CIVIS Bulletin Nr 1, 1983  (page three)

 

 

She's all for it!

(See Slaughter of the Innocent page 366, Naked Empress page 137)

 

 

Previously, at the abolitionist rally organized by the then budding AA at Oxford University in the Fall of 1979, Richard Ryder questioned the statement of Hans Ruesch, who was the guest speaker, that all animal experiments could be dispensed with. Hans Ruesch in turn challenged Richard Ryder to point out exactly what experiments could not be dispensed with, promising to refute any claim in this sense publicly and on the spot. Richard Ryder answered that he could not name any, that he would first have to consult the entire medical literature. Asked by Hans Ruesch to do so, and to put his findings in writing, Richard Ryder answered: "I have no time for that."

 

In other words, Richard Ryder, a scientist, had set up a claim in favor of vivisection that he was unable to substantiate, and that he refused to substantiate even at a future date. In the same speech, he also warned his audience against "emotion," which is the most common "accusation" the vivisectors level at their foes; but it sounded odd coming from a professor of psychology, who should know what role emotion inevitably plays in every person's life and in every nation's history. At one time, Richard Ryder had accepted the Presidency of the RSPCA, even though its approval of animal experimentation was notorious (see Slaughter. p 427). The fact that this Richard Ryder is endorsed by most British societies as the Nr. 1 paladin of anti-vivisectionism should suffice to tell the whole story about these societies.

 

At any rate, at the time Slaughter was published in Great Britain in 1979, BUAV was the natural society for stepping out into the open and publicly launching a violent attack against it. An attack which is worth examining.

 

Now in what way can a purportedly AV organisation try discrediting a book? Conceivably, by pointing out serious faults and inaccuracies in it, even though it should not be the task of an AV society to point out faults in an AV book, if any. But what if no such faults and inaccuracies can be found? In that case, by inventing them outright. The fabrications might boomerang, of course. But the need to kill Slaughter was apparently impellent, and risks had to be taken.

 

Boomerang

 

The task to fabricate such inexistent faults was assigned to John Pitt, the editor of BUAV's official organ, Animal Welfare, and he went at it with headless abandon, in a book review that he titled "Exploitation of Innocents?"

 

Presumably instructed by Dr Gill Langley, one more laboratory worker who just around that time was becoming BUAV's "Technical Adviser," Pitt reported, among other inanities, that Slaughter "destroyed any lingering illusion of credibility" for him as early as page 4, where he saw the Horsley-Clarke stereotaxic device described as a  "torture instrument."

 

Built for the simultaneous perforation of the cranium and implantation of a cannula in the brain, the apparatus is indeed a torture instrument, designed to facilitate the introduction of electrodes and various noxious substances directly into the cranial cavity of the fully conscious animal, with results that are monotonously similar, yet always seem to fascinate the experimenters anew, as in this case:

 

"In unanaesthetized cats, nicotine injected into the central ventricle through a chronically implanted Collison cannula produced various effects - narrowing of palpebral fissures, retching, defaecation, vomiting, laboured respiration, followed by panting and salivation. . . and blind charging sometimes terminating in clonictonic convulsion." (From a 1965 report in Journal of Physiology.)

 

But to ridicule Slaughter's definition of the device as a "torture instrument", Pitt wrote that its inventors were actually "distinguished anti-vivisectionist surgeons," and their apparatus "a consummate technical achievement" that had greatly benefited mankind. (Horsley is remembered for his lifelong obsession with mutilating cats' brains - an activity he had in common with many present-day vivisectors who seem particularly concerned with the state of their own brain.)

 

In his review, Pitt even quoted with relish a vivisectionist writer from New Scientist to ridicule the book's abolitionist stance: "It would be good to see no more volumes like Slaughter of the Innocent, a highly emotive attack on vivisection by someone who would like to see it abolished, not merely restricted."

 

The author sent a letter of clarification about the Horsley-Clarke apparatus to Animal Welfare, but instead of publishing it Pitt renewed his attacks on Slaughter in the following issue, adding new falsifications, which in spite of the author's repeated requests have never been retracted, not even during the two periods when the Presidency of BUAV was held by Jean Pink.

 

In the Preface of the CIVITAS reprint of Slaughter, there is an account of how the deliberate falsifications designed to destroy Slaughter boomeranged: BUAV's long-time President, Mrs Betty Earp, was knocked right off her pedestal in the following, stormy General Assembly, thanks to the more attentive members who had long been familiar with the book's American edition. And in the course of time Pitt also had to pay for his blunders: he had to surrender his typewriter, as too dangerous a toy in such inexpert hands, and was given safer assignments for a while, like photographing stray dogs in London's back alleys. Even the journal he had brought in disrepute disappeared, and was replaced by one of different format and title: Liberator.

