states, "No surgeon can gain the least knowledge from experiments on animals, and all the great surgeons of the past and present day are in agreement on that. One cannot learn surgery through operating on animals. Animals are completely different from man from the anatomical standpoint, their reactions are quite different, their structure is diffferent, their resistance is different. Study of animals can only mislead the surgeon." [Fedi, 1986] Professor Ferdinando de Leo, M.D., Professor of Surgery, Special Surgical Pathology, and General Clinical Surgery and Therapy at the Univerity of Naples, and head surgeon at the Pelligrini Hospital, explained in an interview on Rome television in 1978: "Vivisectors claim that vivisection helps the beginner to acquire manual dexterity. But how can anyone imagine that one can acquire such dexterity by operating on a cat, on a dog, on a rat, whose intestines are much smaller, whose various organs have an entirely different anatomical relationship to each other than in man, in no way comparable to the human? The same goes for the consistency of the innards, their color, their resistance to the scalpel and so on." [de Leo, 1978] Lawson Tait has been called the Father of Modern Surgery because in the late 1800's he developed many of the surgical techniques still in use today. By 1872 he had developed what became known as "Tait's Operation", the removal of the uterine appendages for chronic ovaritis. [Ruesch, 1989, p.277] He also performed the first successful appendectomy and the first cholecystotomy (the surgical removal of gall stones). Before going on to his brilliant surgical career, Lawson Tait was required to first perform "practice surgery" on animals during his surgical training. The result of this, according to Dr. Tait, was that: "I had to unlearn everything I had 'learned' on dogs and start over studying human anatomy. It delayed my progress by twelve years." [Risden, 1967] During his entire career, Dr. Tait continued to condemn "practice surgery" on animals and vivisection in general. In 1882 Dr.Tait wrote: "The fact is that diseases of animals are so different from those of men, wounds of animals are so different from those of humans, that the conclusions of vivisection are absolutely worthless." [Tait, 1882] Countless surgeons before and after Dr. Tait have repeated this assertion. Dr. Abel Desjardins, President of the French Society of Surgeons, chief surgeon at the College of Surgery of the Faculty of Paris, and professor of surgery of Surgery of the at France's Ecole Normale Superieure, explained how surgery must be taught in his speech at the Congress Against Vivisection in Geneva, Switzerland, on March 19, 1932: "The basis of surgery is the anatomy. That is why surgery must first be learned from anatomical treatises and atlases, and then by dissecting a great number of cadavers. Thus you not only learn the anatomy but also acquire the indispensable manual dexterity. From there you go on to learn the practice of surgery. This can only be acquired in the hospital and through daily contact with the patients. You must be an assistant before becoming a surgeon... Finally, let's examine how one comes to the actual surgical operation. First you watch, then you assist a surgeon. You do this a great many times. After you have understood the various stages of an operation and the difficulties that may arise, and have learned to overcome them, then, and only then, may you begin to operate. First, easy cases, under the supervision of an experienced surgeon, who can warn you of any wrong step or advise or if you have any doubts on how to proceed... This is the real school of surgery, and I proclaim that there is no other... After I have explained to you the real school of surgery, it is easy to understand why all the courses of surgery based on operations on dogs have been miserable failures. The surgeon who knows his art can learn nothing from those courses, and the beginner doesn't learn from them the true surgical technique, but becomes a dangerous surgeon." [Ruesch, 1989, pp. 161-162] Even the vivisectionist practice surgery manuals used by students admit that surgical techniques used on animals cannot be applied to huoans. In the Introduction to the vivisection practice surgery manual 'Experimental Surgery', its author J. Markovich, warns students: "The operative technique described in these pages is suitable for animals, usually dogs. However, it it does not follow that it is equally an always suited for human beings. We refuse to allow the student the pretense that what he is doing is operating on a patient for the cure of an ailment." [Markowitz, 1949] When so many eminent surgeons condemn practice surgery on animals as misleading and dangerous, and even the vivisection manuals admit that it teaches students nothing about human surgery, why do some in the scientific and medical community still insist it is necessary? We will examine the reasons behind this in Chapter 3. