INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF DOCTORS AGAINST VIVISECTION.
"VIVISECTION OR SCIENCE - A CHOICE TO MAKE"
Introduction: Italian Congress voted to outlaw vivisection
on scientific grounds.
In November 1984, the Italian Parliament voted with a clear majority
for a motion requesting the government to prohibit all animal experiments
for scientific reasons (as explained below). Unfortunately, although the
majority of the Italian Parliament twice voted to abolish animal research,
based on scientific and medical
evidence, the vote was over-ruled by a government controlled by the
pharmaceutical and chemical industries.
This November 8 1989 congress of doctors and former animal researchers was held
to remind the politicians of their duty. Quotes from some of the participating doctors and scientists are provided
below. Also see this article: Doctors Against Vivisection for similar information.
Doctor's Statements against the Fraud of Animal Research:
Dr Werner Hartinger, MD, surgeon in West-Germany with specialization
in traumatic surgery:
"If the maladies continue to increase in spite of sacrifice of billions
of laboratory animals, then it is obvious that the methodology employed
on animals by medical research is erroneous...
All our knowledge on
the reactivity of the human organism derives from the experiences made
with man and not from what we learned with experiments done on animals.
Also the lawmaker shares this opinion; in fact, to be licensed for marketing,
each drug or therapy must be preventively tested in clinical studies
made on humans, regardless of the results obtained in previous animal
tests...
More than 1600 chemical substances have been licensed for
use in the alimentary industries [the food industries]. An equal number
for cosmetics and about as many for household products. Furthermore,
a practically unlimited number is permitted for pharmaceutical products.
All these substances end up without any control in our organism, and
nothing is known of their cumulative effect.
It is interesting that many of those substances, which animal tests
have revealed to be toxic - such as formaldehyde, dioxin, asbestos and
many others - are still allowed to be marketed under the pretext that
animal tests mean nothing!
There are only two reasons for sustaining the notion of the necessity
of animal experimentation: either one is not sufficiently informed about
it, or else one profits by it.
Medical historian Hans Ruesch in conversation with Dr Werner Hartinger
Prof. Dr. Bruno Fedi, MD, anatomical-pathologist, having specialized
in urology, gynecology, cancerology, lecturer certified at Rome University,
Head of the Civic Hospital of Terni, Italy:
"The title of this Congress bestows on us the task to demonstrate
that vivisection is not scientifically valid; that a concept which has
universally been accepted as apparently exact, is false. We can't now
examine all the motives for vivisection. We must limit ourselves to the
scientific aspect, so that public opinion and the best representatives
of our citizens may learn the facts and promote laws that will advance
scientific progress, for the benefit of everybody, and not only of certain
lobbies or industries.
The proofs against vivisection
are:
1) Genetic proofs: no animal has an identical number of genes and the
relationship between them as has man.
3) Surgical proofs: commonly employed surgical techniques, according
to a great number of leading surgeons of the past and present and also
my personal experience, have been learned and perfected through the
experience with man (prostatectomy, vasectomy, hysterectomy, cistectomy
etc.)
4) Anatomist-pathological proofs: the link between smoking and cancer,
between alcohol and cyrrhosis of the liver, between diet and artherosclerosis,
and many other observations, have all been discovered through man.
5) Epidemiological and statistical proofs: they have all been obtained
through man.
6) Proofs deriving from practical observation: the effect of anabolising
substances on athletes, the effect of Periactin, of Thalidomide, of
Paraquat etc. have all been done on man.
7) Basic discoveries for today's medicine (X-Rays etc.) were made without
the use of animals.
Why then does the vivisectionist method continue? Not for scientific
reasons, but for legal and for economic reasons. Vested interests are
creating a drug-dependent society. The political parties must not allow
the present scientific anarchy to continue. The Members of Parliament
should be concerned with unsound medical practice and therefore may
not allow vivisection to continue. We are not against science, but against
bad science."