 

After BUAV's executive Spring cleaning and consequent ouster of Dr Gill Langley and renunciation of the society's "Dr Hadwen's Trust for Humane Research" which she had been heading, BUAV became the most active AV organisation in Britain. But unity was of brief duration, as happens to all societies who don't know how to protect themselves against infiltration, and soon there was again strife at the top - some of the naive, sincere counselors being inevitably replaced by the other kind.

 

AA

 

In 1979, banking heavily on Slaughter and all its fans, on the author's two personal appearance in England where he accepted to lead AA's marches on Cambridge and Oxford Universities, and profiting by the thousands of newsletters Hans Ruesch disseminated in her support, Jean Pink found herself heading the fastest-growing, most articulate AV society in the entire United Kingdom. So much so that the other societies, seeing their memberships dwindle in order to swell the ranks of AA, decided to abandon their pusillanimous pussyfooting and adopt some of their more successful rival's tactics - for instance, joining its demonstrations and marches they had eschewed and derided in the past.

 

But by the time Hans Ruesch's Naked Empress appeared in the summer of 1982, the book that went a long step farther than Slaughter in revealing the revolting interlock of financial and political shenanigans that keep the Medical Power in clover to the detriment of public health, a profound change had occurred in the AA organisation. Outward evidence of the turnabout was its decision, in 1981, to take over the illusory but lucrative Lord Hadwen Trust Fund for Humane Research that the reformed BUAV was abandoning - lock, stock and Gill Langley, who was the Trust Fund's General Secretary, and who thereupon became also Technical Adviser to AA.

 

So the task of discrediting an uncomfortable book like Naked Empress fell quite naturally to Gill Langley, who went about excoriating it in AA's Outrage with the same determination as John Pitt had done years earlier with Slaughter.

 

But in her review of the book, mindful of what had happened to the editor of Animal Welfare, Langley avoided the Pitt-falls of specifics, which had proved her colleague's undoing, and confined her slurs strictly to generalizations, such as "There are important inaccuracies scattered throughout the book," but without naming any - surely an ingenious ploy for discouraging prospective readers, and a safe one at that, for it's impossible to refute generalizations effectively.

 

When the author pointed this out in a newsletter circulated in Britain, Jean Pink requested Dr Gill Langley to list those alleged "inaccuracies" in a private letter to the author. Dr Langley complied, adding a recommendation to keep by all means the controversy under wraps - on the contention that it is all-important to present to the public an image of total "unity" in the movement. CIVIS is all for unity - with honest and intelligent abolitionists. But not with phonies. Here is a rundown of the supposed "inaccuracies" Dr Langley listed for the benefit of the author:

 

Dr GL's objection: "p 18. Urethane: is not the only anti-cancer drug which can cause cancer. Most modern anti-cancer drugs are based on this principle."

 

Answer: Nowhere does the author claim that Urethane is "the only anti-cancer drug which can cause cancer." On the contrary, he states that most anti-cancer drugs cause cancer, and he has even titled one chapter "The Untreated Live Longer" in which he relates how many patients die from the cancer therapy long before the cancer can kill them.

 

Dr GL's objection: "p 47. Glittering symposiums (sic). The BUAV did not hold any. It did help support two small but international conferences where scientists reported on the latest advances."

 

Answer: Any "international conference" could look like "a glittering symposium" in the beholder's eye. And what might the "sic" refer to? Presumably to the plural form symposiums, instead of the more academic sounding symposia. Both forms are correct, according to the Collegiate Merriam Webster.

 

Dr GL's objection: "Polio was abruptly reduced when vaccination was introduced." No further word about polio.

 

Answer: This sweeping, fraudulent statement is today the favorite ploy of the Medical Power, the Drug Trust and the Vivisection Syndicate, and has replaced the preceding smallpox, tuberculosis and other infections allegedly conquered by animal-based vaccination, which is not true. (See Slaughter, pp 181-196.) Like the preceding claims, by now thoroughly discredited, also the claim about polio is increasingly turning into a trap for those who made it. Polio vanished also in those countries were no vaccination was introduced. We stand by what Naked Empress says about it. (pp 79-84). After its publication, new cases of polio provoked by the vaccine have been reported in New Zealand, Great Britain and the USA. Dr Langley prefers to keep mum about it. Recommended reading: The Poisoned Needle by Eleanora McBean, American Natural Hygiene Soc.

 

Dr GL's objection: "p 177. Photo: In Britain this experiment would require an anaesthetic. "

 

Answer: How nice. But British vivisectors have been reported to have used simple tranquilizers at Cambridge University when they were supposed to use full anaesthesia for the tearing out of the eyes of cats. (See Slaughter, p 78). Why is Dr Langley so eager to whitewash her British colleagues?

 

Dr GL's objection: "p 185 Photo 4: The dog was not conscious when the photo was taken. The BUAV claimed it was, but was forced to retract."

