CIVIS Foundation Report 11, Spring-Summer 1991 (Part One)

 

 

EDITORIAL

 

In our Foundation Report Nr 7 CIVIS was proud to present for the first time to English readers a brilliant abolitionist paper, based exclusively on scientific grounds, by Italy's Prof. Pietro Croce, MD, under the title "That's Why I Am Against Vivisection", echoing and corroborating in scientific terms the views CIVIS had been proclaiming ever since its foundation.

 

As every CIVIS addict knows, the medical and scientific abolitionist arguments, i.e. the only effective ones on a legislative level, had been deliberately spurned and even ridiculed by all the major British AV leaders ever since the death in 1932 of Britain's last competent and outspoken medical AV, the great Dr Waiter Hadwen of Gloucester. (See Found. Rep. 3,4 &5)

 

The absence of another such un-corruptible medical authority was sorely felt by all knowlegeable AV s when in the mid-80s the shameful new bill on vivisection was being sanctimoniously "debated" in Britain's Parliament. The "Technical Advisors" of all the famed British AV leagues - BUAV, NAVS and Animal Aid, not to mention vivisection-prone RSPCA, FRAME, Eurogroup and smaller spawns of the Chemical industry - had seen to it that none of the scientific proofs of the uselessness and counter-productivity of the practice would be brought to the public's attention, much less to the attention of Parliament and the Press, to the point of suppressing all the information offered them by the CIVIS documents. With the considerable sums of money at their disposal those societies could have painlessly financed conspicuous ads and TV spots to thwart the fraudulent bill's easy success. They deliberately, studiously, eschewed their clear responsibility. (See the ONE BILLION DOLLAR article in Found. Rep. Nr 5)

 

It was only after the new bill of 1986, also referred to as "The Vivisectors' Charter", had been safely anchored in the legislature and become law for decades to come, condemning millions of animals to continued torture and millions of humans to equally cruel medical deception, that the British leagues' "advisors" pretended to have suddenly become aware that vivisection is exactly the kind of scientific fraud that CIVIS had always proclaimed it to be, and they unblushingly tried to take credit for this "discovery": trained vivisector Dr Robert Sharpe on top of them all, with his book, aptly titled The Cruel Deception, which he and the leagues had held ready for years but kept in abeyance until the new law had safely passed.

 

In the present issue we present another great abolitionist manifesto, for once not exclusively but primarily on scientific grounds, this time by a prominent German doctor whom CIVIS addicts know well as he was the first President of ILDAV, and who is also President of the League of German Doctors Against Vivisection: Dr med. Werner Hartinger, with 30 years experience in surgery.

 

On 12 December 1990 Dr Hartinger addressed the following, widely circulated Open Letter to Prof. Dr. Rita Sussmuth, President of the German Bundestag, the Federal Republic's Diet:

 

Dear Professor Sussmuth.

 

The letter dated 26/11/1990 to Frau Christa Winkel in Hamburg, written on your behalf by your assistant, Frau Aschinger, has been passed on to me for comment. In that letter, Frau Aschinger expresses views on the necessity for animal experiments, on the justification for them and on their usefulness in the field of human medicine. In doing so, she employs the familiar and already repeatedly refuted arguments of the vivisectionists who have a personal, professional and even financial interest in animal experiments, arguments which in most points tally with those used by industrial circles. This is all the more astonishing in view of the fact that it is the patient alone who should stand at the centre of a doctor's activities and aims.

 

As a doctor with experience at the sick bed and in the operating theatre, I examine the problems of vivisection ideology from an independent viewpoint. I do not judge the results from the viewpoint of biologists or veterinarians, who - regrettably and astonishingly - oft occupy the key positions in both governmental and administrative circles as far as decisions on nutrition and human medicine are concerned. I have nothing against this, but only find it justified when a person speaks about the area in which he is qualified and delivers judgements according to his own area of knowledge. However, I doubt the competence and objectivity of biologists and veterinarians who draw conclusions with regard to human medicine.

 

If medicine for humans could be interpreted and conducted in this way, one could dispense with medical studies and resort to biologists and vets for medical treatment. But human beings are not comparable with animals with regard to the emergence of disease or to therapy, let alone as regards their healing and adaptive powers, and recognition of this is one of the reasons why medical studies differ from the other disciplines.

 

Regretfully, I cannot avoid commenting on your assistant's statements and correcting them from an objective scientific and medical viewpoint, for in the course of many years of work I have seldom read such a one-sided and irresponsibly illogical account, so obviously contradicting all the facts.

 

Obvious contradictions

 

It is hard to swallow such pseudo scientific claims, and regardless of our certainly different views regarding the necessity for animal experiments and their usefulness to the consumer - I am of the opinion that such one-sided arguments in favour of vivisection are neither conducive to meaningful discussion nor worthy of a President of the German Parliament.

 

Not only from a humanistic viewpoint is it shocking to observe how widely the necessity of animal experiments is simply taken for granted - not only by the experimenters themselves - on the grounds that they allegedly make some contribution to the fight against human diseases and infirmities.

