CIVIS Foundation Report 5, Spring 1989 (Part 1)

 

 

THE ONE BILLION DOLLARS AVAILABLE TO ANIMAL RIGHTS GROUPS COULD STOP VIVISECTION IF POOLED TO PUBLICIZE

THE FRAUD IT REPRESENTS INSTEAD OF UNDERHANDEDLY SUSTAINING IT

 

 

EMBARRASSING REPORT

 

In 1984, Richard Morgan, Ph. D., director of Mobilization for Animals, a new "animal rights" group, was stung by criticism that he was spending too much money.  So, ignoring the gentlemen's agreement in force between animal welfare societies, he took his rivals' books under scrutiny and came up with an 8 page FIRST ANNUAL FINANCIAL REPORT of the 15 wealthiest American animal welfare organisations. It was also his last. Although he had solemnly promised a SECOND ANNUAL FINANCIAL REPORT, it never materialized, and he and his organisation disappeared from public view soon after that. Morgan's report included the two tables shown below.

 

Excerpts from Morgan's commentary: "The greatest threat to the advancement of the cause of the animals may not be from those involved in the abuse of animals, but from organizations within the animal rights and welfare movements who are charged with the responsibility of preventing the abuse and ending the suffering. We have done our best with limited resources and volunteer staff members to assure that every detail of this report is absolutely correct. If you find any errors, or have any suggestions, please let us know. No recent financial data was available from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), incorporated in Delaware in 1980. "

 

WHOSE AGENDA IS ANIMALS' AGENDA?

 

The report was met with icy silence by America's leading animal welfare world from Coast to Coast, and overt disapproval from Animals' Agenda, which calls itself "The Animal Rights Magazine". It not merely ignored Morgan's report, but reprimanded him for publishing it.

 

Hans Ruesch immediately advised the editors that it was their clear duty to the animals they pretended to defend to publish the report, but he was ignored, as whenever he had tried to see scientific facts against vivisection printed in that "animals"  monthly.

 

GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT: DON'T BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU

 

It took CIVIS some years to understand why Animals' Agenda steadfastly refused to publish Ruesch's articles and letters that factually demonstrate the damages from animal based medical research, although the editors kept assuring their readers that they were "totally against vivisection". Then why would they never publish any parts of the only effective arguments that might really do away with the misleading, aberrant practice, namely the mass of existing medical arguments?

 

The answer came last year, when CIVIS learned that most, if not all, of the leading animal welfare societies of America - including those listed in Morgan's report - were Animals' Agenda's financial backers, with the Humane Society of the United States, America's biggest animal welfare organisation, leading the field.

 

And it is a fact that all of them pay lip service to animal rights in every field, with many beautiful and inspiring words by which they can gain trust, sympathies, and funds from the animals' friends, but all are committed to conceal the mass of existing evidence that vivisection is a scientific hoax. Who says it? Thousands of doctors and medical scientists all over the world whose voices only CIVIS has taken the trouble to collect and that less than a handful of allied organisations dare publicize. Others ignore or even contradict them.

 

Those who have read NAKED EMPRESS and also Morris Bealle's book, THE DRUG STORY, know that and how the international Drug Trust controls the governments and the media from Rockefeller Center. They also know how several decades ago the Drug Trust managed to convince all newspaper editors that since journalists were no medical experts, all medical stories should be "approved for correctness and uniformity" by a board of experts before publication, to safeguard the public from misinformation. And who would appoint those "experts"?  Why, the Drug Trust, of course! THEY and they alone were the "real experts". And this is how the massive spread of guided misinformation on medical matters was started well over half a century ago in the USA, and soon spread to the rest of the world.

 

Dr Walter Hadwen did not yet have this insider information when he hinted, well over half a century ago, as reported on our front page, at a "mysterious power that stands supreme behind the editorial chair."

 

The "mystery" stands unveiled in Morris Bealle's THE DRUG STORY and Hans Ruesch's NAKED EMPRESS, which for that reason have not been able to enter the regular anglophone book circuit.

 

HUGE ASSETS

 

How did CIVIS get to its rough 'one billion dollar' estimate? The fund balances listed by Morgan totaled $140,697,768 in 1983, the annual compensations totaled $954,279, and they should have doubled in the intervening years. First, because the so-called animal rights movement, which had started experiencing a sudden upsurge in 1978, has continued to grow unabatedly ever since, and so have the funds of the main societies.

 

For instance, the MSPCA had increased its funds and its compensation to the President by 10% in the year following the Morgan report. And then because substantial compensations, paid to officers of some societies in addition to their acknowledged salaries, have come to light since then. An example:

 

One of America's most celebrated investigative reporters, the syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, reported in September 1988 that John Hoyt, President of HSUS, had his society buy a $310,000 home for him. Hoyt and Vice-President/Treasurer Paul Irwin also received over the past four years money from two affiliates of HSUS - the National Association for the Advancement of Humane Education and the National Humane Education Center. Moreover, according to Anderson, "Since 1985, the NHEC, which is controlled by the Humane Society, has paid Hoyt $55,000 and Irwin $38,000. The NAAHE, a division of the Humane Society, paid Irwin $10,000 over the past two years... Insurance premiums and other benefits boosted Hoyt's compensation to $139,622 and Irwin's to $114,325 last year."

 

When that syndicated column appeared in the many hundred American dailies that subscribe to it, who rushed loyally to save Hoyt's and Irwin's tarnished image? None other than Animals' Agenda, with a half page article titled EXECUTIVES NOT OVERPAID SAYS HSUS BOARD.