 

Answer: Once more Dr GL feels obliged to speak in defense of her colleagues. Usually, only live animals are incannulated. Whether this dog was still conscious at the moment the picture was taken, or already dead, we wouldn't know, because we were not there. Was Dr GL?

 

Dr GL's objection: "p 186. Photo 1: The caption implies that the dog had been skinned and survived for 5 years. Not so, it was probably skinned at the end of its life."

 

Answer: How do you know?

 

Dr GL's objection: "p 179. Photo 3: Does not look like a photograph."

 

Answer: It is a photograph, reproduced from a French medical book of the last century. So it isn't first-rate photography, but once more the inaccuracy is all in Dr GL's own mind.

 

Dr GL's objection: "p 109. National College of Naprapathy: presumably this should read naturopathy."

 

Answer: On encountering a word she has never seen, a serious scientist would consult a dictionary before asserting that the word doesn't exist. In the Collegiate Merriam-Webster she would find: "Naprapathy: A therapeutic system using manipulation and based on the theory that diseases result from strained or contracted ligaments in pelvis, spine or thorax. Funk & Wagnall's Standard Dictionary and Britannica World Language Dictionary give similar definitions.

 

Small wonder that with a "Technical Adviser" like Dr Gill Langley to draw from, British anti-vivisectionists nowadays hear Jean Pink say in her declamations: "Even if animal research has obtained great benefits for mankind. . ."

 

She would presumably be hard put to name those "great benefits" to the author of Slaughter, and having to listen to his reply. But the greatest irony of all is that this Dr Gill Langley, so blatantly ignorant - as any vivisector is bound to be - of medicine, of research, of true understanding of health, is in charge of AA's Lord Hadwen Trust Fund, ie an organisation that solicits donations by promising to "develop" alternative methods of research!

 

NAVS and IAAPEA

 

Now we come to Colin Smith's review of Naked Empress in NAVS' Animals' Defender. Unwilling to dialogue with Hans Ruesch, incapable of refuting his claims, Colin Smith also had no choice but to resort to outright forgery in an attempt to discredit the book.

 

Colin Smith states: "Hans Ruesch's antipathy against the established societies leads him to plain inaccuracies. For instance (p 47) he claims that at the IAAPEA General Assembly held in Milan the delegate from Rome's very active young LAV' which had joined the IAAPEA in good faith was allowed no time to address the assembly. In fact, the LAV is not a member-society of the IAAPEA and has made no application to join."

 

Answer: It is true that LAV never made an application to join IAAPEA - on Hans Ruesch's advice, by the way - but LAV joined the IAAPEA Milan meeting in question, to which it had been invited by IAAPEA's Milan representative, Kim Buti; and it is equally true that the LAV delegate, Walter Caporale, tried to read a prepared speech reflecting LAV's official views, which tally with Hans Ruesch's, but was not allowed to deliver it, on the pretext that time was short; whereas the first of the two meetings ended an hour ahead of schedule, because there was nothing left to discuss. The LAV speech was then published in the November 1981 issue of Italy's monthly Animali Natura Habitat, along with the information that Caporale had not been allowed time to deliver it. This in turn elicited a personal letter of explanation from Kim Buti, dated December 22, 1981, in which the IAAPEA representative tried to explain to LAV's President just why Caporale had not been allowed to speak: He was considered "too young", and his participation would have meant, according to Kim Buti's letter, "an insult to all those mature and experienced persons who had traveled enormous distances to participate. "

 

So Colin Smith's claim that the incident reported on p 47 of Naked Empress never took place is a deliberate falsification, and not the only one. To wit:

 

Colin Smith states: "Similarly Ruesch publishes (p 46) an extract from a letter he received from Dr J. D. Whittall in which the Doctor claims he was unable to persuade the NAVS Council to write abstracts of experiments. It must be a very old letter (of course Mr Ruesch gives no date)."

 

Answer: on p 46 two letters by former NAVS Council member, Doctor Whittall, are cited, and both dates are given. (In the other letter, the Doctor agrees with Hans Ruesch's view that vivisection. won't be abolished by funding alternatives.)

 

Colin Smith states: "These rather silly, niggling, distortions make one question other statements concerning other societies which one is in no position to check."

 

Answer: This is a masterly stroke. It goes a long way towards rehabilitating all the other phonies in the AV movement, which have been denounced with precise documentation. At the same time, it tends to discredit thoroughly the book's whole credibility. The British Research Defence Society couldn't have done a better job, and in fact the British AV societies can do it far more effectively.

 

Colin Smith concludes: "Mr Ruesch does himself, and the AV movement much harm by working out his personal grievances in print against those who would be his comrades in arms. It may make Mr Ruesch feel better, but it sure doesn't help the animals!"

 

Answer: With comrades in arms like BUAV, AA, NAVS, IAAPEA etc., who needs enemies? The animals?

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