Animal Experimentation continues because it is beneficial to the huge Medical, Technology, Research, Drug Company alliance that is increasingly intervening in our lives and our health. Animal Experimentation is said to be necessary for the welfare and health of humans. This is simply not true! Here are a few of the facts on vivisection:

• It is estimated that 50 to 100 million animals worldwide are tortured and killed in animal experiments!! Animals are blinded, poisoned to death, scalded, electrocuted, paralysed, burned, maimed, driven mad, turned into drug addicts, and given diseases in animal experiments.



• We now know that more than 90 % of human diseases are caused by environmental impacts or lifestyle choices. The need for cures is largely a myth created to sustain a multi-billion dollar medical structure. Vivisection is actually a huge business, with billions of dollars involved in breeding, grants, fundraising and salaries. Those enmeshed in this industry will do everything they can to perpetuate their profits, including misleading the public about the efficacy of animal experimentation and healthy animals continue to be sacrificed.



• The Director of Research Defence Society, (which exists to defend vivisection) was asked if medical prgress could have been acheived without animal use. His written reply was "I am sure it could be".



• 95% of drugs passed by animal tests are immediately disgarded as useless or dangerous to humans.



• The chances of a cure for most major cancers has not improved over the past 30 years and more people suffer from the disease than ever before. Yet still the major part of thousands of dollars spent annually by cancer charities goes to animal-based research.



• One is six patients in hospital are there because the drug they have taken had been passed safe for us on humans after animal tests.



• It was denied for decades that asbestos caused disease in humans because it didn’t in animals.



• Heart by pass surgery was put on hold for years because it didn’t work on dogs



• Polio researchers were mislead for years about how we catch the disease because they had experimented on monkeys.



• Aspirin fails animal tests, as do Digitalis (heart drug), cancer treatments, Insulin (causes animal birth defects), Penicillin and other safe medicines. They would be banned if results from animal experimentation were accurate.



• If we had relied on animal tests we would still believe that humans don’t need vitamin C, that smoking doesn’t cause cancer and alcohol doesn’t cause liver damage.



• Blood transfusions were delayed 200 years by animal studies, corneal transplants were delayed 90 years.



• Thousands of drugs passed safe in animals have been withdrawn or banned due to their effect on human health.



• Rats are 37% effective in identifying what causes cancer in humans. Flipping a coin would be more accurate.
• At least 50 drugs on the market cause cancer in lab animals. They are allowed because it is admitted that animal tests are not relevant.




Doctors who are against vivisection:

• Dr. Andre Menache.........please listen to him here: Experiments in Weizmann Institute and also at: Good Science vs. Bad Science



• A great book, by Drs. Ray and Jean Geek, called "Sacred Cows and Golden Geese" dispels the myth that animal experiments have contributed to medical progress. They show that using animals to safety-test human medicines is worse than useless!



• I have studied the question of vivisection for thirty-five years and am convinced that experiments on living animals are leading medicine further and further from the real cure of the patient. I know of no instance of animal experiment that has been necessary for the advancement of medical science; still less do I know of any animal experiment that could conceivably be necessary to save human life. -H. Fergie Woods, M.D.



• What good does it do you to test something (a vaccine) in a monkey? You find five or six years from now that it works in the monkey, and then you test it in humans and you realize that humans behave totally differently from monkeys, so you've wasted five years." - Dr. Mark Feinberg, a leading AIDS researcher.



• "There is no doubt that the best test species for man is man. This is based on the fact that it is not possible to extrapolate animal data directly to man, due to interspecies variation in anatomy, physiology and biochemistry." - Dr MacLennan and Dr. Amos, Clinical Sciences Research Ltd., UK



• "There are, in fact, only two categories of doctors and scientists who are not opposed to vivisection: those who don?t know enough about it, and those who make money from it." - Dr. Werner Hartinger, M.D., German surgeon.



• "I cannot recall a single instance where my clinical judgment was even remotely influenced by the results of a psychological study using animals as subjects or 'models.' " - Michael Klaper, M.D.



• "Not only are the studies themselves often lacking even face value, but they also drain badly needed funds away from patient care needs." - Neal D. Barnard, M.D.



• 1000 Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection. by Hans Ruesch, editor. CIVIS, New York, 1989. A collection of statements from physicians opposing animal experimentation from 1989 back to 1824. (This is a very intesesting read......Please check out http://www.vivisectionfraud.com/ This website give information on The Hans Ruesch Center



• "We've made great progress in the past decade, and with the help of our partners we can do even more to increase the pace of developing and introducing alternative methods." William Stokes, D.V.M., director of NICEATM, the NTP office at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.




Please check out:50 DEADLY CONSEQUENCES OF LAB ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS to see how animal experimentation has misled researchers for centuries.....this is a great read!

Here a just a handful of drugs that were extensively tested on animals and after being approved for human use, were found to have dangerous and deadly side affects. Some were pulled from the market.:

Clioquinol, Eraldin/Practocol, Tequin, TGN 1412, Thalidomide, Zyprexa/Olanzapine. Phenactin, E-Ferol, Oraflex, Rexar, Suprofen, Zomax, Suprol, Rezulin, Selacryn, and Vioxx have been pulled from the market after killing or harming thousands of people.

Side effects of prescription medicines kill over 100,000 people a year in the US and almost as many in the UK. That is more than all illegal drugs combined!