Prof. Pietro Croce, MD, former animal researcher of 30+ years,
lecturer certified at Milan University, Italy, member of the College of
American Pathologists, long time researcher at the L. Sacco Hospital of
Milan, in the USA and Spain:
"There are two or more solutions to every problem and the obvious solution
is often the most erroneous. Science is not a dogma. On the contrary.
It must be debatable, it must always be conscious of its own potential
fallaciousness, otherwise it degenerates into scientism. And this has
happened to modern medicine, which has become a religion. I repeat:
Science is not a dogma. On the contrary. To remain alive it must be
accompanied by continuous confutation, step by step, until the moment
arrives for a total confutation, for a "great passage". In medicine,
the moment for such a passage has now come.
The basis of our thought
is the following: no animal can be an experimental model for any other
species. Great tragedies have occurred because this self-evident truth
has been ignored. We don't even have to recall all those many tragedies.
Suffice it to mention that in a span of just three years, between 1984
and 1987, 14,836 toxic effects from medicines have been revealed and
the health authorities have been obliged to withdraw from the market
22,621 drug combinations.
We remain steadfast in our affirmation that a methodological error
remains always an error, from the day of its birth until it passes away.
Some results obtained with animals and human beings have coincided.
That's inevitable. But then it's always been just that: a coincidence,
ascertainable after the fact only."
Louis De Brouwer, MD, noted researcher and medical author, France:
"Nowadays the media talk a lot about pollution of the planet. But that's
only the tip of the iceberg. Why don't they include the most dangerous
form of pollution - medical drugs? Anti-hypertension drugs cause enduring
damage and allergic reactions; not found in laboratory animals. At least
one third of patients suffer side-effects, including cardiovascular
failure....
The pharmaceutical industry controls governments by their contributions
to their political campaigns... Vivisection is a legal system which
allows the pharmaceutical companies to market harmful products.... It
is an unscientific practice and should be outlawed, but this is prevented
by financial interests, largely Swiss banks. Banks and the pharmaceutical
industry dominate Switzerland....
Apart from the differences between the various species, individuals
vary within the same species...
No wonder there is increasing disease throughout the world. We are all
victims of general pollution. We are all at the mercy of politicians
and the pharmaceutical industry...."
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, different genetic
codes, can only lead medical science into error. The mouse, the dog,
the monkey, even when they are placed into the same environment, don't
contract the same maladies. There simply can be no medical progress
based on animal tests...
The general belief in their usefulness is the result of the brain-wash
conducted on public opinion for a long time. There are more than four
hundred methods of medical research that do not require animals.
But
far more important than any research is prevention. And prevention is
being practically ignored by the medical organization because it costs
little or nothing. We must change method and we must change the law.
We must have aboIition, and it has to be total."
Gerhard Buchwald, MD, Director of the Park-Sanatorium of Bad-Steben,
West Germany, witness in more than 150 court trials about vaccination
damages:
"Vaccines have never had the proclaimed preventive effect on
infections. The regression of infectious diseases started over 200 years
ago, which means long before the introduction of vaccination, and it was
due to the improved social conditions of the population: nutrition and
hygiene.
Contrarily to general belief, the vaccinations have had a negative
influence on the decrease of the infective maladies and mortality. Statistics
started off at a period when the infectious diseases were already on
the downgrade. Careful studies over a period of many years have revealed
that each introduction of a mass vaccination has obtained only one result:
the immediate recrudescence of the malady that the vaccine should have
prevented, but which it has solicited instead. The temporary but immediate
isolation of infected patients has each time proved sufficient to prevent
an epidemic.
After every flare-up of an infection due to vaccination, the maladies
have resumed the downward course which existed already before the vaccination.
In general and over a period of many years, every vaccination has caused
more casualties than the infection it was supposed to prevent. This
happened for instance with the smallpox vaccination in Germany and many
other countries... Vaccines don't protect, but do harm. A scientific
proof of their usefulness has never existed, whereas the severe, sometimes
fatal damages they cause are a proven fact."