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter Two The Damage to Human Health The damage to human health and medical science caused by vivisection comes in many forms. These range from the more visible harm caused by dangerous drugs that have passed animal tests, to more subtle forms such as the medically-invasive attitude that vivisection has helped advance. In this chapter, we will look at several different aspects of vivisection's negative impacts, citing examples of each. Animal Tests and Dangerous Drugs The anti-arthritis drug Opren was released by Eli Lilly in 1980. According to results of animal tests, Opren was both safe and effective in modifying the disease process of arthritis. The results in human patients were quite different. Although Opren was effective in treating laboratory rats with artificially induced arthritis, it did not reverse the disease process in human patients. [BBC1, 1983] Worse than simply being ineffective, the drug proved to be highly toxic to humans. By the time Opren was withdrawn in August 1982, there had been at least 3,500 reports of armful effects, including 61 deaths, primarily through liver damage in elderly patients. [British Medical Journal, 1982, pp. 459-460] There were also many reports of severe photosensitive skin reactions. None of these side effects had been anticipated in animal tests. Laboratory tests in which rhesus monkeys received seven times the maximum human dose for a year revealed no sign of toxicity. [Opren: Clinical & Laboratory Experience, 1980] In 1982, the anti-depressant drug Zelmid was released. Laboratory tests with rats and dogs at five times the human dose showed no signs of toxicity [Heel, 1982, pp. 169-206] In human patients the drug caused many reactions, including nerve damage, convulsions, liver damage, Guillain-Barre syndrome and at least seven deaths. [Mann, 1984] In September, 1983, Zelmid was withdrawn. These recent examples illustrate the pattern in which drug disasters have occurred and will continue to occur as long as drugs are "safety tested" on animals. News stories about the latest "miracle drug" appear, in which we are told it has been "safety tested on animals". After its dangers to human health become apparent, the drug is withdrawn, its place taken by new "miracle drugs". And so these so-called miracle drugs prove to be miracles only at generating income for their manufacturers and tragedies for the people who take them. This pattern is not new. An early example can be found in Robert Koch's Tuberkulin vaccine.* In the summer of 1890, at the Tenth International Medical Congress in Berlin, Koch announced that according to his animal studies, Tuberkulin cured tuberculosis in guinea pigs. Thousands of people rushed to Berlin to be inoculated with Tuberkulin. Unfortunately, Koch had chosen to ignore the biological facts that (1) guinea pigs are not humans, and (2) tuberculosis takes on a very different form in guinea pigs. The predictable result was that Tuberkulin neither prevented nor cured tuberculosis in human patients. Even worse, it proved capable of worsening the condition of tuberculosis patients, and of causing the disease to flare up in previously infected patients. [Dowling, p. 74, 1977] A century later, the lesson still has not been learned. * For more information on vaccine risks, see the booklet The Vaccination Connection by Sue Marston, published by and available from PRISM. Animal Tests and Environmental Dangers In addition to hiding the hazards of dangerous drugs and vaccines, animal tests are also used to hide environmental hazards from the public. Irwin D. Bross, Ph.D., had firsthand experience with just such an incident at the Hyde Park chemical dumpsite in western New York. Dr. Bross, Director of Biostatistics at the Roswell Park Memorial Institute for Cancer Research for 24 years, discovered that the dumpsite was an environmental danger to the nearby population, despite animal tests that "proved" that the toxins dumped there were not a hazard. In a 1983 article entitled "How Animal Research Can Kill You", Dr.Bross explained: "At Hyde Park and many other dumpsites (including Love Canal and the West Valley nuclear dumpsites) the residents and workers have been repeatedly assured by State and federal agencies that their low-level exposures were 'harmless'. My research showed that these assurances by government agencies, assurances based largely on animal studies, were false, and that there were excess risks of cancer and other adverse health effects among the persons exposed to these 'safe' levels. By science and common sense, when epidemiological studies of humans are positive and laboratory studies of animals are negative, it is prudent public healih practice to accept the human evidence as a guide. My employer, the New York State Health Department, not only disregarded the human evidence of the dumpsite hazards, it harassed me into