It is quite likely that the subject of vivisection makes you feel uncomfortable, but nevertheless you may still consider that it is an essential part of scientific and medical investigation; that without these experiments medical progress would be severely hampered.
To put it bluntly, in order to ensure that the human race receives the medical care it deserves, the poor animals must suffer.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
However, the basis for this statement is not the moral argument about whether or not it is right for animals to suffer, but on the scientific basis of using animals as a suitable model for humans.
The scientific evidence shows that, contrary to what we are told, there is no animal species that is a suitable model for humans.
The ONLY correct models for humans are, without exception, humans.
But even humans vary physiologically. After all, different people react differently to different substances.
Take the obvious example of allergies; some people have ‘allergic’ reactions to certain substances to which other people do not react. So even humans cannot be reliable models for all other humans.
A further vital point that is rarely, if ever, divulged by vivisectors is that using an animal as a model for investigating human diseases would only be relevant if animals generally suffered from the same diseases as humans.
However, the evidence shows that in the vast number of cases, animals do not contract the same diseases as humans and therefore, in order to be able to undertake a study, diseased states are artificially created in the animals. This artificial process can never provide a proper scientific model for how a natural disease will occur and develop and therefore can never be a reliable indicator for assessing the correct treatment of the disease in humans.
The evidence also shows that animal reactions to chemicals, drugs and food additives can vary within a species. Vast differences can occur in the results of experiments on a range of animals and these differences can be dose related, for example a very low dose of one chemical may have a dramatic effect on a mouse and yet a large dose of the same chemical may only have a very small effect on a rat.
All of this confusion can only leave the ‘researcher’ wondering which animal model to use as the basis for how humans may (or may not) react.
And in case you may be wondering why apes should not be used as suitable models, because after all they are genetically closest to man, the following should clarify the position:
“There are many known differences between chimps and humans. Certainly there are enough differences to make the use of chimps for medical experiments as if they were human nonsensical. No chimps … have been of any use in the experiments they were used for … .The whole wretched business (and it is big business) should be stopped and stopped now.” Professor Vernon Reynolds, primatologist and professor of biological anthropology, University of Oxford
To ensure that you are left in no doubt as to why rats and mice are used, it is quite definitely not because they are sufficiently similar to humans to be suitable models but because they are cheap, small and easy to handle: these are not scientific criteria!
The former vivisector Professor Pietro Croce’s own words sum up the situation :
“Even the choice between different species of animal is illusory: actually one is not even speaking of there being a choice at all, but of a kind of fishing blindly among different possibilities in a haphazard way or, worse, according to opportunistic criteria in deciding which animal is more or less convenient: the mouse, the rabbit, the guinea pig are “convenient” because they are easy to keep; cats and dogs because they are easily and cheaply obtainable: everything except the one element which ought to be the deciding factor: an animal having morphological, physiological and biochemical characteristics applicable to man. However, such an animal can only be man himself.
An experimental model of the human being does not exist. Every species, all the varieties of animals and even individuals of the same species are different from each other. No experimentation carried out on one species can be extrapolated to any other, including man. To suppose that such extrapolation could be legitimate is the main reason for the failure and sometimes for the catastrophes which are inflicted upon us by modern medicine, especially in the area of drugs. Too little is spoken or written about certain facts, partly in deference to a ‘science’ which purports to be the “saviour of mankind”, but more usually to avoid provoking the huge economic and political interests which prop up this benefactor.”
There is, and has been for a very long time, strong scientific criticism against vivisection, not only as a scientific procedure, but also because the results obtained from it are misleading and dangerous. The following quotations demonstrate this fact:
“Medicine is, essentially, a science of observation, in which experimentation is only a minor part of the medical investigation. But the worst of it is that this minor part has been contaminated by a gross error – that of having taken animals as models for humans.”
Professor Dr Pietro Croce
“The reason why I am against animal research is because it doesn’t work, it has no scientific value and every good scientist knows that.”
– Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, M.D., Head of the Licensing Board for the State of Illinois, paediatrician & gynaecologist for 30 years, medical columnist & best-selling author, recipient of numerous awards for excellence in medicine.
“Like every member of my profession, I was brought up in the 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 the lower 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.”
– Prof. Lawson Tait, M.D., Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (F.R.C.S.), Edinburgh & England. Hailed as the most distinguished surgeon of his day, the originator of many of surgery’s modern techniques, and recipient of numerous awards for medical excellence.
“Animal model systems differ from their human counterparts. Conclusions drawn from animal research, when applied to human beings, are likely to delay progress, mislead, and do harm to the patient. Vivisection, or animal experimentation, should be abolished.”
– Dr. Moneim Fadali, M.D., F.A.C.S., Diplomat American Board of Surgery and American Board of Thoracic Surgery, UCLA faculty, Royal College of Surgeons of Cardiology, Canada.
If all this is news to you, you will also be interested to discover that the current medical paradigm is also based on unsound science.
You can find out more about becoming and remaining naturally healthy from our book, Why Germs Don’t Make You Ill and Drugs Can’t Cure You.