Bernhard Rambeck, MD, Director of the biochemical laboratory of
the Institute for Research on Epilepsy of Bielefeld, Germany:
"We don't intend to abolish neither science nor medicine, because mankind
needs them today more than ever before. But medical science has blundered
into an impasse from which it has to get out. Medicine has become an
administrator of symptoms, having forgotten what its role is: to prevent
and cure diseases. The erroneous mechanistic concept of health has deviated
research from the right road.
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 also including
psychic reasons, which can't 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. In spite of enormous investments in research, the promised
breakthroughs have not been realized and there has been no significant
progress wherever animal models have been employed.
While we fiddle with animal brains, we forget every case is individual.
More emphasis should be placed on teaching patients to reduce or interrupt
seizures, and on diet and relaxation. Animal experiments also prevent
us drawing conclusions from the spontaneous recoveries."
Hans Ruesch, author and medical historian:
"I haven't prepared a paper to read, because I first wanted
to hear what the other speakers would say. In fact I heard that various
bills on vivisection are at present under study, of which four are regulationist
and one abolitionist. I can assure you that any kind of regulation is
totally useless, so we shouldn't waste the time of MPs and the money of
taxpayers discussing it.
The strictest regulatory law ever designed to curb vivisection was
enacted in Great Britain in 1876, when the animal experiments numbered
about 300 a year. Under this strict law, the experiments rose year after
year, until they reached the macabre total of five and a half million,
at least 85 percent of them performed without anesthesia.
Our adversaries deride these figures, affirming that many experiments
are done without anesthesia because they imply a mere pinprick. But
that's misleading, because the purpose of most pinpricks is to inflict
some mortal malady to the animal, a sacrifice that is furthermore totally
useless, because it is impossible to transmit to an animal a human malady.
This is a hard biological fact; And for this reason it is impossible
to learn from an animal how to cure human maladies. So if we want to
waste time with idle discussions, let's talk about regulations. But
if we really want to change something in order to improve not only the
fate of animaIs but especially of humans, by reforming modern medicine,
then let's talk abolition.
I've heard it said that the Italian law, which dates from 1931, is
the worst. I've also heard it said that in some countries there are
some very good legislations. But all those laws are equally bad because
they affirm the usefulness of vivisection, that doesn't exist. The moment
you admit that vivisection is useful for man there can be no restraint,
no limit to it. Here all look up to England and America as examples
to follow, but as far as vivisection is concerned these two countries
are by far the worst in the world - where the infiltration by our adversaries
has reached perfection. Especially Britain, where the entire anti-vivisectionist
movement is directed by the Vivisection Syndicate. Three years ago a
new bill was enacted in Great Britain, which is even worse than the
old one. More and more experiments need no longer be reported, and at
the same time vivisection is being introduced into the so-called undeveloped
countries, meaning the as yet unexploited countries.
A while ago in the lobby, a lady challenged me to denounce the journallsts
for their silence, to blame them for not spreading more information
about vivisection. But she was wrong. Most of the Italian public knows
what happened to my book when it came out in 1976. The journalists spread
it all over the country as no other book before. They did what they
felt like doing. But within a few weeks the book was withdrawn by its
own publisher, the Rizzoli publishing empire, which was owned, and still
is, by Montedison, the chemical multinational.
We can blame the press, but not the journalists. Their service to us
can only be sporadic, a flash in the pan. They are on a payroll, and
so they must obey the boss. For some time now Italy's principal daily,
Corriere della Sera, and its popular subsidiaries, are propagandizing
the obscene head-transplant experiments of the American Doctor Robert
While, as if they were not useless, but as if they had even moral merit,
and show pictures of the doctor receiving the accolade from the Pope
for his achievement...What's the purpose of this? To desensitise the
public, which must gradually get used to this kind of scenes, and to
accept them sheepishly as "Science".
