Well, you might wish to try xenotransplantation - say you desperately need a new liver. There must be SOMETHING doctors can do. Why not be heavily persuaded to have a specially prepared pig's or primate's liver? (Of course the pig/primate will not live . . . but there again, will you? . . . )

Do, then, visit Uncaged's website, where you will read what were once secret papers, about the kind of grotesque xenotransplantation ‘experiments' that were carried out, about how ‘scientific' they were, about their quality. The research was carried out by Imutran, (a subsidiary of Novartis) at Huntingdon Life Sciences, in collaboration with - yes, you've guessed it - a university. Cambridge University, to be precise. This is science? You would entrust yourself to the findings of such people? You would volunteer to be a human guinea-pig? Write your Will now.

Pigs have over a million viruses, most of which we don't know anything about. The World Health Organisation has warned that proceeding with xenotransplants could result in new diseases triggering a new human epidemic. And all because the pseudo-scientists and their supporters refuse to move to genuine scientific methods.

If animal ‘models' are such a reliable replacement for the human model for vivisectors' ridiculous games, why do they need to use humans at all?

Laboratory animals - specifically bred to be imprisoned, forcibly restrained, assaulted, starved, electrocuted, cut, tortured, deliberately driven mad, bled, xenotransplanted, fed unnatural diets, held in unnatural habitats (do all these mimic the usual human conditions, and can one force the truth from any tortured being?) - do NOT have the answers to human health problems. Cancer, for example, is more prevalent, despite the billions of currencies and animals spent on so-called research for ‘cures'. So. Still blinded by their unsuccessful version of ‘science', dissatisfied vivisectors are now trying create more ‘human-like'and even more unnatural, animals. At what point does the created human-like animal become the animal-like human? In a sense, this does not matter: experimental testing should not be carried out on animals, and only performed on humans if they have freely given intelligent informed consent.

The next Big Thing will be Nanotechnology. Already there are developments to deliver drugs into the body using this technology, all hush-hush as corporations fight to get their system to the market (us) first. But everything's in place to make it safe for us isn't it? Well, er, no. And what IS in place to supposedly protect us isn't working anyway, as noted above.

VIVISECTORS/ANIMAL RESEARCHERS

The callous road from vivisection in the classroom, through scientific studies to a career as a vivisector, leads inexorably to experimenting on humans should the vivisector wish it: it is a continuum of indifference to suffering. A culture of damage and death. "The dehumanizing process that begins with the first vivisectionist experiment the student is made to witness is affecting widening segments of the medical world" rightly says Ruesch.

The vivisector is someone to be pitied, thrashing about, as he/she is, in a bloody and mendacious mire of their own making. He/she is not necessarily, as some people may believe, a neo-Nazi, nor necessarily a member of any other group that encourages blind belief in, and adherence to, a false theology except one: pseudo-science. The vivisectors' work is ugly: it is the ugliness of people who act basely in a righteous cause. The harm they have done - the damage and deaths to man and beast - will never be undone.

For these reasons vivisectors and all who support them, in my opinion, are empty, separate and inferior in their career. Many opponents of vivisection call vivisectors evil, but this just gives them an excuse to carry on with their pointless and grisly self-chosen work. They are too weak and arrogant of character to stop what they are doing by themselves.

We must ensure that the policy-makers in and beyond governments come to the sensible and intelligent decision to abolish vivisection (which includes the 3Rs and any comparisons with animal/non-consenting human-tested research), and employ genuinely scientific and ethical means of research: achieving an ethical culmination of genuinely scientific work and a healthy nation. That's where the money should go.

Deirdre Balaam

Some Suggested Reading:

Slaughter of the Innocent, Hans Ruesch (1978).

The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What To Do About It, Marcia Angell (2004)

Vivisection or Science, Prof Pietro Croce, MD (1991)

Eternal Treblinka, Charles Patterson (2002)

Sacred Cows and Golden Geese, Dr Ray Greek (2000)

Secrets of the Drugs Industry, Bryan Hubbard (2002(a What Doctors Don't Tell you publication)

Reclaiming Our Health, John Robbins (1996): gives a lot of information showing how we may be being manipulated and how we might stand up against such manipulation.

Bitter Pills - Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs, by Stephen Fried (1998 Stephen Fried's wife took a pill for a minor infection, and ended up in the emergency room.

The Medical Mafia, Guylaine Lanctot, MD (1995)

Animal Experimentation, by Moneim Fadali, MD (1996): he examines animal experimentation, not only from an ethical standpoint, but also from an eminently practically view of the problems it has caused for both doctors and patients.

