Firstly, the main reason why i am against animal testing has nothing to do with "animal welfare". I am a post graduate in the life sciences studying health and disease trends. I am against animal testing because it is dangerously misleading and is NOT science. You can prove or disprove anything at all through testing a product on a variety of species under various different conditions. You can even do the same experiment on the same individual animal and come up with a totally contradictory result. I oppose animal testing because it is scientific fraud done for commercial reasons not scientific reasons. I also campaign against unscientific (fraudulent) practicies in clinical human testing. Unfortunately, your reasoning has been poisoned by the well-meaning but ill-informed campaigns of animal rights groups - many of which are infiltrated by and orchestrated by puppets of the pharmaceutical-vivisection industry. They put out wishy washy ethical arguments which act as a smokescreen to conceal the REAL opposition to animal testing. This oppositon consists of scientists, doctors and former-animal researchers who campaign to have vivisectionist testing on both human and non-human animals abolished for medical and scientific reasons; to put allopathic medicine back on track of advancing human health, through research relevant to human health, rather than being the fourth major killer in many western countries after heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
There are some sample quotes from such doctors and scientists further below.
I once believed animal testing was necessary and had led to medical progress in the past. However, there are numerous books which examine the history of medicine and document that the real advacnes have come from clinical observation of sick people, human population studies, autopsy studies and other forms of non-violent human research methods. Animal testing has retarded medical progress many many times, and been directly responsible for many grave disasters; products and procedures declared "safe" after intensive animal testing but then found to injure/kill humans.
If you'd like to know the information and arguments that are not or only very rarely presented in the mass-media and hardly ever from animal "welfare" grousp please see the site of Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr
You can find similar articles at the site www.teknet.net.au/~eye/
and at www.werple.net.au/~antiviv
Secondly, in regard to your statement:
"Ho can you justify that Animlas are just as important as Humans? Humans have alwyas come above animlas in life, so why does it need to change now?
** This statement has provided justification for every form of tyranny amongst humans. By the same token you could say "The European races have ruled over and oppressed other races of people so therefore this is o.k. and should continue". Also, one could say, using your reasoning, "Men are stronger than women, have oppressed them in the past, and because they have the ability to oppress women then this is o.k. and should be allowed". Do you buy that argument? It is the same "might makes right" philosophy you have espoused. If you think there is nothing wrong with harm inflicted on sentient animals by humans then you are a hyprocrite to protest when some thug assaults you. He is just abiding by your "might makes right" philosophy.
For me, I strive not to inflict harm on any other sentient creature because i do not like to suffer myself and i do not wish to impose suffering on other people or on animals that have a nervous system and the ability to suffer and experience pleasure.
Most of the following quotes are from the books Slaughter of the Innocent (1991) and 1000 Doctors Against Vivisection - A Growing Trend (1989), by medical historian Hans Ruesch...