early retirement from the state service." [Bross, 1983, pp. 5-7] Dr. Bross went on to explain how fraudulent animal tests are convenient for government bureaucracies wishing to hide environmental hazards from the public: "From the bureaucrat's standpoint, the beautiful aspect of animal research is that whatever you want to claim can be 'proved' in this way. Among experienced public health scientists it is well-known that you can 'prove' anything with animal studies. This is because there are so many different animal models and each system gives different results. By selecting whatever results happen to support a particular position (and ignoring the results to the contrary), one can come out with the desired 'conclusion'. This obviously is not the way that genuine science works but this is how animal studies are commonly used. Whenever government agencies or polluting corporations want to cover up an environmental hazard, they can always find an animal study to "prove" their claim. They can even do a new animal study which will turn out the way that they want by choosing the 'right' animal model system. If you happen to be one of the millions of Americans who has been or will be exposed to dangerous mutagens that are officially called 'safe', the games that are played with animal research can kill you." [Bross, 1983, pp.5-7] Vivisection and Funding Priorities Vivisectors spent several years and millions of tax dollars developing the artificial heart in animals, primarily dogs. Characteristically, the vivisectors chose to ignore the biological facts that (1) dogs are not human, (2) dog blood is less likely to clot than human blood, (3) dogs walk on four legs, which places less stress on the circulatory system than in upright humans, and (4) the ventricles in a dog's heart are arranged opposite to those in human. [Levin, 1991, pp.24-25] In adition to this, the dogs were always healthy before the operation, whereas human patients who were at the point where they could be convinced to receive an artificial heart would be in an advanced state of physical decay. The very idea of an artificial heart demonstrates the mechanistic view of health that vivisection encourages. Swiss medical historian and author Hans Ruesch explained it this way in his book 'NAKED EMPRESS, or The Great Medical Fraud': "A mechanical heart can not work satisfactorily for long, because the natural heart is sensitive to all the fine psychosomatic influences and the complex metabolic processes constantly taking place in any living organism... Fear or anger, for example, will quickly accelerate the natural heartbeat; sleep or rest will gradually slow it down. But a mechanical heart keeps pumping at a constant rhythm, regardless of the perpetual emotional impulses emitted by the-nervous system and the fine metabolic variations... If the heart does not react to psychological impulses and metabolic influences - and no mechanical heart can ever do that - then the patient will suffer serious psychoses, delirium, and biological troubles that won't allow him to live long." [Ruesch, 1986, p.174] It is not surprising that after some success with the artificial heart in animals, it was a complete failure in humans. In 1982, a dentist by the name of Barney Clark became the first human recipient of the artificial heart. The operation was performed by Dr. William DeVries. The result should not surprise anyone whose thinking is not entrenched in the vivisectionist mentality. The New York Post reported that, "Clark died after being hooked up to the steel and plastic contraption for 112 days. After he died, it was revealed that the courageous dentist had been in great pain and delirious most of the time he was hooked up to the machine." [New York Post, 1984] Time Magazine reported that Clark had been "... beset by kidney failure, chronic respiratory problems, inflammation of the colon and loss of blood pressure." [Time, 1983] Unfortunately, the Barney Clark incident did not prevent further attempts with the artificial heart - with similar results. Finally, after years of wasting enormous amounts of tax dollars the artificial heart was abandoned. This is typical of how vivisection consumes most of the funds and resources available for medical research, while valid research goes unfunded. In order to begin correcting our health care situation, we must take our funds and resources out of useless experimental research on animals and put them into clinical research. Clinical research involves working with people who have already spontaneously developed the disease that is being studied. Clinical research is the principal method of scientifically valid medical research because only by working with people who already have a disease can we come to understand the disease. By redirecting the money and efforts wasted on vivisection into large-scale clinical studies, we would not only be investing in scientifically valid medical research, but we