CIVIS Bulletin Nr 1, 1983  (page five)

 

 

On June 9, 1980, Switzerland's best-known ecological journalist, Franz Weber, in the company of Hans Ruesch, announced at a press conference in Berne the launching of "a popular initiative for the abolition of vivisection and all painful experiments on vertebrate animals," in the name of his environmentalist foundation, 'Helvetia Nostra.' Of the eight members on the Committee, three were medical doctors. In the following interviews, neither Franz Weber nor Hans Ruesch invoked ethical arguments, which they consider self-evident, but also hopeless in a highly commercialised, profit-oriented country like Switzerland, which has degraded into an oligarchy of the chemical industry. The principal reason for the initiative were the medical arguments, collected from scientific papers and presented in Hans Ruesch's book, copies of which were distributed to the numerous members of the press attending the conference.

 

 

As expected, the next day all of Switzerland's leading newspapers gave a distorted rendition of Weber's and Ruesch's statements, playing down or entirely omitting the scientific evidence submitted, and inventing outright emotional outbursts like the following front-page headline in Lausanne's Tribune: "FRANZ WEBER ACCUSES: SADISTIC TORTURERS!"

 

In spite of the hostility of the national press and of the 'Schweizer Tierschutz', the umbrella organisation for the 67 Swiss "animal protection" societies, 151,065 signatures were collected long before the term expired, well above the needed 100,000. At this writing (September '83), the Swiss government is still stalling in fixing a date for the ballot, and is rumored to be preparing a "counter-initiative" that would sabotage the original or water it down.

 

HOW ABOUT THE USA

 

American AV societies are much less subject to infiltration than their British and Continental counterparts, because there is no legislation against animal experiments in the USA, and thus no danger that somebody might try to have any laws enforced against the vivisection community. American infiltration, if it exists at all, is mainly ideological, and due to the awesome reverence for anything that sails under the flag of Science that has been inculcated into every American ever since childhood.

 

So the American public, more effectively than any other, has been hypnotized, with the help of education and the venality of the opinion-makers, into accepting today's death-dealing medicine as the saving religion, and vivisection as an inevitable sacrifice to which its bloodthirsty, grant-hungry doctor-priests are entitled - "if you want to safeguard your children from cancer."

 

In the USA, infiltration is rampant mainly in the so-called Humane societies, which are the American counterpart of the European Animal Welfare societies.

 

Harvard University, depository of vivisectionist ideology in America, became alarmed about the rise of animal rights feelings everywhere, and published in September 1982 a 24-page study titled: "The Animal Rights Movement in the USA: Its composition, funding sources, goals, strategies and potential impact on Research."

 

To the discriminating, the Harvard Report reveals to what extent the general public is guilty of guided ignorance, and allows itself to be fooled by some of the Humane societies. In the way of example, we shall examine here the biggest and the wealthiest.

 

According to the Harvard Report, the largest is the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), with 140,000 members. It is run by a large board of directors that include several individuals affiliated with the research community. To keep its members happy it campaigns sometimes against pound seizures and the use of "stolen pets", but not of other animals, in research.

 

On August 17, 1971, HSUS President John Hoyt wrote to one of our correspondents, in reply to her question on the subject:

 

"…HSUS is not, has never been, and does not intend to become an anti-vivisection society."

 

A New York Daily News article in May 1982 precipitated a public credibility crisis for HSUS with the revelation that its board included one of the nation's major vivisectors, Dr Robert R. Marshak, who was also dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine and affiliated with the notorious National Society for Medical Research, which in spite of its noble denomination is mainly a huckster for the laboratory animal breeders, and has grown to be America's principal vivisection lobby (see Naked Empress, pp 52-54).

