: Animal testing is bad. If you want to test things test them on prisoneers on death row.In response to the above, from
Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research CAFMR: www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr
Just as testing on other species is bad science and produces results that aren't of scientific use to sick people, testing on prisoners (regardless of ethical considerations) would not produce relevant results either. If you have a drug that is of potential use for say, cancer patients, there is no point testing it on healthy prisoners that do not have natural spontaneous cancer. They have very different metabolisms. You will get results of that drug on people without cancer - which will be quite different than those of people WITH cancer. Even if the cancers are artificially induced in the prisoners, they are not the same thing as naturally-spontaneously acquired cancer and the reactions in the test subjects will be quite irrelevant to people with "real" cancer.
Similarly, testing products for say, arthritis, on prisoners or ANY people without naturally-acquired arthritis, will not yield useful results.
When it gets to the stage of testing drugs on people then it must only be given to those WITH THE DISEASE CONDITION the product is designed to counter. Also, it must only be with the FULLY informed CONSENT of the subjects. This is the only scientific way to test products.
Nevertheless, there have been numerous cases in the USA where products have been tested on prisoners (as well as on disabled people and other outcasts of society) without their consent.
The former animal researcher Prof. Pietro Croce explains the above points further:
Prof. Pietro Croce.
The Difference between Vivisectionist Experimentation
and Clinical Research--
WHY VIVISECTIONIST EXPERIMENTATION ON HUMANS DOESN'T WORK
EITHER.
"As a member of the Italian anti-vivisection league, L.A.V.
(Lega Antivivisezione), I share with Doctors in Britain Against
Animal Experiments the same basic principle of "Scientific
Antivivisectionism": the principle which states that "no animal species is an experimental model of any other animal species": a principle that becomes axiomatic when human medicine is involved....
...In view of the aforementioned statement that
experimentation "inter-species"(between species) is always deceptive, the reverse--experimentation "intra speciem" (within the species),
in theory (but only in theory!)--should be considered scientifically
correct. In fact, cat might be considered the appropriate experimental
model for the species "cat", dog might be considered the appropriate
experimental model for the species "dog". . . and humans for the species "human". But actually we should modify this statement by saying that cat is the best available model for the species, cat; dog of the species dog; man the best available (which doesn't mean "the perfect") experimental model of the species "man".
+++ Difference between metabolism of "healthy volunteers" & sick
patients +++
Let us examine why I stated "not a 'perfect model'". For two
reasons:
First, for a scientific consideration. The volunteer is by
definition, "healthy" (we say, indeed, "healthy volunteers"), and that
means that his metabolism, his reactions to stimuli, on the whole are not abnormal. On the contrary, in medical practice we treat people whose metabolism is not only altered, but is also altered differently, in the different pathologies.
Second, let us come to ethical considerations. What does "healthy
volunteer" mean? In reality, the so-called "healthy-volunteers"
can be divided into two categories: To the first category belong some
gullible, naive persons who, allured by able pursuaders, agree to selling for money a quality--health--that all civilised legislations consider as an individual, inalienable right.
QUESTION: If the experiment should cause an immediate or
delayed damage to the so-called "volunteer", who is going to be considered penally responsible? And, on the economic level, who should bear the expenses to cure the offended? Perhaps the community? And why the community?
To the second category of the so-called "volunteers" belong
some who justify the risk, deliberately accepted, by referring to
religious or philanthropic motivations. But actually, in most instances we are dealing with subjects with a tendency to paranoia, in which the act of sublimation conceals mental disorders ranging from a morbid desire for protagonism to real delirium of auto-destruction. Society should reject the apparently generous offer of these people and should rather re-educate them in thephysiological egoism and self-respect, which are the essential premises for the conservation of the individual and the species.
Third: the term "volunteer" in most instances is a euphemism.
As a matter of fact, the so-called "volunteers" are very often prisoners, indigent students, the handicapped, residents in old folks' homes, starving people and innocent children of the Third World.