would in the process be providing sick people with treatment, care and attention. We must wonder how many lives could have been saved if the money and effort wasted on experimenting with the artificial heart in animals had been spent on valid clinical studies of people with heart disease, learning more about the preventable causes of heart disease and educating thepublic about prevention. Another invaluable method of studying human health and disease is epidemiology. Epidemiological studies involve comparisons between different populations. For example, by comparing the rates of heart disease in different countries along with their standard diets and average rates of alcohol consumption, conclusions can be drawn as to the role those factors play in causing heart disease. Epidemiology is a scientifically valid method of medical research because it involves the study of humans living natural lives and developing spontaneous diseases. This is in sharp contrast with the unscientific practice of vivisection, which involves the study of non-human animals in unnatural laboratory conditions with artificially inflicted disease. Nothing can ever be learned about human health by using the vivisection method, whereas epidemiology has already provided us with much valuable information. Unfortunately, epidemiology is not given the emphasis and funding it needs because of a backward medical research establishment that continues to squander its resources on vivisection. Professor Pietro Croce, M.D., explained the situation in his book ' Vivisection or Science: A Choice to Make': "Epidemiology, the science based on the observation of man and spontaneously-occurring events which afflict him, could have a decisive role to play in research on cancer, on certain acquired metabolic dysfunctions and on degenerative disease... Nevertheless, the epidemiological method is used little and inappropriately. The cost of efficient organization is, of course, high, but it could be effective if money were not wasted in useless research, in the breeding of animals for laboratories and in the pharmaceutical industries which are more interested in creating new diseases than in fighting the old ones." [Croce, 1991, op.141-142] Vivisection and the Delay of Valuable Therapies Digitalis, the oldest and most useful remedy for human heart failure, was first extracted from the foxglove plant by Dr. William Withering in 1775. Its use in human patients was delayed because when it was tested in dogs it raised their blood pressure to dangerous levels. Dr. James Burnet explained in 1942, "In the old days we were taught, as a result purely of animal experiments, that digitalis raised the blood pressure. We now know that this is utter nonsense. Indeed, it is a remedy of very great value in certain cases when the blood pressure is found to be abnormally high." [Burnet, 1942, p:388] Chloroform was discovered in 1828. The widespread use of this valuable anesthetic was delayed for years because of poor results in animal tests, particularly in dogs, for whom chloroform is highly toxic. [Richardson,1896, p. 54] The 'caged-ball valve' was almost discarded because it killed so many of the dogs upon which it was tested; yet the same valve is now working in human patients as a replacement for damaged human heart valves. [Starr, 1961, p. 740] And so vivisection not only gives false confidence in the safety of dangerous drugs, vaccines and techniques, it also delays the use of effective and useful therapies. This is inevitable because of the biological variations between species. Many substances which are harmless and even beneficial to humans are deadly to animals, e.g. Penicillin can kill guinea pigs. [Koppanyl, 1966, pp.250-270] Fluroxene, a form of ether, causes ataxia, hypotension and seizures in dogs, cats and rabbits, but none of these effects have been detected in humans. [Anesthesiology, 1973] Aspirin causes birth defects in rats, mice, guinnea pigs, cats, dogs and monkeys, but not in humans. [Mann, 1984] As Professor Pietro Croce, M.D. puts it, "It is hard to find anything in biomedical research that is, and always was, more deceptive and misleading than vivisection." [Croce, 1991, p.21] Vivisectors and False Claims Vivisectors claim that medical advances and new techniques are made possible by experiments done with animals. This claim lacks any scientific credibility. Due to the biological variations between species, vivisection can only give misleading results as to how a technique will work in humans. According to Dr. Bruno Fedi, M.D., director of the City Hospital of Terni, Italy, "All our current knowledge of medicine and surgery derives from observations of humans... These observations have led us to discover the connection between smoking and cancer, between diet and atherosclerosis, between alcohol and cirrhosis, and so on... Everything we know today in medicine derives from observations made on human beings." [Fedi, 1989, pp. 