 

The number of experiments carried out worldwide, and in our own country, at numerous institutes and in connection with the same problems, shows in itself that there can be no question of the "irrenounceable quantity" referred to in the German Animal Protection Law, and that the number of animals killed in experiments is determined by factors of competition, personal interests and commercial motives.

 

Regardless of the fact that any hypothetical advantage derived by human beings in no way entitles them to use their mental and physical superiority to inflict agonising death on billions of our fellow-creatures, this principle would mean that every self-determined "contribution", whatever one may mean by that term, would justify every conceivable experiment.

 

Precisely that attitude has led to the current extermination of animals in experiments which are excessive in character, in number and in the suffering they entail. This attitude is based on the calamitous mentality according to which other living creatures only exist for the purpose of being used - like the slaves in former times - for our own personal benefit.

 

One must, as a human being, follow at this point the thoughts of Pope Pius XII, who declared recently in this connection:

 

"The animal world, like the whole of Creation, reveals to us God's power, His wisdom and goodness. It therefore deserves unlimited reverence and protection from Man. Every instance of reckless killing of animals, every act of cruelty and harshness is therefore in contradiction of healthy, humane feeling. The animal kingdom's role in the scheme of Creation does not consist in being the object of any kind of exploitation."

 

That is certainly a competent judgement on moral entitlement, but not a comment on scientific value or usefulness, which I would now like to discuss:

 

The claim that knowledge in the field of human medicine is gained through animal experimentation is illogical and can be refuted not only by means of scientific reasoning but also on the basis of results and the general state of health of the population. This finding is not altered in any way by the repeated statements heard constantly from scientists linked with vested interests, and it should be noted that there have been just as many scientists who gave up experimental research in the field of human medicine, due to their knowledge gained from experience, and who have even had the inner strength to publicly declare their self-critical decision.

 

When people constantly become sicker despite decades of killing billions of animals, allegedly carried out "for their benefit" - when the malignant tumours, as well as fatal heart and circulatory ailments, are steadily increasing and currently account for almost two-thirds of all fatalities - when the figures for acute and chronic illness continue to mount- when the costs for medical treatment are climbing to prohibitive figures and the waiting period for operations is beginning to create a sort of medicine according to social class - then one must recognise that the immense number of animal victims have evidently not produced any useful results.

Despite this negative balance sheet, it is claimed by way of justification that most of the diagnostic and therapeutic methods used in human medicine were developed, or even "discovered", by means of animal experiments. Such statements are not reconcilable with any fact-based way of thinking.

 

Logical thinking

 

In each specialised area, the logically thinking scientist can deduce no more from his experiment than the fact that the animal used has, under the conditions applied, shown a certain reaction or change in function, or has borne this or that surgical procedure well or badly. Any more far-reaching interpretation is speculation, at best a hypothesis with no appraisable validity for humans. The experiment must always be repeated and checked again on human beings. Only when the results of both the animal and the human experiment are available can one recognise any possible comparability and judge the degree of validity. It is therefore totally impossible to reach any conclusion from an animal experiment as to the innumerable possibilities for an unforeseen side effect or toxicity.

 

The result obtained from experimenting on an animal does not enable one to conclude that a human will react in the same way. Chemical substances often: differ more than a thousand-fold as regards their effectiveness and tolerability, and they frequently have no effect, a contrary effect or a completely different effect within the human organism from what they produce when tested on animals. If one also reflects that the metabolic breakdown of these foreign substances and the toxins they often give rise to, as well as their detoxication and excretory mechanisms, are to a large degree different and unpredictable, if one realises that the biomechanical tolerability, reaction and ability to compensate do not permit any direct conclusions to be drawn for humans, and when one is aware that side-effects which provoke cancer or damage organs in animals are, like gene changes, damage to offspring or long-term damage, not assessable when attempting to extrapolate them to human beings, then simply to transfer the data to the human situation represents an incalculable risk which no responsible experimenter should be prepared to take.

 

These facts can in no way be changed by the oft-quoted "transferability ratio", for this ratio can only be determined when identical data from human experiments are to hand. Until that moment, the ratio is not known, nor can it be calculated. Likewise, the choice of the most comparable animal species presupposes that one already knows the effects and effectiveness to be expected in humans. Without that know ledge, the suitable species of animal cannot be selected.

 

In other words: the same experiments have to be carried out on humans, at a risk which cannot be calculated. Only then is it possible, in retrospect, to form a judgement as to whether the human organism reacts in the same way as the animal one and, if so, to what extent the results of the animal test are applicable to humans. Any knowledge we possess concerning reactions and effects in the human organism has only been obtained through the human being, and could not be gleaned via animals.

 

The lawmakers agree

 

The lawmakers who are advised by the same scientists also share this viewpoint, and consider the simple transfer of animal experiment results to human beings as unacceptable. They therefore insist on the effects, tolerability and safety of every medicament and therapeutic procedure being tested on humans before approval is granted for these - this despite the many results from animal experiments already available.

 

The relatively harmless dosage and use of medicinal substances and other medical procedures or operating techniques in human medicine are therefore not attributable to the animal experiments, as is stated so frequently, and also in your letter. They are ensured solely by the clinical tests on humans, which are prescribed as a matter of necessity.