The unreliability of vivisectionist experiments on humans
eg.WW2 Nazis
Another problem, a very conclusive one from a pragmatic point
of view, is the problem of RELIABILITY OF EXPERIMENTS PERFORMED ON HUMANS. One fact only I want to recall to your memory: no one, not a single one, of the experiments carried out in the Nazi extermination camps has ever been utilised in the following years.
QUESTION: "Why Not?"
ANSWER: Because in the Nazi camps, the experiments
were carried out with the vivisectionist mentality and methods; with that same cruelty, uselessness, stupidity, sadism which guide the hands of those who experiment on animals. Experimentation intra speciem (within the species) is acceptable only in a form of clinical experimentation, which is a method diametrically divergent from what we call vivisection-experimentation.
Clinical experimentation is indeed indispensable for the
marketing of any new chemical product as well as for the testing of new
surgical procedures. But it must be submitted to very strict rules:
First, the new drug should be tested on patients affected by the same disease against which the drug is supposed to be active. Second, the new drug (or the new surgical procedure) should be tested only on condition that there is a reasonable chance of helping that person. I repeat: "that person", not the community in general. Third, the new drug (or surgical procedure) should be tested only on condition that there are no other validated drugs (or
procedures) available at that moment. Fourth, and most important, the researcher should forget all he has learned from experimentation on animals, and he should approach the problem completely free from, misleading prejudices.
What does this mean?
It means that we must destroy the vivisectionist culture from its very foundations...."
Prof. Croce was an animal researcher for nearly three decades.
His curriculum includes: Fulbright Scholarship, Research Department
of Toledo, Ohio. Scholarship Ciudad Sanatorial of Tarrasa in Barcelona,
Spain. Between 1952 and 1982, head of the laboratory of
microbiological-pathological anatomy and analyses and chemo-clinical analyses at the Hospital L.Sacco of Milan, Italy, Member of the College of American Pathologists.
The above was excerpted from an article "THE USE OF HEALTHY
VOLUNTEERS FOR AIDS RESEARCH." by Prof. Croce.
in the Doctors In Britain Against Animal Experiments (DBAE)
NewsletterMay/June 1994. Prof. Croce is the Honorary President of DBAE.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
CONTACT THE FOLLOWING ORGANISATIONS:
Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research (CAFMR) --u
Po Box 234 Lawson 2783 NSW Australia. Ph. & fax National
(047) 586822; International 61-47-586822).
Info. kit $18 Aus., ($15 int'l) includes a copy of
40-page report "Pharmaceutical Drug Racket", factsheets
& newsletters.
Doctors & Lawyers for Resposible Medicine (formerly D.B.A.E). --
PO Box 302, London N8 9HD, UK .
CIVIS-- Foundazione Hans Ruesch
(International Centre for Scientific Information on
Vivisection) --POB 152 Via Motta 51-CH 6900 Massagno-Lugano,
Switzerland.
The Nature of Wellness (SUPRESS Inc.) --u
PO Box 10400, Glendale, California, U.S.A. 91209-3400.
ph: (818) 790-6384 fax: (818) 790-9660).
People for Reason in Science & Medicine (PRISM) --u
Po Box 1305, Woodland Hills, California, U.S.A. 91365.
Guardians-A Group Exposing Vivisection --
PO Box 59, Pascoe Vale South 3044 Victoria, Australia.
Ph & Fax (03) 9386 3778 -Mobile 015 304 778.
Hotline 0055 10575. Annual subscription $15. www.werple.net.net.au/~antiviv
What Doctors Don't Tell You -- 4 Wallace Rd., London,
NI 2 PG, UK), monthly publications.
CPAPR -- Box 26, Swain, New York 14884-0026, U.S.A.
Professor Pietro Croce's book "Vivisection or Science?--A
Choice to Make" (1991), as well as Hans Ruesch's books
"Slaughter of the Innocent"(1976, 1991), "Naked Empress-the Great Medical Fraud"(1982, 1992), and "1000 Doctors (and many more )Against Vivisection"(1989), are available from most of these organisations.
None.
