CIVIS Bulletin Nr 1, 1983  (page two)

 

 

THE INBUILT FRAUD CLAUSE

 

In the mid-Seventies, the World Coalition for the Abolition of Vivisection, under the Presidency of Jean Duranton de Magny, was conned into financing a research institute for the development of so-called alternative methods, for which, we repeat, there was no more necessity then than there is today. The Institute was first established in Vienna and then transferred to Munich. It ate up huge sums of the World Coalition's funds. It was run by a Japanese, a certain Prof. Goto, who was a vivisector. We listened to his address at the Coalition's General Assembly in Munich. Goto was simply giving a lecture on cancer, reading from a ten-year-old scientific paper on the subject. Not half the delegates present were able to understand his German, the language in which he hesitantly delivered his address, and not one of them was able to make any sense of his speech clouded with pseudo-scientific jargon.

 

Hans Ruesch informed President Jean Duranton de Magny that his Coalition was obviously being conned by the Japanese, but it took the Executive two more years to wake up to the truth, dismiss the Japanese and stop financing the Institute.

 

In May 1983 a big scandal broke in the West German and Austrian press, which had a field day devising cute titles like "Anti-vivisectionists vivisected". They concerned charges of fraud brought against the best known AV organisation in the German-speaking countries that had been promising for over a decade to stop vivisection: the lnternationale Bund der Tierversuchsgegner, based in Vienna. Its founder, Herr Wilhelm Lot, had announced that his Institute was developing cultures of human cells that would bring about the abolition of vivisection, and on this promise he had raked in millions with nothing to show for it, until the contributors - mostly from West Germany - had brought charges.

 

We do not hesitate to call his organisation fraudulent even though the courts will take years to pronounce themselves. Years ago, when this Herr Lot was announcing that "it is not yet possible today to keep human cell cultures alive, but we are working towards that", we asked him how come he had never heard of Prof. L. Hayflick's human diploid cells culture system used by Pfizer in the USA and several European firms for the production of vaccines (including polio vaccine) that had proved much safer than all the animal-based vaccines and with which millions of people were nowadays being vaccinated. But Herr Lot had never heard of Prof. Hayflick. "I hear so many names, I can't be expected to remember them all," was his lame excuse during our conversation.

 

The availability of the Hayflick system had at that time already been extensively treated by the medical and general press, including Time and Newsweek, and of course by Slaughter - the book had been most favorably reviewed in Herr Lot's own journal published in Austria. And yet Herr Lot had never heard of Hayflick, whose work is as determinant for advocating the cause of abolition in the vaccination field as the works of Lawson Tait are in the surgical field.

 

It might seem unfair to point out one case of fraud by one particular organisation, since fraud is rampant in every field of human endeavor, (and particularly in medicine and research). But it is not unfair because Herr Lot's case is not exceptional but much rather emblematic, typical. It is our opinion that all organisations that promise to "develop alternatives" suffer from the "in-built fraud-clause" which is the assumption that animal experimentation cannot be profitably abolished today without causing great harm to medical progress and human health, whereas just the opposite is true. Thus this inbuilt fraud-clause exists also in those "alternative" organisations that have been founded, and are being run, in perfect good faith by completely sincere people. Sincere people who, at best, are sadly misinformed. They seem convinced of the usefulness of current animal experimentation - or claim they are. Otherwise they couldn't justify the existence of those funds, which, by the way, have been multiplying all over the Western world, all doing the same kind of "research," all with nothing to show for the moneys spent - in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Great Britain of course.

 

There is a second inbuilt fraud clause in those funds. They claim by their very existence that we need more drugs all the time, whereas just the contrary applies. The world needs to get rid of most of the drugs on the market. Up to now 205,000 drugs or combinations have been developed, and most of them had to be withdrawn. We should now withdraw most of the remaining ones, not add new ones. Only the drug manufacturers and the directors of "alternative" funds advocate the necessity of developing new medications.