44-45] These facts have not stopped the promoters of vivisection from making false claims. For example, vivisectors claim that transplants in humans were made possible by vivisection. However, due to the differences in biology, immune systems and physiology, transplants performed in animals can only give misleading results as to how transplants will work in humans. Dr. Werner Hartinger, M.D., a surgeon with over thirty years experience, explained in a 1991 editorial: "With regard to transplants: a properly-trained surgeon is familiar with the operating technique and this presents no difficulties for him. The result of the operation becomes problematic due to varying tolerance of the transplant, which sometimes leads to rejection. The risk can, however, never be assessed by using some "animal model". In addition, neither the dosage, nor the effects or side-effects of the necessary immunosuppressive can be assessed for use on humans via experimentation on animals." [Hartinger, 1991] Heart transplants provide a perfect example of this. Hundreds of heart transplants were performed on dogs before they were attempted on humans, and yet the first human patients died because of complications that had not arisen in the dogs. [Iben, 1968] It must be noted that no matter how successful human heart transplantation could ever be, it can never be a solution to our country's number one killer, heart disease. 3,000 Americans die of heart disease every day. It is certainly impossible to transplant 3,000 hearts every single day. That adds up to one million hearts a year in the U.S. alone. [USNCH] The enormous amount of money wasted on attempting heart transplants in animals could have been used in clinical studies of people with heart disease, surveys studying the effects of diet and lifestyle on heart disease and in educating the public about prevention. This is representative of the mentality that vivisection has helped to breed, where all of our efforts and resources are directed at devising high-tech, expensive and invasive treatments, rather than trying to prevent disease by addressing its root causes. Animal Experiments vs Health Care By building false confidence in the safety of drugs, vaccines and invasive techniques, vivisection has advanced the concept of "managing" human bodies with drugs and surgery, rather than addressing the root causes of disease: diet, lifestyle, and environment. It is essential fhat we abandon the invasive medical approach that vivisection has helped to advance, and concentrate on natural, non-invasive, cost-efficient and effective methods of keeping people healthy. By taking our money, time and efforts out of useless and counterproductive vivisection experiments and putting them instead into large-scale clinical and epidemiological studies of humans, we can begin to truly understand the effects of diet, lifestyle and environment on human health. These all-important factors can only be understood by observing humans living natural lives. Fortunately, the general public is becoming more aware of, and interested in, the importance of diet in maintaining health. True to form, the vivisectors have used this fact to justify receiving grant money to study human nutrition in laboratory animals. Can if be that the vivisectors are completely unaware of the most simple reality of life and the food chain - that all animal species have different nutritional needs? More likely, they are completely aware of this fact, but choose to ignore it as long as the grant money keeps rolling in. Obviously, no one would expect to live a healthy life on a diet of cat food, dog food or bird seed. And yet vivisectors continue to claim that they can determine the perfect diet for humans by studying laboratory animals. Dr.Franklin C. Bicknell, M.D. Member of the Royal College of Physicians, ridiculed this thinking as far back as 1956 when he wrote, "There are still people who feel that the rat will guide us to the perfect diet. Me? I think it merely guides us to the garbage heap." [Bicknell, 1956] More and more people are becoming frustrated and disillusioned with invasive drug-and-surgery-based medicine and are turning to the so-called "alternative medicines". This is of course very threatening to the pharmaceutical companies, vivisectors and doctors who profit from the promotion of drugs and surgery. Their response is to claim that "alternative" methods do not work and are "unscientific". It is easy to see the ridiculousness of this claim when we know that modern medicine is based largely on vivisection, which lacks any scientific validity whatsoever. Due to the fact that vivisection receives billions of dollars in grants, little money is available to study any of the "alternative" medicines: holistic, naturopathic, homeopathic, acupuncture, vegetarianism, etc. These methods all use natural, non-toxic and cost effective methods to maintain health. For years invasive, drug/surgery based medicine has held center stage, getting all of the grant money, attention and media coverage. It is certainly time to share that spotlight. This is not meant as an endorsement of any particular branch of "alternative medicine". We are merely stating that it would be logical to determine what is of value in them. Despite constant reports of "imminent medical breakthroughs" and so-called "miracle drugs", our health situation is not improving. The annual bill for health care in the U.S. is expected to reach 1.5 trillion dollars ($1,500,000,000,000) by the year 2000.