However, as Prof. Croce has illustrated, all this is not Science, but
"scientism" - a degeneration of Science, a malformed offspring of it,
born in France more than a century ago, which made our self-styled scientists
believe that if we infect animals with AIDS - which can't be done -
then we can learn from them how to cure humans of AIDS, which can't
be done either.
Speaking of AIDS: it was created in the animal laboratories by the
incompetence of the pseudo-scientists who direct "modern medicine".
This view was officially voiced for the first time by Russia's news
broadcasts in 1985, and of course previously by CiVIS medical experts
like Dr. Gustave Mathieu of France. They have meanwhile become so numerous
that the question as to whether AIDS was born in the animal laboratories
or not is no longer a moot point. It was."
Excerpt from the 1986 documentary Hidden Crimes regards - The Money Issue - how vivisection researchers approve each others grants - wasting our taxpayer dollars on unscientific work.
Reference:
The above quotes are from "CIVIS International Foundation
Report Nr. 8", WINTER 1989 - 1990, Address: PO Box 152- Via Motta
51 - CH-69OO Massagno - Switzerland, CIVIS (Centro Informazione Vivisezionista
Internazionale Scientifica)
See the MOVIE: Lethal Medicine
Documentary on how the drug-based medical system is a leading cause of injury and death to humans in countries like the USA. It explains why medicine injures and kills so many people because of the misleading unscientific results from vivisection (the name for animal tests and animal experiments).
Similar Articles:
Why Do Pharmaceutical
Drugs Injure & Kill Millions of Humans?Are We the Real "Guinea-pigs"? . . . Medical journals report that pharmaceutical
drugs injure millions and kill hundreds of thousands of people each year. This article
explains how drug companies: i) use flexible unscientific tests to make their products
look "safe"; ii) can then use those flexible tests as a legal defence to avoid punishment.
A History of Western Medicine: From ancient Greece to modern times ... a summary of how human medicine:
i) advanced due to scientific clinical observations of humans; and
ii) was regularly stalled and led astray for millenia due to misleading results from vivisection ... excerpts from a book by the medical historian Hans Ruesch.
Doctors Against Vivisection on Scientific & Medical Grounds (vivisection = animal research, animal experiments, animals testing
on live animals or humans). These doctors explain that vivisection is misleading and very damaging to human medicine. Furthermore, that it is not done for science but for commercial reasons to help insure companies against law suits from humans who are damaged by medical treatment.
Why the Unscientific Practice of Vivisection Continues:Dr Coleman explains: "Drug companies depend on the fact that animal experiments are unreliable in order to get their new products onto the market without testing them properly..." Furthermore, on how animal testing is an easier path for academics and organisations to access grant money and build careers.
A
Critical look at Animal Experimentation: PDF article from
the Medical Research Modernisation Committee; by Christopher Anderegg, M.D., Ph.D.;
Kathy Archibald, B.Sc.;
Jarrod Bailey, Ph.D.;
Murry J. Cohen, M.D.;
Stephen R. Kaufman, M.D.;
John J. Pippin, M.D., F.A.C.C.
Fallacies
about Animal Research. In this article Doctor Charles
Bell Taylor explains how the major medical advances came about through study of humans.
Why Animal
Research Continues:(PDF) Expose
of fraudulent animal rights & welfare groups & their alliance with
the Pharmaceutical-Vivisection Industry. This article shows how these
groups are financially in bed with the drug industry, promote pro-vivisection
information and help suppress the truth about the human damages
and deaths due to the unreliable results of unscientific animal experiments.
Recommended Organisations:
Physicians Committee
for Responsible Medicine: Group of doctors, physicians and
health practitioners promoting good health through real science. http://www.pcrm.org
Campaign
Against Fraudulent Medical Research (CAFMR): Archive of articles. Information that the pharmaceutical-chemical industry do not want us to know: medical history, medical fraud, psychiatric abuses,
vaccination damage coverups, behind sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) etc. http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr