CIVIS Bulletin Nr 1, 1983  (page six)

 

 

PATON

 

Of the two main speakers, the first was Prof W.D.M. Paton, representing the important sounding "European Science Foundation - University of Oxford" although his main claim to scientific fame is his capacity of causing convulsions in cats through electrodes implanted in their cranial cavity, in imitation of identical experiments conducted by his Oxford and Cambridge colleagues ever since the last century.

 

The blather this pseudo scientist let out in the course of his interminable, droning, soporific speech - part of Parliamentarian procedure, designed to send the journalists home out of bored desperation, which in fact came to pass - can be exemplified by following statement:

 

"Suppose, for the sake of argument, that no animal experimentation had been done in the past. We would have a knowledge of ourselves and of the animal kingdom inferior to that of the Greeks. We would not know that our arteries contain blood."

 

Nobody laughed, and Hans Ruesch kept raising his arm after Paton's speech, wanting to be heard, but in vain. With all the bloodshed caused by a bellicose humanity throughout history, the wars, the revolutions, the decapitations, the amputations, the private killings, or just the accidental little cuts in one's own hand, to assert we would not know the veins contain blood must be the symptom of some mental disease or other, for which, however, no animal experimentation can give us a clue. But the Chairman only gave some Eurogroup or other "safe" persons the word, and not one of them was willing or capable of refuting just a single vivisectionist forgery.

 

Ruesch wanted to recall the case of Galen (200 A.D.) who in spite of his endless investigations into living animals that he kept cutting open in order to discover the secret of the blood had come to the conclusion that the blood is in a state of constant flux, of ebb and tide, like the sea, and had even failed to discover that the blood circulates. This "discovery" had to wait more centuries, until William Harvey demonstrated the circulation of the blood by simple and painless experiments he did on his own arm (see Slaughter, pp 155-157).

 

Actually, even this much-touted "discovery" was none at all, for the Chinese had known that the blood circulates for thousands of years, as reported in their 'Hei Cing' (The Book of Medicine), which is the basis of Chinese medical literature (see Slaughter, p 155).

 

In short, the whole purpose of the British-sponsored Strasbourg Hearings was not to inform European Parliamentarians about animal experimentation as advertised so that they could reach decisions, but to keep them in the dark, to reassert the traditional misinformation designed to keep the pharmaceutical industry and the animal breeders happy.

 

DAYAN

 

The second main lecturer on opening day was another Englishman, A.D. Dayan, European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries Associations. Chestnuts from his address, which had been handed, like Paton's in a 25-page mimeograph to every participant upon arrival:

 

"Society has demanded that governments throughout the world should require manufacturers of potentially hazardous products to test them first in animals. Scientists and manufacturers have no alternative but to conform to the laws of the land in which they operate."

 

So this representative of an association that has been recklessly selling genocidal products to the entire world, to the point of dumping onto impoverished Third World nations drugs that have already been taken off the Western markets because of their deadly effects, is allowed to advance law-abiding reasons for the laboratory holocaust; but of course he neglects to point out that those tests have no scientific value, as the continual catastrophes show, and that those laws have been imposed by the very chemical manufacturers in whose employ he is, as an insurance against lawsuits and criminal prosecution whenever the havoc wrought by their products becomes too evident to be successfully concealed. Dayan stated furthermore:

 

"Studies with animals are essential for the development of curative medicines for men and animals, such as vaccines against poliomyelitis and rabies, and drugs to treat high blood pressure and cancer."

 

Decisive rebuttals to those false claims have been published all over the world, and not only in Slaughter and Naked Empress. The numerous cures that treat high blood pressure without harming the patient still further don't consist of poisonous chemicals but of diets that don't enrich the doctor but demand a bit more effort from the patient than swilling pills; cancer deaths are on a steady increase because the cures are tested on animals, and the variety of lucrative therapies that are being inflicted upon the more gullible patients kill them long before the cancer can kill them; rabies has been expanding worldwide ever since Pasteur launched his first alleged vaccine against it, which meantime has been regularly replaced by new ones, advertised to be "more effective and less dangerous;" as to the polio vaccine, a long bibliography exists concerning the damages caused by the vaccines of Salks and Sabin - each one of those "scientists" accusing (in papers published by WHO) the other of having palmed off an inferior product. But far more important is the fact that those vaccines proved extremely dangerous, and in a number of cases deadly, for the very reason that they were cultivated on animals.