 

According to a recent news release of UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organisation) the world can even dispense with most of the 240 drugs that WHO had listed as the only indispensable ones. A new list, set up in collaboration with WHO, has trimmed the list down to a mere 26 approximately the same number the Allende medical commission had named. And among the 26, UNIDO lists just 9 that are even more indispensable than the others, and are headed by our good old Aspirin! (Weltwoche-Magazin, Zurich, Oct. 14, 1981).

 

Most of those funds are run by vivisectors, or former vivisectors, and at any rate by people who keep close links with the vivisection community, on the contention  that the "researchers" must be "persuaded" by friendly conversations, and the lure of monetary indemnities, to leave animals occasionally alone, and try some other avenue. All this is going to lead nowhere so long as vivisection is not outlawed, because people who are used to working with animals - and usually enjoying their work - are not going to sit down to acquire the complex knowledge necessary for the use of, say, computers, which requires application and at least median intelligence. Whereas any dunce can cut up animals.

 

THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE IS ABOLITION

 

In 1980 an expensive campaign was launched in the USA against the Draize test, the cruel irritancy test on the eyes of rabbits, devised to safeguard cosmetic manufacturers from lawsuits when their products cause damage to consumers as they, in fact, increasingly do, ever since those tests were introduced several decades ago. (In ancient times, a large number of cosmetics were in use, none of them tested on animals and all of them innocuous; the same can be said of all the cosmetics currently used in the undeveloped, desert regions of Africa and Asia.)

 

The 1980 campaign, mainly financed by radio personality Pegueen Fitzgerald and organized by Henry Spira, called for a boycott of Revlon products, with full page ads in the New York Times, which read in part: "Last year Revlon victimized 2,210 rabbits without any pain relief. . . The motive is pure greed. . . The public knows there is no good reason to suffer hell for the sake of yet another money making mascara."

 

The campaign was so effective that one day Revlon announced with great fanfare that it was donating $750,000 for the development of alternatives to the Draize test. Many AV organisations and all those who ran Alternative Funds hailed this as a great victory, and called off the boycott. But it was eyewash. Revlon's "donation" came out of its advertising budget, and was a public relations stunt, designed to stop the boycott of its products forthwith; meanwhile animal experimentation went on unabated in its laboratories. The money went to New York's Rockefeller University, the hotbed of America's vivisection, and it can be presumed that most of it, or all of it, served to buy more animals, because three years later nothing had been announced in the way of "alternative" to the Draize test, for which there is no need in the first place.

 

A similar international campaign was conducted, also with considerable expenditure of AV funds, against another cosmetics firm, Avon. And again, as soon as Avon announced it was devolving money towards the "development" of alternatives, the boycott against its products was called off, and Avon's animal tests continued as before. Of course, both campaigns should not have been called off but intensified until the firms gave up animal experimentation. They would then very quickly have found "alternatives".

 

But the term "alternatives" is in itself a misnomer for what is required, as one should speak of "replacement techniques" or better "scientific methods" - which exist already in sufficient number. Only the people who have a vested interest in the misleading animal experimentation deny it. Apart from the all important clinical observation, there is homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture, holistic medicine, phitotherapy (herbalism), chiropractice, osteopathy, and many other medical schools that will be listed in a future Bullet-in and all have the advantage of being cheaper and safer than the methods employed by the prevailing, "allopathic" school and for that reason alone are being dismissed as "charlatanry" by the charlatans in charge of the profit-oriented, official health agencies. There is no reason to found "funds" and "trusts" to "develop" new techniques. The replacement techniques exist already. What is needed are funds to advertise the deadly damage caused continually by the profitable animal-based medicine, which must be outlawed.