[Milwaukee Sentinel, 1990] It does not make sense to continue to pay the vivisection, pharmaceutical and medical industries trillions of dollars to mismanage our health. It is easy to see why these people defend vivisection when we realize that they profit immensely from it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter Three The Vivisection Industry Big Business Most people are unaware of what an enormous business vivisection is. Vivisectors receive over 7 billion dollars in U.S. government grants every year. This grant money comes out of the pockets of U.S. taxpayers. To make matters worse, the vivisectors themselves decide which grant proposals will receive funding. Through the system of peer review, vivisectors submit grant proposals and sit on the same committees that approve such grants. In any other area this conflict of interest would not be allowed. In the self-monitored world of vivisection, it is simply business as usual. In addition to taxpayer-sponsored government grants, vivisectors also receive money from private charities. This money is donated by well-meaning people in the good faith that if will be spent on valid research. These people hope that their donations will help to find a cure for the disease in question. They are unaware that their donations finance fraudulent, unscientific, experimental research on animals that can never cure anything. Year after year the public is told that the cures to these diseases could be "just around the corner" if only they would donate more money for "research". And yet vivisectors never round this "corner". Of course, to do so, if they could, would put an end to their funding. In addition to the vivisectors themselves, there are companies that profit from this system. Vivisection consumes approximately 100 million animals a year in the United States alone! The majority of these animals are purchased from animal breeders. Obviously, the profits to be made by breeding 100 million animals a year are enormous. There are also the makers of cages, restraining devices, surgical equipment, food and bedding material for the animals. The list goes on and on. The industry which profits from vivisection will do anything to hide its fraudulence from the public. Ironically, it is the very fact that people do not think of vivisection as an industry that keeps them from questioning its scientific validity. As long as the general public is unaware of the enormous profits to be made from vivisection, it does not question the motivations of the people who defend it. Alibi Tests In 1957, the West German chemical company, Chemie Grunenthal, released the drug Thalidomide (known in Germany as Contergan and in England as Distaval), a tranquilizer for pregnant women and nursing mothers. It had first been tested on animals for three years, and no adverse effects had been detected. [Time, 1960] On the basis of these animal tests, Chemie Grunenthal was permitted to claim that Thalidomide was harmless for pregnant women and nursing mothers. In October 1961, after further animal tests, Thalidomide was released in the United Kingdom with the assurance that it could be "given with complete safety to pregnant women and nursing mothers without adverse effects on mother or child." In reality, Thalidomide was anything but "completely safe". Thalidomide caused more than 10,000 birth defects in the children of women who had taken it - some born with fin-like hands growing directly from their shoulders, some born with missing or stunted arms or legs, others born with ingrown genitals, deformed eyes or ears. [Ruesch,1983, pp.360-361] What happened later provides insight into the real purpose that animal testing serves. This real purpose is a world apart from the story we are told, that animal tests are done to protect the consumers. As we shall see, it is the pharmaceutical companies and not the consumers that animal tests protect. After the human damage caused by Thalidomide could no longer be concealed, Thalidomide's manufacturer, the West German company Chemie Grunenthal, was put on trial. It resulted in a two and one-half year criminal trial, the longest in German history. Chemie Grunenthal brought in medical experts from around the world to testify on their behalf. The basis of their sworn testimonies was that generally accepted animal tests could never accurately predict human reactions to drugs. [Ruesch, 