 

Consequently, a Prof Leonard Hayflick of Stanford University (California) developed more than 20 years ago a new vaccine based on a human diploid cell strain system, which is now being used in many countries. The use of dangerous monkey tissue such as those used by Sabin and Salk could have been avoided from the start if researchers had been trained to work more intelligently - namely without animals. In a letter to the author dated October 9, 1973, Prof Leonard Hayflick wrote:

 

"If your question speaks to the point of why primary monkey kidney tissue was chosen for the early production of Salk and Sabin virus vaccines I myself have been trying to obtain an answer to that question for many years. The choice seems to have been made almost capriciously. In retrospect it was a very poor choice indeed."

 

Putting the crown on his blather under the heading "Conclusion," Dayan said:

 

"There are enormous gaps in human knowledge, which are only likely to be filled with the aids of animal studies (shades of the Animal Breeders Association - H.R.), including discovery of the causes and cures of diseases of major importance to man, such as senile dementia (sic!), cancer, malaria, and other tropical illnesses…in fact, if knowledge of ourselves is to advance, if the quality of life of man and animal is to be improved, and if the environment is to be protected against natural and man-made hazards, then experiments in animals will continue to be necessary!"

 

We must point out that 1) senile dementia may be a disorder rampant in laboratory workers but hardly ever occurring in animals; 2) animals don't contract malaria nor other tropical illnesses affecting man, and, 3) no cancer artificially provoked in animals by arbitrary and violent means (grafts, poisoning, traumas, stressors) has any similarity whatever with any of the human cancers known, and which have proved impossible to duplicate exactly in animals in the 200 years during which the bankrupt animal-based cancer research has been going on.

 

THE BRITISH PUPPETS

 

Now we come to examine the official British "opposition", - the carefully trained phonies - to which all the British AV societies had given carte blanche through their absence: The Eurogroup for Animal Welfare.

 

Right at the beginning of her main address, biologist Judith Hampson put in a solid plug for animal experimentation. While her chief adviser, Mrs Sheila Silcock, a vivisector and RSPCA consultant, listened closely, Hampson recited:

 

"Animals may be subjected to procedures causing injury or disease similar to those occurring in humans. Such experiments enable scientists to learn more about human disease, its causes, prevention and treatment, and to predict the risks of exposure to certain substances or conditions in humans."

 

So here we have the official spokesman of the animal causes, Eurogroup, financed and founded by drug-happy RSPCA, reciting the catechism of vivisectors, disseminating the traditional untruths, keeping mum about the disasters caused to humanity through a false method of research.

 

Hampson then delivered the familiar homily "We know that most scientists experiment only most reluctantly" (the poor things, how they must suffer when forced to experiment) and suggested "better treatment of laboratory animals with the help of vets" - as if she, who had herself worked in animal laboratories, didn't know that veterinarians are trained vivisectors, otherwise they don't acquire their degree.

 

In the Conclusion of the Eurogroup's final address, signed by vivisector S. Silcock and biologist Dr J. Hampson, both RSPCA members and both with former laboratory experience, British hypocrisy achieved new distinction when Hampson read out the group's requirements:

 

"We'd like to see: 1) Refinement of experimental techniques…2) More, and deeper questions asked by the experimenters themselves…3) An ethical reappraisal of the value of animal life and a deeper assessment of our justification for exploiting it, so that experimental animals are recognized as sentient individuals which we exploit only with deep regret and humility rather than regard as laboratory tools provided for us simply as means to human ends."

 

"SERIOUS EYE TROUBLE!"  WOW!

 

Now let's see what the other official "anti-vivisectionist" from Britain had to say in Strasbourg: Dr Robert Sharpe, a well-bred young man who spoke for IAAPEA, the international offshoot of Lady Dowding's NAVS, which prides itself on its reputation as a "moderate" organisation.