 

With a mailing list of about 50,000, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA) is according to the Harvard Report, the wealthiest humane society, with assets of about $42 million. Although it claims that its main concern is the humane treatment of animals, it does not oppose vivisection, only its use of stolen house pets. Seven of its eight officers are men, and like most state humane societies it is part of the status quo. It operates a veterinary hospital, a farm and an animal shelter. In 1980 it received nearly $1,6 million in private contributions, earned nearly $2 million in investment income, and an additional $3.7 million in realized capital gains.

 

For reasons that can only be explained with the indifference of its members, the richest and most powerful societies are those that do less against vivisection, or even support it passively or actively. So the MSPCA's investment practices appear to be in direct conflict with its public stance on the use of animals in cosmetics and other types of testing, if it is true, as the Harvard Report asserts, that in 1980 the society invested nearly $2 million in cosmetics and pharmaceutical companies that test products on live animals.

 

Questions also have been raised by the fact that MSPCA chief-of-staff and board member Gus Thornton, who was paid $54,000 in 1980, sits on the Board of Directors of Jackson Labs of Bar Harbor, Maine, which uses living animals to test its products.

 

The MSPCA president, Davis S. Claflin of Dedham, is paid more than $66,000 per year. In 1982 he became President of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, replacing Germany's Hans Jurgen Weichert whose unsavory record is reported in Naked Empress (pp 43-45).

 

 

 

BRITISH BULWARK AT EUROPEAN COUNCIL

 

A few years ago, a so-called Committee of Experts on the Protection of Animals at the European Council of Strasbourg decided to draw up a Convention on the use of live animals for experimental purposes. The roster of "experts" making up this Committee read like a Who's Who in Vivisection, for easily understandable reasons. Who is an expert on animal experimentation? Why, a vivisector, of course.

 

In January 1977, the group had become the Ad-Hoc Committee of Experts for the Protection of Animals (CAHPA), under United Kingdom chairmanship, as officially acknowledged by Lord Belstead. All the voting members of the CAHPA are themselves vivisectors, members of the RDS (Britain's vivisection lobby), or people who for other reasons represent their interests.

 

Under the chairmanship of, in turn, G. Vallier (F), G. Pratt (UK) and S. Erichsen (N), and the vice-chairmanship of J. Siegrist (CH), C.J. Kjaersgard (DN) and A. Steiger (CH) - all names to remember - and occasional consultations with Eurogroup - CAHPA devoted several plenary meetings to draw up a draft Convention that was nothing short of scandalous, at least semantically, because it defined itself "for the Protection of Animals" instead of "for the Protection of Vivisectors and the Benefit of the Pharmaceutical Industry and the International Animals Breeders Association."

 

This draft Convention introduced an unprecedented permissiveness and a new height in hypocrisy: for the first time in any legislation in the world, repetitious operations on one and the same animal would be legally permitted, and this was being presented as a humanitarian measure, on the contention that by using an animal more than once, fewer animals would be used! But of course all those who are familiar with vivisectionist mentality, are well aware that this new concession would not reduce but rather increase the number of animals used, because it represented a new incentive. In fact, the lobby of the animal breeders has heavily influenced the drafting of the Convention.

 

Careful Plans

 

The first careful plans to railroad through, when the time would come, this scandalous Convention had been laid out in Britain as far back as 1979, shortly after Slaughter had appeared. The RSPCA, watchdog of the pharmaceutical interests, decided to forestall any future interference from Continental AV groups at Strasbourg, and for this purpose organised and financed the foundation of an international make-believe AV organisation of its own, over which it would retain full control - the "Eurogroup for Animal Welfare," under the direction of RSPCA member Seymor-Rouse. It was founded in Brussels on March 15/16, 198O, and is linked to the WSPA (see Naked Empress, pp 43-45).

