THE MYTHS OF VIVISECTION
Bernhard Rambeck, MDMyth 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / Intro / Next Page
Second myth: "Only animal experiments have made possible the fight against disease and thereby increased life expectancy"
This myth is part of the standard repertoire of those who support animal experiments, but it is false! The increase in life expectancy has, above all, been caused by the reduction in infectious diseases. The well-known British doctor of social medicine, Professor McKeown, showed by extensive studies that the reduction of infectious illnesses, and hence of infant and child mortality, is due to improved sanitary conditions and hygiene, as well as to improved and sufficient nutrition and the limiting of the birth rate, and is not due to new drugs and vaccines. Correspondingly, there is a very high infant and child mortality rate in the developing world, due to social problems, poverty and malnutrition and not to lack of drugs or vaccines.
If we consider the so-called diseases of civilisation - and they account for about 80 per cent of all deaths -we get the impression that modern medicine is rather powerless in its struggle. Fifty-two per cent of the population die from avoidable chronic cardiovascular diseases, and 24 per cent die from cancer - and this is an increasing tendency. Modern chemotherapy has hardly been able to touch these diseases; decades after the introduction of the first effective anticarcinogenic drug cyclophosphamide, only a few per cent of all cases of cancer are more or less curable, and this only with considerable side-effects and damage. If, in the United States, the number of deaths due to cardiovascular disease decreases, this will be a result of the change in smoking habits but not of the introduction of new drugs. Only research into the actual causes of diseases can influence common illnesses.
Furthermore, one has the impression that, on considering the real main causes of death for today's mankind, medicine plays only a very subordinate part, because medicine cannot influence the cases of death from smoking, alcoholism and incorrect nutrition in the industrialised world and from war, hunger and social problems in the developing world.
Myth 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / Intro