statements by some of the world’s leading surgeons:
· Prof. Lawson Tait, M.D., 1899, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh & England: “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.” Professor Tait was hailed as the most distinguished surgeon of his day. He was the originator of many of surgery’s modern techniques, and recipient of numerous awards for medical excellence. (1)
· Prof. Dr. Julius Hackethal, 1986, Germany’s most famous surgeon: “After 41 year’s experience as a surgeon I can say with absolute certainty that in my case animal experiments have contributed nothing to extending my surgical knowledge or improving my practical skill.” (2)
· Sir Frederick Treves, 1898, Director of London Hospital, surgeon to the Royal Family and world-renowned authority on abdominal surgery: “Many years ago I carried out ... sundry operations upon the intestines of dogs, but such are the differences between the human and the canine bowel, that when I came to operate on man I found that I had everything to unlearn, and that my experiments had done little but unfit me to deal with the human intestine.” (emphasis added). (3)
· Prof. Dr. Ferdinando de Leo, 1986, professor of Pathological and Clinical Surgery at the University of Naples, Italy: “I have been a surgeon for 51 years. I am still performing operations daily, and can state that in no way whatever do I owe my dexterity to animal experimentation. Like every good surgeon, I first learned my trade as an assistant to other surgeons. . . It’s true that there are always advocates of vivisection who say that one must first practise on animals in order to become a surgeon. That is a dishonest statement, made by people who reap financial benefit from it.” (4)
· Prof. Dr.Salvatore Rocca Rossetti, 1986, surgeon and Professor of Urology at the University of Turin, Italy: “I have seen surgeons who carried out experiments on some organs from dogs in the belief that these were identical with those of humans, and they did not know that they were cutting into a quite different organ, even into a lymphatic gland instead of the thyroid gland. Nobody has become a surgeon because of having operated on animals. He has only learnt wrongly through animals. I have been able to see this over my many decades as a surgeon, also as a Director of hospitals. I have carried out tens of thousands of operations on people without ever performing them first on an animal.” (5)
· Dr Werner Hartinger, 1987, West German surgeon of 30 years and the first President of the International League of Doctors Against Vivisection: “Vivisection is barbaric, useless and a hindrance to scientific progress. I learned how to operate from other surgeons. It’s the only way, and every good surgeon knows that.” (6)
Dr. Christopher Anderegg, PhD, 1996, former animal researcher:
“Experimental research with animals and the equally worthless ‘alternative methods’ (which for the most part are based on cell cultures derived from animals) are the greatest fraud in the entire field of science and medicine and have led to the catastrophic failure of the biomedical establishment in the finding of cures for the ever increasing number of human diseases. This is hardly surprising, since human medicine cannot be based on veterinary medicine. It is only through the use of truly scientific methods which are directly relevant to people (these include clinical studies of human patients, epidemiological investigiations of human populations, observations of human volunteers, and experiments with human cell, tissue and organ cultures) that we can hope to understand the causes of human diseases and find their cures” (20)
Dr. Sydney Singer, Ph.D. 1992 : “If animal research is irrelevant to humans, then why is it so prevalent? Billions of dollars are spent each year, and about 100 million animals are killed each year, in animal studies. Can the entire research business be wrong? Well, they are wrong if the question is whether their activities will ever help humans. They are right if the goal of their work is money.
You see, in order for drug companies to get their products out to the public, they must somehow convince the ignorant, trusting masses that the drugs have already been tested for safety and effectiveness. Few people, except for the truly desperate, are willing to be the subjects of a drug study, especially when the hazards of the drug are not yet understood. Of course, the only way to really know whether a drug is safe and effective in humans is to give it to humans. Human testing is essential for any drug, or surgical procedure for that matter, which is intended for humans. But drug companies know that they would be in deep financial trouble if their products had to be tested on people first, without the facade of safety.
Animal testing provides that facade. And the facade works in the legal defence of their efforts, as well. When drug companies have been sued for their destruction of human lives with their dangerous concoctions, their defence has been that they performed all the standard animal tests prior to marketing. In other words, they did what was standard operating procedure. While a judge in one case concluded that the animal studies were of no value because they could not predict human response, the drug company was vindicated because they carried out standard operating procedures.
Why are animal tests considered standard operating procedure when they are useless for predicting human response? It is because the drug companies fund animal research at universities throughout the country to make animal research seem valid. Researchers are like prostitutes. They work for grant money. If there is no money for the projects they are personally interested in, they go where there is money. Their incomes come directly from their grants, not from the universities. And they want to please the granting source to get more grants in the future. Their careers depend on it.
Drug companies spend billions of dollars directly funding animal studies, and indirectly fund them through their influence on the National Institutes of Health and other governmental funding agencies. Drug companies even pay for animal research facilities to be erected on medical university campuses. In this way, they are assured that legitimate looking researchers in white lab coats will endorse animal testing as standard operating procedure. In turn, this allows them to get more products out to the human public, and make more profits.” (21)
None.