 

The self-imposed criteria established by scientists as criteria of scientific validity include the predictability, the calculability and the reproductibility of a method or an effect. These requirements are not fulfilled by any animal experiment which is intended to supply information for use in human medicine. It can also not be described as a "model", for a model has to contain at least a calculable degree of comparability. And that is not the case with an animal experiment.

 

Vaccinations

 

It is not true either that the medical method of vaccination was "discovered" through animal experiments, just as it is untrue to claim that the infectious diseases such as smallpox were "eradicated" by this method.

 

When the English physician Edward Jenner vaccinated a boy against smallpox in 1796 for the first time in medical history, he had never carried out any experiments on animals and not even thought of doing so. The resulting infection did indeed confirm the effectiveness of that measure, but what he could not yet know about was the serious side-effects of vaccination, which later became increasingly recognised. When "interpreting" this matter, however, one should nowadays presuppose knowledge of this!

 

It should also be mentioned that in Britain and the Netherlands compulsory vaccination for smallpox was already abandoned around the end of the last century, due to the serious brain injuries caused by vaccination. Why is no mention made of the fact that since that time those two countries have, despite their close connections with the Orient and Asia, enjoyed a considerably lower frequency of smallpox infection than the other European nations where vaccination was obligatory?

 

It must also be pointed out that a few years ago the World Health Organisation conducted a large-scale comparitive study in India of the results of the tuberculosis vaccination there. The incidence of infection with tuberculosis proved to be higher among those who had been vaccinated than among those who had not!

 

When weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of any therapeutic method, one must naturally also take account of its injurious side effects. In 1989, despite the fact that 85% of applications were turned down, 2,517 cases of serious vaccination injury involving mental and physical handicaps were recognised by the authorities in West Germany, each victim requiring medical and nursing care for the remainder of his/her life. The bill to be borne by the taxpayer - not the manufacturer of the vaccine - in respect of these injuries amounts to more than DM 10,000,000,000 (ten billion D-Marks). And the above figures do not include those cases of vaccination injury involving less than 100% employment disability or other interpretations of the cause of injury, cases whose costs have to be met by the members of the various health insurance schemes.

 

It is also easy to obtain information from the Federal Statistics Office and the public health authorities which shows that the decline in infectious diseases had already begun long before the introduction of vaccination. The statistical curves then flattened, and delayed the fall resulting from improved social and nutritional conditions. There is, however, no question of "eradication".

 

Absurd pretentions

 

These considerations and facts alone show the absurdity of the statements that the discovery of trypanosomes, anti-malarial medicines, the effects of sulphonamides, streptomycin, insulin and other advances were attributable to animal experiments. They are shockingly unreflected statements, which do not stand up to critical analysis.

 

The trypanosomes referred to above, for example, only develop their flagellate forms within the cells of the body, and can only be detected there. Naturally they also infest animals; but the question whether and how they function in man and what therapy is to be used in humans could only be established empirically by working on humans. There are countless micro-organisms which are not pathogenic or capable of reproduction in animals but are pathogenic and reproductive in humans - and vice versa.

 

Please also consider the fact that countless allegedly great successes have within a short time proved to be false. Impartial scientists are of the opinion that two-thirds of all the medical and biological discoveries that are rewarded with the Nobel Prize prove already within 10 years to be out-dated or inaccurate. I do not intend to disparage these scientists, but only to plea for objective examination of the results of research.

 

Inaccurate interpretations

 

Inaccurate interpretation of events also appears in your assistant's untenable statement that no investigations of teratogenic properties in the substance Thalidomide were carried out in connection with the licence granted for the product "Contergan". It would really be advisable to check on the facts before making such "official" statements.

 

When "Contergan" (Thalidomide) came onto the market in 1957, the manufacturers sent approximately 40,000 (!) circulars to doctors and pharmacists, in which it was described as the best medicament for pregnant women and breast-feeding mothers. As a "really new product", its safety had been tested with particular thoroughness through extensive animal experiments!

 

Already in 1961, the manufacturers had received more than 1,600 warnings regarding injuries, which had to be attributed to their product, and at the Ahlsfeld trial the public prosecutors established that the firm had already had enough information in 1960 to oblige it to withdraw the preparation from the market. The manufacturing company, with licensees in 7 African, 17 Asiatic and 11 Western companies, therefore carried out exceptionally many animal experiments, not only before "Contergan" gained the official licence, but also following these warnings and during the years of the court case.

 

The British licensee Distillers still put Thalidomide on the market in 1962, under the name "Distaval", giving the assurance that it could be used with "absolute safety" by pregnant women and breast-feeding mothers, since all the animal experiments had produced no evidence of damage to the foetus. When the lengthy trial ended in 1970, many animals of all species had been sacrificed in vain in order to prove the teratogenicity of "Contergan". Only in the case of a rare Australian rabbit and a rare species of monkey could one allegedly observe an occasional abnormality in the offspring, and in those cases the pregnant animal had been subjected for months to exaggerated dosages. In these cases, however, it was immediately stated that these results had no relevance for human beings, because deformities, like cancers, "could always come about" if such high dosages over a long period of time were used.

 

 

To Part Two