to frame dragger, thanks for your opinion. I apologise in advance for any typing errors. you say "I love animals to the point of weeping thinking about this issue. HOWEVER, I recognize the necessity, and am familiar with the issues surrounding this. The reality is that we have a choice between human and animal lives. There is a balance that is struck, and we do exploit and kill these animals. The alternative would be to do the same to people (a practice that is already too common) which is at LEAST as morally reprehensible. I also know people who test on animals (mice, rats, cats, monkeys) and they are not bloodthirsty... I couldn't tolerate that kind of person."
If you love animals to the point of tears then you should be very pleased to find that animal experimentation does not benefit humans, in fact has the opposite effect, and can therefore be eliminated completely. "Are there alternatives to vivisection? Of course not. There are no alternatives to vivisection because any method intended to replace it should have the same qualities; but it is hard to find anything in biomedical research that is; and always was; more deceptive and misleading than vivisection. So the methods we propose for medical research should be called ‘scientific methods’… they are not ‘alternatives’".; - Prof. Croce M.D; Fulbright Scholar; Vivisection or Science: A Choice To Make; page 21. may be avail at www.dlrm.org[/url] or [PLAIN]www.nzavs.org.nz; Professor Colin Dollery stated:; "... for the great majority of disease entities; the animal models either do not exist or are really very poor. [We risk] overlooking useful drugs because they do not give a response to the animal models commonly used."(2) Dollery; C. in Risk-Benefit Analysis in Drug Research; ed. Cavalla; 1981; p87.;
"That kind" of person you refer to is very common behind the closed doors of the animal lab, hidden film shows that lack of anaesthetic and people deriving pleasure from causing pain are not uncommon. I will leave this to the side though as supporters of animal experiments need this argument to be based on animal rights as when faced with a scientific/human health argument they have no valid response.
you say "Perhaps a distinction needs to be drawn for people, that life is very GREY, and this is one of the murkiest issues. YES, some financial issues are at play, and in some cases it is (or was) greed, but more often it would cost SO much to achieve current results with computer models and human testing... that many would not HAVE their medication, medical devices, etc."
As I have provided independent and expert information showing animal experimentation to be fraudulent you now call it "murky and grey". It is worse than this but i have no doubt that such partial admissions would not ever have been made without the quotes i included.
What current results specifically? Tell me what advances you believe animal experiments have been essential for.
Computer models, human testing, micro dosing etc are cheaper than animal experiments. The problem with real scientific methods is that they would not convey legal protection to the manufacturer. Though animal experimentation is not a legal reuirement in most of the world, historically, jurys have been duped by these animal 'tests'. Worked for thalidomide (no payouts) and still works now. As any substance including strychnine, cyanide arsenic botulin asbestos HIV infected blood ddt benzene and cigarettes to name a few, PASS animal tests needless to say any pharmaceutical/chemical/pollutant can pass it. This is how these co's get legal protection. Most of their products would fail a valid test.
Human experiments are certainly occurring, to quote Dr Moniem A Fadali MD of doctors and lawyers for responsible medicine
www.dlrm.org "Animal exprimentation inevitably leads to human experimentation" Why? The animal experiment does not tell us what will happen to the human who may or may not react like the animal so the first time a drug or medical procedure is tried on a human that is a human experiment. We know the result of basing human medicine on animals; humans now have 30,000 diseases, cancer and other diseases continue a steady rise (carcinogens such as cigarettes and thousands of other substances pass animal 'tests' which only protect the financial health of the manufacturer/polluter and the animal based cancer research is an ongoing failure). "Animal studies are done for legal reasons and not for scientific reasons. The predictive value of such studies for man is meaningless."; - Dr James D. Gallagher; Director of Medical Research; Lederle Laboratories; Journal of the American Medical Association; March 14 1964.;
The public has been successfully duped into believing that this is an animal versus humans issue. It is in fact animal and humans and the environment and the economy versus profits of some very powerful industries mostly and also titles, careers, status, income, publish or perish, inertia, curiosity, easy availability of animals and convenience of using them and guilt to lesser degrees. I do not deny that there may be some (probably young) people who do animal experiments under the mistaken belief that they will cure a disease, something they have been spoonfed to believe since school and in universities, given 'donations' from drug/chem co's. They will not achieve this via animal experiments. As tens of millions of animals are killed in so called medical 'research' each year and humans have about 30,000 diseases and none are cured clearly they will not achieve this. Much money will continue to pour into these 'charities' though and to the profits of drug co's.
you say "The wise person who loves animals, from mice to people, has to recognize that it is no longer possible to entirely separate the fact from fiction. Moreover, consider the benefit to society, the world, and the future." I agree, the fact that a human is not a rat, cat dog, monkey or any other animal and that human medicine cannot reliably be based on any ohter species would be a good fact to start with. Great beneft would come to humans and the environment when this is realized.
you say "Smallpox is GONE... that is amazing." Not really amazing though, it is the inevitable result of the elimination of disease causing conditions which comes about through epidemiology (observation of the human population), you can thank Bentham and Chadwick (and common sense) for that. Their observations of London prior to the fire enabled them to identify disease causing conditions. London and all other cities where these diseases are gone have been built in a hygenic way. Clean water, rubbish and sewage removal, clean food, asepsis.
The enforcement of vaccination laws in england and wales in 1867 lead to a 3 fold increase in smallpox deaths, peaking at 42,000 in 1872, the largest epidemic ever. Smallpox was in decline until then. The towns of Leicester and Dewsbury rejected the vaccine preferring hygeine and sanitation instead. Consequently these towns had the lowest death rates in the country.
To quote Hansard, February 1, 1964 "From 1936 to 1962, two-thirds of the children born in England and Wales were unvaccinated: of these, 4, under the age of 5, died of smallpox. Of the vaccinated group, 86, under the age of 5 were killed by the vaccination and many more seriously injured."