 

At his milquetoast best, he respectfully suggested that one should try using more alternatives - an advice that later on was to draw a sharp rhetoric lashing from Dudley Smith, Member of Parliament, House of Commons: "Is Dr Sharpe willing to put the public at risk?"

 

Dr Sharpe further recalled the cases of well-established drugs like aspirin, penicillin and cortisone that don't cause malformations in man but cause them in animals, conversely a new drug that comes through animal tests with flying colors may cause malformations in animals. Until now he has not mentioned a vivisector, a drug, a company, let alone one of the countless therapeutical catastrophes. Finally he gathers all his youthful courage and actually comes up with the name of a registered drug:

 

"Practocol was prescribed for over four years before doctors realised it could cause serious eye problems - a side effect not predicted by animal studies."

 

Eye trouble! That was the top criticism the British "Animal Welfare" Establishment dared level at the drug mafia in Strasbourg! "Could cause serious eye trouble!" But not a word from Dr Sharpe about the continuous genocide by the Drug Trust and Medical Power caused by the wrong method of research, of the 30,000 blinded and paralysed people from Clioquinol, of the growing number of uterine cancer in young women caused by DES and the general rise of cancer deaths, of the rising number of malformed births even though animal tests have been multiplied since the Thalidomide tragedy, and so on and on and on.

 

And meantime in Great Britain the leaders of the big AV societies continue mouthing their polite: "Even if animals experiments are useful…" (AA's Jean Pink). And "Even if it can be accepted that there have been some benefits from animal experimentation…" (from an unsigned article in BUAV's Liberator in the May 1983 issue).

 

THE ITALIANS

 

The British commando of animal breeders, pharmaceutical propagandists, and agents of the RDS in Parliamentarian disguise, supported by their Swiss, German and North-European business allies, were reckoning with no other opposition but the pre-arranged, token objections coming from their Eurogroup camp, and were convinced that they would reap the fruit for their drawn-out, meticulous preparatory work at the end of the December '82 Hearings and railroad through their "new" Convention without any difficulty. If that did not come to pass, it was due to the Italian participants.

 

The Italians did everything a group earnestly concerned with ending vivisection should do, and that the British most conspicuously did not do. Italy had delegated to Strasbourg, besides abolitionist parliamentarians like Fiandrotti, Faccio and Barese, also a roster of courageous and highly articulate anti-vivisectionist MDs, veterinarians, researchers, medical students, and representatives of its honest AV organisations like LAV, LAI and ONDA. There was no talk of "animal welfare" in the Italian interventions, and very little talk of "ethics." But there was a lot about the fallaciousness of animal testing, its scientific bankruptcy, and the resulting therapeutic disasters. In fact, just as Great Britain must be considered the Bulwark of Vivisection in Europe today, so does Italy represent the small but solidly entrenched bridgehead of Abolitionism.

 

Italy awoke to the problem in January 1976, when Slaughter appeared in the publishing empire of Rizzoli and large excerpts of the book were reprinted by most of the Rizzoli-owned press including Corriere della Sera, Italy's Times, which published a full page of excerpts from the book in its Sunday edition. The leading women's magazines and other illustrated weeklies - some of them with 7 page spreads - followed suit.

 

By the time young Angelo Rizzoli was informed that he had committed an unforgivable faux-pas by publishing a book that was revealing the criminal activities of the drug industry, which kept his own publishing enterprises going (the multinational chemical Montedison conglomerate was providing oxygen to the ailing Rizzoli empire to the tune of 2.5 billion lire or at that time some $3 million a year) it was too late. Rizzoli could well withdraw all copies of the book from the stores and publish refutations and counter-articles signed by the nation's leading vivisectors that no one was allowed to dispute, but the genie was out of the bottle.

 

As in Great Britain, Italy's then only AV society, the old UAI directed by a panel of industry-connected lawyers, was the principal denigrator of Slaughter, but any and every action they undertook against the book only accelerated the defection of its members, who founded a whole string of new, active societies that banked on Slaughter.