Lethal Laws - Animal Testing, Human Health and Environmental Policy - by Alix Fano (1997): a thoroughly documented, scientific indictment of the current addiction to animal testing.

Vivisection Unveiled, by Dr Tony Page (1997)

Gassed: British chemical warfare experiments on humans at Porton Down (House of Stratus, London, 2000) This is about experiments from the years 1915 to 2000.

A History of US Secret Human Experimentation (from 1931)

Demon Doctors: Physicians as Serial Killers

Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans (2000)

Unregulated Experiments on Humans, by Jim Hightower

Deirdre Balaam's Bio:

I have been interested in animal issues since the age of five. In my youth I used to spend summer holidays on my grandparents' more or less self-contained farm, so I had a wide-eyed view of all kinds of animals, how they were regarded, and what eventually happened to them: geese, hens, turkeys, cows, pigs, sheep, horses and ponies; there were, of course, the farm cats and sheepdog. I saw the sheep being dipped and sheared (some of the wool made into our rugs and blankets), the cows milked (I helped to make butter); the pigs cleaned out; how the foxes were kept away from the poultry; the human killing of the poultry by ringing their necks, the bloodletting, and the sending off to market of livestock.  Many cats and dogs just arrived at the farm - it was said they had been 'got rid of' by passing motorists, but my grandparents couldn't keep them and so they were put in a sack, taken to a nearby river and drowned. My farming uncle and friends shot rabbits and pigeons, eventually made into a meal.  I was a city girl and this reality was hard to bear when I regarded these warm and gentle (on the whole) creatures as my pals. The animals were treated kindly and very well looked after, but in the end they had to die or be sold to be killed elsewhere, living a vastly shorter life than their natural expectancy.

Whilst I was at the farm I began to refuse to eat meats of any kind. When I arrived back home I ate what I was told to eat - not a huge issue, since meat was rarely on the plate, as for most people in those days.  Once I left home and made my own way in the world, I became vegetarian.  O dear. How that personal preference upset many people! What is it about carnivores that once they hear you are a vegetarian, they must immediately smack their lips and recite to you all the carnivore meals they can think of whilst watching your face closely? Or be immediately dismissive and regard you as a crank?  Millions of people around the world throughout history have been vegetarians and vegans - whether they knew it or not - because meat was 'for the rich' (remember 'Let them eat cake'?). They have created admirable civilisations.  Anyway, firm in resolve I eventually became a healthy vegan, and delight in being so.

My mother was a very compassionate gentle person - she had gone to Germany after the 2nd World War to help, in her small way, to sort out the mess of Displaced Persons.  When Amnesty International was about to be formed, she helped Peter Benenson with the office work. She and I both became members.  At roughly the same time, Compassion in World Farming was founded, and I also joined them. I could not believe the cruelty of man against man and beast that one heard of in these organisations' literature. I was drawn into becoming more active. 

To cut a long story short, it was through meeting like-minded people that I heard about vivisection and, scarcely believing my eyes, I read Hans Ruesch's books 'Slaughter of the Innocent' (remember that first sentence of Part One? "A dog is crucified in order to study the duration of the agony of Christ."), 'Naked Empress' and '1000 Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection; I read dear Dr Fadali's book 'Animal Experimentation - A Harvest of Shame', Alix Fano's 'Lethal Laws', Dr Tony Page's 'Vivisection Unveiled', Professor Croce's 'Vivisection or Science?', Dr Robert Sharpe's 'The Cruel Deception', and many others. When I later had a computer, I was able to access many websites which gave not only confirmation but, in fact, extended the information and facts of vivisection.  You will note that it was not from reading book reviews or articles, or watching programmes, in the media that I heard about the reality of it. 

I eventually decided that I would join an association called (now) Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible Medicine, whose brief is to bring to public attention the scientific fraudulence of vivisection. Other organisations target the cruelty of it: I'm afraid that, although the cruelty is unquestionable and brings in the subscriptions for the respective anti-vivisection and other animal welfare associations, this aspect has not made a whit of difference to the public's view that 'vivisection is cruel but essential for medical progress'; and no doubt the public do not want to know of the vivisection carried for beauty's progress, vivisection carried out to satisfy intellectual curiosity, etc.

Hans Ruesch's title 'Naked Empress' was brilliant - for that is what vivisection is: a 'science' without any clothes, so I will end by quoting from 'Slaughter of the Innocent':