 

Let us remember that the large number of valuable, herbal medicines from the East - which are so effective that the chemical industries keep synthesizing them for mass production, adulterating their efficacy in the process - have all been found without animal experimentation. Even AA's naive Jean Pink seemed to realize that all was not well with the "alternative" promises when this item appeared in the Sept-Oct 1982 issue of AA's 'Outrage':

 

"News from the US regarding the progress of the research into non-animal alternatives at Rockefeller University and Johns Hopkins University, which has been funded by the cosmetic industry as a result of pressure from the Animal Rights Movement, is not encouraging, to say the least. We were recently sent, from Avon in New York, a copy of a document entitled 'Requests for proposals' from Johns Hopkins University, inviting scientists interested in this area of research to submit their applications for a grant. It is over 16 months now since the money was donated by Avon, so we feel that the scientists should by now have started their research programmes, but apparently they have only just begun to ask for applications from interested researchers. There is also nothing to report yet from the Rockefeller project funded by Revlon in December 1980. We cannot yet report on the FRAME research project as that was only started on June 1 this year. Is it possible that we have been conned by these companies?"

 

Since Jean Pink asks a question, we feel obliged to give her an answer: "It is not only possible, but it is likely. And you and all those who contribute to the phony alternative funds will continue to be conned, or to con people, until you accept that the way to proceed is to denounce the massive damage done systematically to human health by an ill-led, disease-causing medical organisation financed by chemical enterprises, and that to outlaw the vivisectionist method of research in favor of the only valid medicine, the clinical observation, it is not necessary "first to develop alternative methods."

 

PROF  PIETRO CROCE, M.D.

 

Writes Prof Pietro Croce, Italian M.D. and researcher of international repute, author of treatises on tuberculosis, member of the College of American Pathologists and of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists, formerly chief pathologist at the Hospital L. Sacco of Milan, in his book, Vivisezione o Scienza - una Scelta (Vivisection or Science - a Choice, Publ. LAN, Florence):

 

"Are there alternatives to vivisection? Certainly not. There are no alternatives because any method, to be able to replace it, should have its same qualities. But it would be difficult to find something in biomedical research that has been, and continues to be, more misleading than vivisection. Therefore, the methods to be followed by biomedical research should be called scientific methods rather than alternative methods."

 

Dr Croce goes on, in his eye-opening treatise, demonstrating in what way the vivisectionist method has merely served to misguide medical science, to make it ill, and explaining how medical science should be, and has been, conducted, to reach valid conclusions. Salient parts of it shall be published by Buchverlag CIVIS. Quoting from Dr Croce's book:

 

"Apart from the fact that animals react in quite a different way from humans, no consideration is usually paid to the fact that toxicity tests are almost always conducted on healthy animals, whereas the remedy will be administered to a sick patient. And the malady modifies by itself the metabolism of drugs. For instance, fever increases the toxicity of many drugs. Hepatic diseases diminish the capacity of the liver to neutralize noxious substances. Many renal maladies slow down the elimination of foreign substances like medicines, and the products of their disintegration. (p 25)

 

"By inoculating pathogenic (disease-causing) agents into animals, the researcher tries to obtain a model of human disease. Delusion or mystification? Having taken the wrong road, he avoids looking back in order not to see the truth that could transform him in a statue of salt. And so, having created in an animal an infective disease that is not the same as in the human being, the experimenter starts trying out drugs which are supposed to cure it. At this point, the errors start multiplying in geometric progression, forming an inverted pyramid which can't stand upright." (p 29)

 

At present, the British societies are most unlikely to publicize a book like Dr Croce's. The better to achieve their purpose of clouding the issues and misleading the public, they have even decided to avail themselves of the services of former vivisectors, assigning them the post of "Technical Advisers" - which is certainly the worst idea since sliced bread. And this also explains why, instead of availing themselves of the evidence presented to them on a silver platter by books like Dr. Croce's, Slaughter, and Naked Empress, all of which the authors have put freely at their disposal, they see their main task in putting such books out of the way.

 

THE CASE OF FRAME

 

The first internationally widely known organisation that started collecting AV money by promising to find "alternatives" to vivisection was FRAME (see Slaughter, p 339 and p 428), but its image has grown increasingly blurry since it announced officially that it is NOT an AV society, and that animal experimentation is necessary "if the remaining diseases which lessen the length and quality of human and animal life are to be overcome."