"Dr Charles Henry Kempe, University of Colorado, after a 20 year study Dr Kempe recommends abolishing smallpox vaccination. Since 1948 there have been no deaths from smallpox in the United States. In the same period more than 300 persons have died from smallpox vaccinations, including vaccine induced encephalitis." (The Evening Bulletin, Philadelphia, May 7, 1965) too much more for me to type.
from the campaign against fraudulent medical research
www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr "Japan experienced yearly increases in small pox following the introduction of compulsory vaccines in 1872. By 1892, there were 29,979 deaths, and all had been vaccinated.[20] Early in this century, the Philippines experienced their worst smallpox epidemic ever after 8 million people received 24.5 million vaccine doses; the death rate quadrupled as a result."[21]
refs# 20 Trevor Gunn, Mass Immunization, A Point in Question, p 15 (E.D. Hume, Pasteur Exposed - The False Foundations of Modern Medicine, Bookreal, Australia, 1989.)
# 21 Physician William Howard Hay's address of June 25, 1937; printed in the Congressional Record.
"...smallpox vaccination has been followed by violent local and general reactions and by leukaemia." (Professors Aleksandrrowickz and Halileokowski, Medical Academy of Crakow, Poland, Lancet, May 6, 1967.)
"Even a procedure anchored in law, such as the smallpox vaccination, is now the subject of such strong doubts that Holland has abolished compulsory vaccination for an initial period of 2 years." (Dr Med Eckhard, Hanover, 1924)
"Dr Marmelzat, university of Southern California announced that smallpox vaccination causes cancer in the form of malignant tumours..." (front page of Medical News, 1962).
I can't be bothered typing more quotes on this. Though this one is very relevant to vivisection (animal experimentation) and vaccines, "Opinions on matters held by the public to be 'obvious', long considered natural and necessary, are only so because they are shared widely without question." Maria Chiara Giardini
you say "Human nature may change, but no time soon. People will contract disease, or need surgery, and they will want to live, more than they want the animals that died for that tech to live." Another statemnet which claims, without evidence, that we benefit from animal experiments. it is impossible to say exactly how many of the 30,000 diseases we have came from animal 'tested' substances but i certainly know that none have been cured by it. As regards surgery...
"I have never known a single good surgeon who has learned anything from vivisection." Dr Abel Desjardins, President of the Society of Surgeons of Paris, foremost surgeon of his time in France and Professor of Surgery, from Hans Ruesch's "One Thousand Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection." www.nzavs.org.nz[/url] or [url]www.dlrm.org[/URL] (vivisection is animal experimentation)
Dr Robert Lawson Tait (1845-1899) is recognised as the giant of surgical progress and the most innovative and successful surgeon of all time. he said this, "Like every member of my profession I was bought up in teh belief that almost every important fact in physiology had been obtained by vivisection and that many of our most valued means of saving life and diminishing suffering had resulted from experiments on animals. I now know that nothing of the sort is true concerning the art of surgery; and not only do i not believe that vivisection has helped the surgeon one bit, but I know that it has often led him astray."
you say "It's not right, or wrong, it's apex predation taken to a new height." It is wrong. The predators at the top of the apex are very powerful industries predating the human and animal population and the environment for economic gain, not humans predating animals (via 'research') for the general good of humans as i presume you are implying.
"It FEELS wrong, and I have deep reservations about some of this research (especially in the realm of psych and neurobiology with which I am most familiar, and where the experiments are arguably 'cruel'), but I see no alternative at this time. If we expect to reach the point where we can spare animals AND people, we need to pass through this point."
No doubt you want to suggest, as your capital letters indicate, that opponents of animal experimentation only FEEL it to be wrong. The facts indicate that the conclusion that animal experiments are wrong is very well grounded in FACT. i.e It harms humans (and animals) on a grand scale. Prof Croce has already responded above to the use of the term 'alternative'. There are over 400 real scientific methods, ie ones which produce results which are valid for humans with consistency. see [url]www.curedisease.net[/url]
So here are some real scientific methods; ie they are predictive for humans. for drug creation: Microdosing; ie human cell phase then micro dose in humans; ie v. small quantities given and patient monitored as dose increased; patient pref. suffers from problem to be remedied so efficacy can also be tested. makes healthier drugs as the animal testing phase is not indicative; it is a legal device.
Better again is genetically engineered drugs. a dna chip is created and drugs tailor made for individuals asterand or pharmagene are already doing this; Computers enable scientists to design and test new medicines. Though they may never be able to replicate a human patient completely; they will always reap more accurate findings than an entirely different species. Medical computers are now designing new drugs for AIDS; cancer and other diseases. There are many others. So; i am not suggesting that no tests be done; only valid ones.; re cancer; i agree there are many known causes unrelated to animal exp. such as sun; high fat diet; smoking however exposure to substances which pass animal tests such as cigarettes is certainly a cause of cancer. without epidemiological studies being done it is difficult to identify exactly which of the hundreds of thousands of artificial substances is causing cancer or other damage in humans. this type of valid research receives little funding.; These methods would decrease human mortlity as the misleading aspect is removed from drug creation. it would increase a drug companies chance of being sued as; if they chose to market a potentially harmful drug; they would not be able to rely on misleading animal data to claim that they did not know and when your product is the fourth biggest cause of death in the USA (and similar in other wealthy countries) you want legal protection.
"The only thing we have learned about human nature from 50 years of psychological research on animals is how depraved some humans will be in order to gain money, power and titles."
For the sake of brevity I would like to give you an opportunity to tell me the 5 or so greatest advances/benefits to humanity from animal experiments. After 100 years, over a billion dead animals and over a trillion dollars spent there should be some shouldn't there?
