Comment by Alexander Schifferegger
Every year more than 250 million animals are used worldwide in medical research — over 2 million Australia wide. Thirty animals die every second in laboratories around the world.
This is claimed to benefit medical science and human health. However, a growing number of doctors and scientists believe that animal research is useless, its results misleading and therefore frequently counterproductive and damaging to human health.
This is because animals are not like us; they suffer from different diseases, and their reactions to drugs are different. Medical advances come about either independently from or despite animal research, not because of it.
It is impossible to re-create a naturally occurring disease in a healthy animal, simply because once it is "re-created", it is no longer the original, natural disease. Data obtained by looking at artificially diseased animals are not applicable to human beings. This is why no disease has been cured in the 20th century except for the control of infectious diseases through nutrition, hygiene and public sanitation.
Here are just a few of the drugs which have caused horrific damage to humans, even though they had all been "safety tested" on animals:
- Opren: an anti-arthritic drug. Withdrawn in 1982 after more than 70 deaths in Britain and 3,500 other serious side effects, including damage to skin, eyes, circulation, liver, kidneys.
- Clioquinol: an anti-diarrhoeal drug. Caused 30,000 cases of blindness and/or paralysis in Japan alone and thousands of deaths worldwide.
- Osmosin: an anti-inflammatory drug. Withdrawn in 1983 after 650 reported serious side effects and 20 deaths.
- Eraldin: a heart drug, given to patients for four years before side effects were identified, including blindness, stomach troubles, pains in joints and growths.
- Thalidomide: a sedative given to pregnant women, caused about 10,000 birth defects worldwide.
- Flosint: an anti-inflammatory drug. Use resulted in reports of 217 adverse effects, including seven deaths.
Drugs prescribed all over the world are suspected of causing thousands upon thousands of adverse effects annually. All are "tested" on animals. A frightening 10% of children born in USA now have some form of birth defect. Most of these can be traced back to the use of medical drugs, food additives, cosmetics and other chemicals, all of which have been "safety tested" on animals.
Since animal "tests" provide no protection for us, we are the real guineapigs when we are given a new drug.
Do you want to ruin the citrus fruit growers? Then feed their lemons to cats, who will die from them.
To convince consumers that botulin is harmless, just add a bit of this poison to some cat food; the cat will happily lick its lips. But the cat's traditional prey, the mouse, will die from it as if struck by lightning.
Does your cat have the sniffles? Be sure not to give her any aspirin unless, of course, you want to kill her.
One hundred milligrams of scopolamine leaves dogs and cats unaffected, but five milligrams are sufficient to kill a human being.
Strychnine, as popular as arsenic among murderers in detective stories, has no effect at all on guineapigs, chickens or monkeys, even in a dosage which would be enough to put a whole human family into convulsions.
Amyl nitrate dangerously raises the internal pressure of the eyes of dogs, but it lowers the pressure within the human eye.
The foxglove (digitalis) was formerly considered to be dangerous for the heart because, when tested on dogs, it raised their blood pressure. For this reason, the use of the medicament, which is of undisputed value for the human heart, was delayed for many years.
Novalgin is an anaesthetic for humans, but in cats it causes excitement and salivation, symptoms similar to those occurring in animals suffering from rabies.
Cycloserine is used for tuberculosis patients but has no effect on guineapigs and rats which have been infected artificially with tuberculosis.
Chloramphenicol often seriously damages the blood-producing bone marrow of humans but not that of animals.
Chlorpromazine damages the human liver but not the livers of laboratory animals.
Methylfluoracetate has a toxic effect on mammals, but a rat can tolerate a dosage 40 times higher than the dose that kills a dog. Will people react like a rat? Or like a dog? Or like neither?
One needs only to find the appropriate animal species to obtain the desired answer: black or white, positive or negative. That method reduces science to the level of a kind of malleable dough, mouldable to whatever shape one chooses.
So why does animal research continue?
There are huge financial vested interests in animal research: the animal breeders, the manufacturers of cages, restraining devices, animal feed and surgical instruments.
Apart from obvious commercial interests, many scientists base their entire career on animal experiments; any criticism of vivisection is seen as a threat to their jobs.
Animal toxicity "tests" provide a legal defence for drug manufacturers when humans suffer adverse effects, as the company can claim to have adhered to "safety" tests.
Last year in Victoria alone, half a million animals were used in experiments. Legally these animals can be blinded, scalded, crushed, mutilated, irradiated, infected with disease, poisoned and killed, all in the name of science.
These experiments were paid for by taxpayers' money. Alternatives are available, and more must be found. But they won't be if we don't speak out.
Animal Guardians is holding a rally on Saturday, May 7, at 11.30 in front of the State Museum in Swanston Walk as part of "World Day for Laboratory Animals".
Have your say by joining in commiserating the suffering of laboratory animals.
[The writer is campaign director of Animal Guardians, who can be contacted on (03) 386 3778 or mobile 015 304 778 or hot line 0055 10575.]