CHAPTER ONE
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, MD, 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 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 NAME
PROMOTED AS
RESULTS
Clioquinol
anti-diarrhea
2,000+ deaths...30,000+ blinded, paralyzed
Isoproterenol
anti-asthma
3,500+ deaths
Thalidomide
sleeping pill,
anti-nausea10,000+ birth defects...3,000+ stillbirths
DES
anti-miscarriage
cancer, birth defects
Cigarettes
social drug
420,000 deaths/year[3]
Poenvibutazone
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 productionheart 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 court 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 ... well, 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, MD, 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, which 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, MD, 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 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 humans. 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 and 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.