The great breakthroughs in science that have given us all the medical advances we enjoy today have actually come from ethical, human-based research - most notably astute clinical observation, epidemiology (population studies), autopsies and in- vitro research, including the use of human tissue. Anaesthetics, antibiotics, aspirin, beta-blockers, pacemakers and many other great discoveries owe nothing to animals and everything to human ingenuity.

Another issue is the fact that drugs can injure animals but display no adverse reactions in humans. These are equally significant in revealing the inaccuracy of animal data because these tests keep potentially useful medications out of our reach. Here are some examples of how animal testing significantly reveals the differences between human data and animal data:

• Penicillin, considered one of the most significant medical advances, was delayed and nearly disregarded altogether because of animal testing. Alexander Fleming first noted penicillin killing bacteria in petri dishes. He then tested in on rabbits. It failed. Rabbits, unlike humans, excrete penicillin in their urine before it can be effective. Fleming put the drug aside, believing it to be useless.18 He later had a very sick patient he felt there was no hope for. With nothing to lose, he tried administering the penicillin. The patient's life was saved, and antibiotics were introduced to the world. H.W. Florey, co-winner of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of penicillin, attempted administering it to a sick cat. The cat died.19 Luckily, Fleming initially tested penicillin on rabbits. Though not effective, at least it was not harmful. Had he tested his preparation on cats, guinea pigs, or hamsters it most likely would have have never been tried on humans, as it is fatal to all of them. 20, 21 Penicillin is also known to cause birth defects in rats.



• Flouride, was initially withheld from dental use after causing cancer in rats.



• Ibuprofen, a apin medication causes kidney failure in dogs, even at very low doses.



• Acetaminophen, used everyday by Americans, causes kidney failure and death in cats.



• Aspirin, is the most popular over-the-counter drug and has stood the test of time as being effective and safe for humans, yet aspirin causes birth defects in rats, mice, cats, dogs, guinea pigs and monkeys.

So, what are the non-animal methods or scientific research? Here are a few:

• In Vitro Research - this testing has been shown to produce more accurate results which correlate from the laboratory to real life. Tissue Culture - is the cultivation of the living cells outside the organism. This is done by placing the cells in a nutritional medium. In other words, pieces of living flesh can be grown and multiplied in the test tube. This includes Organ and Cell Cultures. Organ Cultures - Small pieces of tissue are cultured so as to retain the function of the organ from which they where removed. In the opinion of some biologists, organ cultures, to an even greater extent than cell cultures, have considerable potential for future development. Cell Cultures - Dispersed cells are cultured in a medium that promotes continuous growth. These can produce vast quantities of cells over the course of years. Cell cultures can be produced from normal healthy cells or from cancerous cells. Human cells can be given by a living donor who need suffer no ill effects from losing a few cells.



• Models - Simulated human anatomical features, including flesh, muscle and bone structure, make it possible now to pursue, for example, car crash studies without resorting to animals. Resusci-dog models are now used extensively in veterinary science.



• Audio Visual Guides and Aids - Film, closed circuit television and video tape can all be used as teaching aids, thus sparing thousands of animals from continued re-runs of the same experiment.



• Chromatography and mass spectrometry - These techniques, used in conjunction, now make possible the detection of minute quantities of substances in their journey through the body, thus allowing direct study of the action of new drugs, etc., in humans. Their toxic effects can be noted well before they become dangerous.



• Computer and Mathematical Modeling - Recently led to new treatments for breast cancer, AIDS, high blood pressure, and aided development of new prosthetics.



• Epidemiology - this is the study and control of diseases within a human population. These studies have linked diet to heart disease, smoking to lung cancer, and identified all known environmental poisons and occupational diseases. These habits or substances are labeled as "dangerous" and we can avoid them.



• Genetic Engineering - Until the early 1980's, insulin was still produced from cow and pig pancreas, and then the first commercial human insulin was marketed, made by bacteria, which had been genetically programmed to produce the human version of the hormone. Now being produced of a much purer type than previously available using animals, this insulin is helping to eliminate a great portion of the harmful effects suffered by about 20% of the users of conventionally produced animal insulin.



• Technological Breakthroughs - The achievements of physicists, chemists, mathematicians, computer engineers and biotechnical engineers have long since outpaced the archaic methods of animal experimentation.



• Check out:You Tube-Animal Testing

The major reason new drugs are still tested on animals is to protect companies in court when people are injured or killed by adverse drug reactions. It's liability protection!

(Sources: http://www.askuswhy.com/drug_(4).htm; http://www.vivisectioninfo.org/humane_research.html; http://www.da4a.org/science.htm; http://www.arrc.org.au/alternatives.htm.)

John Hopkins University also manages a website ALTWEB, ( Altweb ) Which is the global clearinghouse for information on alternatives to animal testing. They discuss methods and sources available to Reduce, Refine or Replace animals used in teaching, testing and research (the 3 R’s).

Please check out both of these websites. I am both so impressed and encouraged with the work that John Hopkins University is doing, where they believe the best science is humane science.

They have a newsletter you can subscribe to and a video documentary to view @ CAAT and the 3R's.

Every single day more than 38,000 animals are used to test cosmetics, toiletries like toothpaste and shampoo, and household detergents and cleaners. The most common test is called the "Draize Test" where products are put directly into the animals’ eyes and technicians record the effects. The "Lethal Dose" test measures the amount of a product it takes to kill part of a group of animals forced to eat it. THESE TESTS ARE NOT REQUIRED BY LAW, but some companies continue to use them to protect themselves from future lawsuits.

As a consumer, you can help by avoiding their products in favor of companies that do not test on animals.