 

The matter of vivisection came up in Parliament, and the necessary signatures for a referendum were quickly collected (230,000 notarized signatures, instead of the 50,000 that were required). But after the bill was presented in Parliament, the Government (Andreotti) fell, and all the efforts were for nought, and had to be started all over again. Meanwhile, however, public opinion was incurably aroused, and the politicians couldn't help but take notice of it.

 

And that is how the Italian delegation at Strasbourg in December '82 managed to foil the quick acceptance of the British-sponsored Convention, even though many of the Italian speeches were brutally curtailed by the Chairman when their arguments became too dangerous, including the Parliamentarian Adele Faccio, who was not permitted to complete her second intervention.

 

We cite from the Report on those Hearings by West-Germany's 'Arbeitskreis Wissenschaftlicher Tierschutz' (Scientific Work-Circle for Animal Protection), signed by two German scientists, Prof I Bingener and Dipl. Phys. I Hahn, which was widely circulated all over Europe and Great Britain:

 

"The Italian delegation did not only fight with competence and southern fire like lions against the numerically crushing superiority of the vivisection lobby, but they had furthermore in their ranks first-rate experts from the medical, the veterinary and the legal field, who delivered precisely formulated counterarguments. Especially on the last day, under the chairmanship of Fiandrotti, did the Italians have the opportunity to make their arguments against animal experimentation heard. The attitude of Eurogroup, an association of various European animal welfare organisations (founded by RSPCA - H.R.), who criticized the Italian interventions as too verbose and frequently offensive, can be attributed to Eurogroup's own sympathy with the vivisectors rather than corresponding to the truth. Much rather, the European Council should be grateful to the Italians. It is their merit that the two day Hearing became a duel between the archaic, moth-eaten views of the British vivisection lobby and the Italians' bugle-call and summons to new beaches and new concepts. But it is to be feared that the fresh wind from the South won't be able to blow away the century-old robes of vivisectionism and will soon be ground away by the mills of the totally administered Euro-bureaucracy."

 

Hans Ruesch was there as spokesman of CIVIS and Honorary President of the international OIPA. But although he kept shaking his arm to be heard until he developed a case of bursitis, he was allowed only a brief speaking time at the end of the last session, and only because some of his supporters were beginning to make themselves heard.

 

Rome's Giornale d'ltalia, Italy's highest circulation daily, commented thus the incident in a long article titled "The Shame of Strasbourg," in its Sunday edition of Feb. 20, 1983:

 

"The Chairman, in the guise of false moderator, allowed to speak only those he wanted to speak, consistently ignoring the anti-vivisectionists. Suffice it to say that all through the Hearings the continuous requests from Hans Ruesch, the well known author and anti-vivisection expert, were never taken into consideration. It was only when the Hearings verged towards the end and Ruesch protested with particular vehemence because he was not allowed to speak that he was given just three minutes time (after a vivisector had talked for half an hour), so that he had to limit his intervention to saying: "I can refute all of the innumerable lies we have heard from those pseudo-experts all day long, but now I can do it only in writing, which I promise to do as soon as possible, since I wasn't allowed the time to do it here."

 

Even this brief statement, delivered in French, was subjected to un-parliamentarian interruptions from some of the British participants, who heckled Ruesch with jeers and catcalls.

 

The Giornale d'ltalia went on saying:

 

"The Hearings thus represented a failure for the anti-vivisectionists. However, they should not get discouraged, since at Strasbourg the vivisectors have clearly demonstrated that they fear a confrontation, by preventing their adversaries from expressing their views. The weakness of a thesis is obvious when its supporters don't have the courage to accept a fair debate. One prevents one's opponents from speaking only when one's own arguments lack validity. Allowing no room to the opposition is typical of dictatorships. But history has shown that in the long run all dictators fall; and also for the dictatorial empire of the pharmaceutical speculation, built on the sufferings of animals needlessly tortured in the laboratories and on the sufferings of human beings victims of iatrogenic (medically-induced) diseases, the day of redde rationem (final reckoning) is bound to come."

 

How come have we never read anything remotely resembling these Giornale d'ltalia comments in any major British newspaper?

 

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