 

Over the years, millions of Britons have been conned into donating to the RSPCA, in the belief that the society honestly endeavors to prevent all animal suffering rather than defending the vested interests of the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. But its real attitude towards vivisection was reported on pp 427-428 of Slaughter. The RSPCA image has not been the same ever since, and it kept going from bad to worse, to wit:

 

In 1980, the RSPCA co-sponsored with America's Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) an international journal, described as a scientific one. In mid 1981, the HSUS/RSPCA journal carried an article, "Biomedical Research and Animal Welfare," written by a vivisector who is on the board of the latest Charles River Breeding Laboratories lobby - the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, founded "to promote the procurement, breeding, husbandry, and use of laboratory animals and accessories." Membership also includes Taconic Farms, which markets laboratory animals pre-vivisected with up to 17 surgical operations, including blinding by enucleation.

 

Eventually, the RSPCA image had grown so dubious that Richard Ryder, in an effort to refurbish his own image as Britain's top anti-vivisectionist, resigned as President of RSPCA (but he is presently Chairman of RSPCA's Animal Experimentation Advisory Committee), and moved over to BUAV. Richard Adams, celebrated author of The Plague Dogs, unaware of RSPCA's unsavory reputation, was conned into accepting RSPCA's Presidency. But before long he got wise, and in the Fall of 1982 handed in his resignation. After Honest Adams had blown the whistle, three vice presidents had no choice but to resign as well if they wanted to retain a shred of credibility - Lord Houghton, Lady Dowding, and Clive Hollands, who should all have known better than to join in the first place.

 

It was in the knowledge that a lost virginity is difficult to restore and that the RSPCA was too compromised ever to play the role of official "animal defender" at Strasbourg that the society had decided to found that sham AV organisation, Eurogroup for Animal Welfare, staffed with RSPCA members or other reliable figures hand-picked by the RSPCA, most of them from the research, ie vivisection community.

 

Eurogroup spokesman at the European Council was to be a Dr Judith Hampson, a biologist officially presented as "Chief Animal Experimentation Research Officer of the RSPCA." Her First Assistant was to be Mrs Sheila Silcock, who was also a member of RSPCA and came straight from the vivisection laboratories. As further "experts" of Eurogroup were listed the following figures: Dr Henk Smid (Netherlands), Madame Denise Pasternak (President of the Swiss AV League), Dr F. Stafleu (Netherlands), and Dr G.S. MacGregor (U.K.). This group was the only one "invited to arrange the presentation of the animal welfare argument" at Strasbourg, as Dr Judith Hampson put it. Sad irony.

 

This RSPCA-sponsored Eurogroup advocates the use of expressly bred laboratory animals rather than the use of impounded pets, on the ground that specially bred animals are "more satisfactory and better for tests," being less subject to stress since they are used to the environment, and furthermore the public is indignant about the stolen house pets ending in vivisection laboratories.

 

What could be expected from Britain's only official defenders of the animal's interests can be gathered from Dr Judith Hampson's own published utterances, to wit:

 

"Medical science has gained a great deal from experiments on animals and will continue to do so…So what can be achieved demanding abolition of animal experiments, or even of ALL painful experiments? In my view, very little…We cannot hope to dispense with animal experiments. I believe that we HAVE to accept that some painful experiments will continue."

 

Such being Dr Hampson's views, the question arises as to what on earth was she doing at the Strasbourg Hearings? Quite obviously, preventing better informed anti-vivisectionists from voicing intelligent medical views.

 

Having never been interested in replacement techniques, but knowing that the question of "alternatives" would certainly come up in the course of the Hearings, Eurogroup had decided to enlist the collaboration of another "reliable" organisation: lAAPEA, who would "promote the cause for greater use of alternatives."

 

Of course, what the British AV societies should have done beforehand was to study the draft Convention, denounce this Convention and also Eurogroup through leaflets, manifestations, press conferences and advertisements (they have the money to do all that), approach sympathetic MPs, provide them with information, and persuade them to go to the Hearings. The British AV societies did nothing of all that. But the animal breeders, the RDS and of course the chemical lobby did all this. In fact, years beforehand emissaries of the vivisection lobbies had been approaching British MPs to find out which ones would be amenable to "persuasion."

