Any true medical progress has in the past, as in present times, only been achieved through scientific study based upon the real world and natural disease, and not the artificial world of the experimental animal laboratory.
WHY VIVISECT? HOW MANY DRUGS DO WE NEED?
Why do drug companies rely on such unreliable and dubious methods for testing drugs? The answer is simple. If drugs were tested properly using true scientific methods, such as in vitro cultures of human cells and properly carried out human clinical trials, the vast majority of them would not be approved for marketing because their harmfulness and ineffectiveness would be all too apparent. For instance, in 1981 the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), published a list of a mere 26 drugs, from the 205,000 marketed drugs, that were considered "indispensable", with 9 being more indispensable than the others. (12) Other medical commissions in Chile 1972, and Sri Lanka 1978, came to similar findings, that there are not more than a few dozen drugs worth keeping. However, both existing governments were ousted shortly there-after by US backed forces. They were replaced with administrations open to American trade and the products of the chemical-pharmaceutical industry. (13) This should cause anyone who thinks that we need more drugs to reconsider their opinion. It is plain to see that inconsequential and ambiguous methods of drug-testing are essential to protect the astronomical profits of the pharmaceutical industry.
DRUG COMPANIES MAKE THESE ADMISSIONS!
If you have difficulty accepting this explanation then consider the following statement from Eli Lilly's August 1993 Prozac 20 Consumer Product Information pamphlet: "There can be no such thing as absolute safety with prescription medicines. Individual patients sometimes react differently to the same dose of the same medicine and it is possible that some unwanted side effects will not be known until a medicine has been widely prescribed for a number of years."
If they admit that even individuals of the same species react differently to an identical product, then why test on other species? Dr Herbert Gundersheimer, one of many doctors against vivisection, explains: "Results from animal tests are not transferable between species and therefore cannot guarantee product safety for humans... In reality these tests do not provide protection for consumers from unsafe products, but rather are used to protect corporations from legal liability." (14) When people are damaged by unsafe products (such as pharmaceutical drugs, industrial and household chemicals, cosmetics...etc.) and attempt to take legal action, manufacturers can claim to have adhered to "safety" tests and are thus absolved of having consciously marketed a harmful product.
THALIDOMIDE: A CASE EXAMPLE
This is what happened in the case of Thalidomide, a drug which after years of extensive animal tests was marketed as a perfectly safe tranquilizer for pregnant mothers. The end result: more than 10,000 grossly deformed new born babies. During the lengthy trial of the manufacturers in 1970, numerous court witnesses, all animal experimenters, stated under oath that the results of animal experiments are never valid for human beings. (15) One of these experts was the Nobel Prize winner Ernst Boris Chain who co-discovered the anti-bacterial effects of penicillin. According to the court records on 2 February 1970 he stated: "No animal experiment with a medicament, even if it is tested on several animal species, including primates, under all conceivable conditions, can give any guarantee that the medicament tested in this way will behave the same in humans: because in many respects the human is not the same as the animal." (16) Because they had performed the required animal safety-tests, and because these did not show evidence of any danger, the manufacturers of Thalidomide were found not guilty by the court of consciously marketing a harmful drug.
This is the real value of animal experiments. Firstly, they can be manipulated, whether consciously or unconsciously, to produce results favorable to a financial backer. Secondly, they serve as a legal alibi for corporations when their products kill and injure people. It is worthy of note that Professor S.T.Aygun, a virologist at the University of Ankara, who uses only the so-called 'alternative' methods, discovered the danger of Thalidomide to humans and Turkey was spared the tragedy. (17)
BIRTH DEFECTS SKYROCKET
The incredible reaction to the Thalidomide tragedy by the pharmaceutical lobby was that it was a 'rare exception' and that it 'emphasizes a need for more rigorous animal testing, not less.' This explanation was accepted by most people. So animal testing increased, along with the output of 'safety-tested' drugs. The consequences of this? In the 1950s in the Federal Republic of Germany, 3 out of every 100,000 babies were born malformed. By the 1980s, 500 out of every 100,000 were born malformed. (18) This is more than a 100-fold increase. In the United States birth defects have increased more than 350% in the last 25 years. In the late 1950s, 70,000 American babies were born with birth defects every year. In the 1980s this toll reached 250,000 a year. (19)
The reason for this increase in human birth defects is known. A survey by doctors in West Germany revealed that 61% of malformations in new-born children and 88% of all stillbirths are attributable to the damage caused by drugs taken by the mother during pregnancy. (20) Remember, all these drugs were found to be "safe" through extensive animal testing!
Why do people believe so firmly in vivisection? The answer to this lies in their education.
THE DRUG TRUST, EDUCATION & THE MEDIA
With most of the world's major drug companies under its control the Rockefeller organization, since the early part of this century, has been the largest single private source of funding for medical science and education in the western world. The aim of this lavish funding for our education is to produce a curriculum designed to indoctrinate students with beliefs favorable to the profits of the pharmaceutical-chemical industry. Only colleges and medical facilities that predicate the massive consumption of chemical drugs, "safety-tested" on animals, as the secret to health, are recipients of drug company largesse. Likewise, drug companies through ownership and advertising revenue exercise a dictatorial influence over the mass-media as they do also upon party politicians through 'donations'. Meanwhile, doctors who heal by inexpensive natural means, thereby threatening pharmaceutical profits, are decried as quacks, driven out of the country or into jail. (21)
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