1983, pp.361-362] Incredibly, Chemie Grunenthal was found not guilty and was not held liable for any damages. One of the experts who testified at the trial was the Nobel Prize winner, co-discoverer of penicillin, Ernst Boris Chain. On February 2, 1970, he stated under oath: "No animal experiment with a medicament, even if it is carried out on several species, including primates under all conceivable conditions can give any guarantee that the medicament tested in this way will behave the same in humans, because in many respects the human is not the same as the animal." [Hartinger, 1991, p.3] Reliance on animal tests had allowed the sale of Thalidomide and the birth of 10,000 deformed children. The same animal tests provided the alibi that allowed its manufacturer to get itself off scott-free. The Thalidomide story makes it clear that drug companies knowingly perform fraudulent animal tests simply to provide themselves with an alibi for selling dangerous drugs to the public. Animal testing continues to provide alibis for drug companies. It allows them to sell dangerous drugs by using animal tests to fraudulently "prove" their safety. After the human damage caused by these drugs can no longer be concealed, drug companies are allowed too defend themselves by saying they "performed all the required tests". According to Dr. Herbert Gundersheimer, MD: "Results from animal tests are not transferable between species, and therefore cannot guarantee product safety for humans... In reality these tests do not provide protection for consumers from unsafe products, but rather they are used to protect corporations from legal liability." [Gundersheimer, 1988] Obviously, the chemical/pharmaceutical companies have a great motivation to continue the myth that animal testing is scientifically valid. And these huge multinational companies have the money, power and influence to keep this myth going. The Status Quo The public would like to believe that the medical research community would be open-minded, logical and willing to re-examine the theories on which their research is based. On close examination, it becomes apparent that just the opposite is true. Indeed, vivisection continues, to a large degree, simply because "that's the way it's always been done". Researchers and doctors are taught from day one of their training through vivisection, by teachers who were in turn taught the same way. The medical research community seems to have an unshakable tendency to continue an error once it has been accepted. Those doctors and researchers who do question privately are often unwilling to risk their careers, reputations and licenses by publicly opposing the status quo. One doctor who stood against the accepted medical beliefs of his time was Dr. Walter R. Hadwen, born in 1854. He placed emphasis on diet, lifestyle and hygiene rather than drugs, chemicals and vaccines. He delivered his city, Gloucester, from a smallpox epidemic by ruling out vaccination and introducing strict measures of hygiene and sanitation. [Ruesch,1989, p.276] A devout opponent of all animal experimentation, he accepted the Presidency of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection in 1910. Dr.Hadwen best explained the tendency of medical men to accept and perpetuate error in the preface to his book 'The Difficulties of Dr.Deguerre': "No medical man during his student days is taught to think. He is expected to assimilate the thoughts of others and to bow to authority. Throughout the whole of his medical career he must accept the current medical fashions of the day or suffer the loss of prestige and place. No public appointments, no coveted preferments are open to to the medical man who declines to parrot the popular shibboleths of his profession. His qualification may be beyond reproach; he may himself possess the qualities that command respect; but unless prepared to think and act within the narrow circle of accepted dogma, he must be prepared for a more or less isolated path." Confusing the Issue Vivisection is a human health issue. It is not an "animal-rights" issue. Vivisection must be abolished because of the harm it does to people. By constantly debating the issue with "animal-rights" activists who do not comprehend the scientific issue, vivisectors make the public believe that there are no scientific challenges to vivisection. This is blatantly untrue. In addition to the eminent doctors and scientists whose opposition to vivisection you have already read, there have been countless others. Prof.Robert Mendelsohn, M.D., taught and practiced medicine for over 30 years. During that time he had been the National Director of Project Head Start's Medical Consultation Service, Chairman of the Medical Licensing Board for the State of Illinois, Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of Illinois, and recipient of numerous awards for excellence in medicine and medical instruction. He was also the author of The