 

Besides its sham "animal welfare" organisations, Britain had sent to Strasbourg a formidable task force of medicine men and parliamentarians, all carefully briefed by the RDS, and headed by Lord Adrian, well-known at home for his strong pro-chemical speeches.

 

To show the preponderance of British participation at the December '82 Hearings: there were in all 120 vivisectionists from 21 countries. Twenty countries had provided 75 of those - meaning each country averaged less than 4. But the 21st country, Great Britain, had 45 delegates - all committed to the perpetuation of vivisection.

 

THE BRITISH STEAMROLLER

 

Thus things looked hopeless indeed for the animals and medical truth when the December Hearings began, under British sponsorship and almost entirely conducted in the English language. The first-day session started ominously, introduced by Britain's John Osborn, Member of Parliament, acting as Chairman. One would normally expect a Chairman to be impartial or at least not to allow his personal interests to prejudice a Parliamentary Hearing in the way he did. Mr Osborn is a Council Member of the notorious RDS, Britain's vivisection lobby, mostly financed by the drug industry, and this explains his incredible opening remark to the effect that many people attending would not have been present had it not been for experiments on animals!

 

The trend in which he would conduct the entire session was thus clearly defined. Two other British propagandists of the Drug Trust were then allowed to read undisturbed and in a typically parliamentarian, soporific monotone their endless speeches, crammed with all the traditional untruths of vivisectionism that nobody could dispute, because the Chairman would choose - among the many participants who afterwards raised their hands - only those he knew could be "relied" on, like the members of Eurogroup.

 

 

In the present, 1986 photographic reprint of the original 1983 CIVIS Bulletin Nr 1, this boxed text replaces the previous listing of recommended anglophone organizations. Because it has proved impossible to keep up with the frequent changes in the structure and the policies of the executive committees of many of these leagues, and because sooner or later committees can and will be infiltrated by the huge, ever-watchful commercial interests, CIVIS has decided no longer to recommend specific organizations in its Bulletins.

 

As a general rule, CIVIS advises to distrust any A V league that limits itself to the trite and obvious ethical objections while determinedly ignoring the existing mass of incontrovertible scientific evidence that clearly disqualifies the vivisectionist metho­dology as having any validity for medical research. This warning clearly condemns, in the first place, and until a radical change in their policies occurs, all the major British animal welfare and A V leagues, most of which are notoriously advised by laboratory workers, past or present, and fellow travelers.

 

Matters look a bit more hopeful in the USA, for the reasons indicated on page 33. Here we have at least one young and very articulate abolitionist organization, SUPRESS, founded by Javier Burgos, the first to have embraced the CIVIS policy­ based on the recognition that the false theme "A dog or a baby" can't be defeated by ethical arguments, but only through the full exposure of the scientific nullity and consequent harmful fallaciousness of animal experimentation.

 

Among the newcomers to the scientific opposition in the USA who rate a special mention is Brandon Reines, a vet from Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in Boston. Following the examples of Britain's great, past surgeon, Lawson Tait, the more recent works of the British medical historian, M. Beddow Baily, M.D., and the writer's own Slaughter of the Innocent, Reines has brilliantly demonstrated how the whole line of modern medical conquests have all been obtained clinically, but were then falsely attributed, by the fraudulent medical organization, to animal experimentation, in order to justify the constant demands for funding - their beloved "research grants," or blood money.

 

Reines' latest, illuminating work on the subject, Heart Research on Animals, has the introductory endorsement of one of America's leading cardiovascular surgeons, Moneim A. Fadali, M.D., of the University of California, Los Angeles (1985). In spite of this, the American and British media, most of which didn't hesitate to present the ghoulish "Baby Fae" experiment as one of the greatest "medical breakthroughs" of the century, instead of the predictable, shattering failure that it was, have so far determinedly ignored, as all previous, similar works, Reines' irrefutable scientific treatises, too.

 

 

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