 

These identical words were pronounced at the Council of Europe by well-known vivisectors like Prof Dayan and Prof Paton. So it was not surprising that the day FRAME decided to set up an "expert" Toxicity Committee to examine the use of animals in safety testing and the role of "alternative" testing procedures, the Chairman of this Committee turned out to be no one else but Michael Balls, who was at once Chairman of the FRAME Trustees and an active vivisector - just like other members on the Committee!

 

This circumstance was denounced even by Dr Robert Sharpe of London's "moderate" NAVS, in an article entitled "FRAME's Disappointment", which added other interesting information, to wit: In November 1982 the FRAME Committee announced its findings, arrived at after 3 years' hard work. And they had decided that animals are still essential for safety testing, and although many researchers emphasized the difficulties of transferring results from animals to human beings, they concluded from this that MORE research was necessary to discover HOW to transfer the result of animal tests to human beings! If it takes a good dose of idiocy - or deceitfulness - to put out such kind of crap, it certainly also takes a good dose of idiocy to fall for it, and not to realize that any "Fund for Alternatives" contains an inbuilt fraud-clause: it confirms the validity of current animal experimentation, which has no validity. The only valid alternative is Abolition, enforced by law.

 

BUAV

 

When Slaughter appeared in Great Britain in April 1979, BUAV was the most thoroughly infiltrated society of the lot. Not only did it go in heavily for diversionary activities designed to detract funds and attention from the main purpose for which the organisation had been founded, but it was actually supporting, without blushing, the Halsbury Bill in Parliament. This bill purported to "update" the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act - the world's first anti-vivisection law, originally meant to reduce still further the very small number of animal experiments performed at that time, and to avoid all suffering to animals. In practice, the old bill had allowed vivisection in Great Britain to grow from a few hundred to a macabre 5 million licensed experiments yearly, 85% of which done without any anesthesia.

 

The "changes" the Halsbury Bill tried to introduce were strictly in favor of the vivisectors, protecting their impunity still further. That's not surprising, since Lord Halsbury had been representing the Research Defence Society, ie Britain's official vivisection lobby financed mostly by the chemical industry, in the House of Lords for 20 years. The fact that BUAV was actively supporting such a bill proved that it was only paying lip-service to its original purpose of Abolition, meanwhile doing everything in its power to thwart any effective action in that direction, and even to suppress any pertinent information. A typical statement can be found in the May-June 1979 issue of its official organ, Animal Welfare, commenting on its collaborator, Richard Ryder, a long-time vivisector, who had meantime turned into an "anti-vivisectionist" writer and lecturer. Said the journal, speaking of Richard Ryder:

 

"He thought that non-medical research could be curtailed immediately and then we could proceed to concentrate on reform of the medical aspects of animal experimentation, leading of course to the eventual total abolition. . . Richard Ryder paid tribute to Lord Houghton and Clive Hollands (of SSPV - H.R.) who had done so much on the Committee for the Reform of Animal Experimentation."

 

In fact, SSPV, with which Clive Hollands and Lord Houghton were connected, was as thoroughly infiltrated as BUAV, and eschewed all scientific questioning of the medical validity of animal experimentation in favor of vague, soothing wordings such as "leading of course to the eventual total abolition" meaning in some distant, unspecified future. Meanwhile animal experimentation could go on unabated.

 

It should be noted at this point that in his 'Victims of Science', the book that established Richard Ryder's reputation as the foremost "anti-vivisectionist" in the English-speaking world, there is never the slightest mention of the counter-productiveness of animal experimentation, not one perpetrator of the useless laboratory atrocities is ever named, except monkey heads transplanter Robert White, not a single instance of the massive damage caused by the wrong research method is ever brought, not one criticism of the Drug Trust's genocidal activities is ever to be found. Ryder sticks to the nameless generalizations requested by the Vivisection Syndicate (see Naked Empress. p 39). But his book established his reputation in the AV world, enabling him, the retired vivisector, to become the foremost spokesman for Britain's phony AV organisations. His milquetoast contribution to the sham debates at the European Council at Strasbourg in December 1982 fully confirmed this writer's view that Richard Ryder is one of the main representatives of Britain's 5th Column in the AV movement.

 

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