People's Doctor newsletter and several best-selling medical books. In a 1986 interview, Dr.Mendelsohn stated: "The reason why I am against animal research is because it doesn't work. It has no scientific value. One cannot extrapolate the results of animal research to human beings, and every good scientist knows that... As far as I am concerned, I have to be opposed to quackery; since animal experiments have no validity and since they lead to quackery in medicine, I have to be opposed to animal experiments as a scientist." [Mendelsohn, 1986] G.H. Walker, M.D., doctor at the Royal Hospital and the Children's Hospital in Sunderland, England, wrote in 1933: "My own conviction is that the study of human physiology by the way of experiments on animals is the most grotesque and fantastic error ever committed in the whole range of human intellectual activity." [Walker, 1933, p.335] Sir George Pickering, Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, wrote in 1964: "The idea, as I understand it, is that fundamental truths are revealed in laboratory experimentation on lower animals and applied to the problems of the sick patient. Having been myself trained as a physiologist, I feel in a way competent to assess such a claim. It is plain nonsense." [Pickering, 1964, pp.1615-1619] Recently more and more doctors have formed organizations that oppose vivisection on scientific grounds. These honest, courageous doctors wish to rid their profession of the unscientific practice which keeps us from obtaining our health care goals. These groups include: International League of Doctors for the Abolition of Vivisection (ILDAV) , Doctors in Britain Against Animal Experimentation (DBAE) and League of German Doctors Against Vivisection. The vivisection industry has managed, with the help of the media, to ignore these scientific challenges. The reason for this is obvious: they know that they cannot defend vivisection scientifically. The Ivory Tower The continuation of vivisection would be impossible if not for the way it is handled by the media. Reporters receive "news handouts" from laboratories and report them without question. Vivisectors do not receive the type of "third degree" that journalists give to other newsmakers. We are always presented with newspaper articles about the latest "big medical advance" When we get past the attention-grabbing headlines to the middle of the article, we find that this "big advance" is "in the preliminary stages and will need more years of testing before it is ready for trial in humans." In five years no one asks what became of this "big advance", and people have heard of so many new "big advances" that they have long since forgotten this one. It is interesting to note that when these articles mention the "needed five years of research", they do not mention the additional taxpayer-sponsored grant money that goes with it. This pattern has gone on for many years, and yet most people continue to accept these reports. The reason for this must lie in the fear the general public has of questioning "scientists". Unfortunately, the general public is led to believe that vivisection is beyond its comprehension and can only be understood by "scientists". Vivisectors hide behind scientific jargon and technical double-talk to make people feel that they could not possibly comprehend anything so complicated. As we have already demonstrated, vivisection is in no way beyond our ability to comprehend and question. Not only do we have the ability to question vivisectors and pharmaceutical companies, but as medical consumers and taxpayers we have an absolute right. It is time to stop devising plans for paying these people to mismanage our health, and question why they are not advancing our health situation. The vivisection industry has placed itself in an ivory tower above questioning. With our money it has created a system which is completely self-monitored and self-regulated. It is imperative that we take the vivisectors down from their ivory tower, expose their research as fraudulent, and replace it with valid research that will enable us to create a healthy society. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- References Anaesthesiology. April, 1973. BBC1. "The Opren Scandal". January 19, 1983. Bicknell, M.D., Franklin. The English Complaint. Jan. 1956. Blank, M.D., Karlheinz. Der Tierschutz (Journal of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Tierschutz, Germany). no.62, 1985. Brecher, M.D., Arie. From a speech given at a conference of the International Congress of Doctors Against Vivisection, Italian Parliament, November 8, 1989. Reprinted in the International Foundation Report no.8, Hans Ruesch's CIVIS, Winter 1989-1990. British Medical Journal. August 14, 1982. Bross, M.D., Ph.D., Irwin D. "How Animal Research Can Kill You". The AV Magazine. November 1983. Burnet, M.D., James. Medical World. July 3,1942. 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