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 By the time Opren was withdrawn in August 1982, there had been at least 3,500 reports of harmful effects, including 61 deaths, primarily through liver damage in elderly patients.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 [Mann, 1984] In September, 1983, Zelmid was withdrawn.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 After its dangers to human health become apparent, the drug is withdrawn, its place taken by new "miracle drugs".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.
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* For more information on vaccine risks, see the booklet The Vaccination Connection by Sue Marston, published by and available from PRISM. More on vaccination here
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 nderstand the disease. By redirecting the money and efforts wasted on vivisection into large- scale clinical studies, we would not only be investiog 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 the public about prevention.
Another invaluable method of studying human health and disease is epidemiology. Epidemiological studies involve comparisons between different populations. For example, heart disease in different countries, 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 side 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 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 drugs 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 that 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; as for 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 continual 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.