 

The article had nothing to do with animals, nothing to do with vivisection. It dealt only with $$$$$$. The editor of Agenda presented the views of HSUS' attorney, Jacob A. Stein. Salient statement: "The HSUS during Mr. Hoyt's 18-year tenure as president has grown from a constituency of approximately 30,000 to over 800,000."  The overwhelming majority of which were won after the appearance of SLAUGHTER.

 

And how did the company manage to boost its constituency so impressively? By repeating the usual false promises that HSUS is fully engaged in the fight against every type of animal abuse, such as vivisection, and circulating frightful color pictures of vivisected animals.

 

But never one word about the proven baleful effects of animal based medical science was ever voiced by HSUS or any of its wealthy business colleagues. THAT subject is taboo.

 

DRAMATIC INCREASES

 

Some of today's richest societies didn't figure in the Morgan report, such as PETA, which lately has deservedly become America's largest and richest society, by identifying itself with the Animal Liberation Front and passing to, or encouraging, direct action.

 

By avoiding to criticize the scientific uselessness and damages from vivisection, PETA can get favorable mention in the press. So a Jan. 17, 1989 N.Y. Times article reported that PETA's membership had risen from 8,000 in 1983 to 250,000 this year, which could make it the biggest and richest animal rights society in the world. Confidential reports on its recently gained assets range anywhere between $2.5 and $250 million.

 

Another candidate for the "largest and richest" title is the World Society for the Protection of Animals, whose shenanigans are described in NAKED EMPRESS. It is an umbrella organisation for almost all the official, government supported, national "animal welfare" organisations the world over, committed to keeping vivisection alive. How its lawsuit aimed at suppressing NAKED EMPRESS boomeranged on the WSPA is related in our Report Nr 4.

 

WSPA retains credibility by occasionally launching spectacular anti-fur, anti-whaling, anti-corrida campaigns, but keeping vivisection alive by ignoring it, or, when pressed, passing on misleading information.

 

AXES TO GRIND

 

With HSUS and its President, Baptist minister John Hoyt, we have more than one axe to grind.

 

We first focussed our attention on Hoyt when he answered thus to one of our correspondents' inquiry: "Our society has never been, is not, and never intends to become an antivivisection society..."

 

So 800,000 friends of animals, who lately took the trouble to join this "humane" society, will be told by its top executive that "vivisection just can't be abolished", or words to that effect, and they will never be told that CIVIS has succeeded in launching an ILDAV, has succeeded in obtaining with SCIENTIFIC arguments a Parliamentary majority vote AGAINST vivisection in Italy, or any of the many other successes CIVIS has achieved on an international level, which all point to the fact that the ABOLITION of vivisection is not only possible but inevitable once the truth is allowed to come out.

 

And by the same token they will not be advised to view the HIDDEN CRIMES video made by Javier Burgos' SUPRESS, which can show them what vivisection really is, and incidentally also shows the tables of the Morgan report.

 

What the 800,000 HSUS members will be told instead, if they press their president about vivisection, is that it just can't be eliminated as yet because "it saves human lives." They will certainly never be told that millions of people have been killed by a medical pseudo-science based on animal experimentation. The Drug Trust watches that no news harmful to its financial interests reach the general public.

 

THE CASE OF NEW WOMAN

 

A few years ago a Florida based American magazine, New Woman, which claims a readership of six million, published an article titled 'Any Dunce Can Cut Up Live Animals', extracted from SLAUGHTER OF THE IN.NOCENT and signed Hans Ruesch. The author's signature was followed by a list of American AV and Humane societies. Topping the list was Hoyt's HSUS.

 

The editors informed the author that never in the magazine's whole history had there been such a terrific readers' response. The book itself was not on sale at the time, because its American publisher, Bantam Books, had been obliged to make it disappear shortly after publication, but all the humane and AV societies listed after the article were open for business, and they reaped what the author had sown.

 

Neither the author's address nor the name CIVIS had appeared anywhere in the magazine. When the author wrote a brief letter-to-the-editor to let the magazine's readers know that they could get free, additional information from him, not only was the letter never published, but it was revealed that the magazine's assistant editor, who was responsible for the publication of Ruesch's article, had been fired.

 

ANIMALS' AGENDA

 

Shortly before the ILDAV conference took place in November 1988 in Geneva, the editor of Agenda requested an article about the event from Hans Ruesch. The article was sent on time to appear in the magazine's January issue, and had been kept within the prescribed length. But it did not appear, nor was any explanation given to the author. The explanation may have been in the title: "Medical Doctors Demand Abolition of Vivisection", and in the citations of reputable, international doctors.

 

Instead of the Ruesch article, the magazine published one by a certain George Cave, who directed a small humane society, and represented a vicious attack against Hans Ruesch and his CIVIS organisation's scientific stand in their fight against vivisection.

 

The article, cosigned by a certain Dana Stuchell, didn't miss the opportunity of putting in a

solid plug for vivisection, saying: "The facts of the matter are that some animal experiments have contributed in some ways to human benefits." Like all their like-minded colleagues, Cave and Stuchell also were content with this sweeping generalization, unsubstantiated by facts, well knowing that generalisations cannot be refuted. Only facts can. And then the two fearless animal workers added a big lie - a lie that has been used and reused in Great Britain by the likes of Gill Langley, the certified infiltrator, currently being sued in court for libel and fraud.

 

THE BIG LIE

 

Cave and Stutchell slyly twisted Hans Ruesch's words, to turn white into black. Sanctimoniously, they lament: "After decades of struggle to make the concept and values of animals' rights respectable....we are advised to scuttle this moral foundation for a narrow focus on 'scientific fraud'."

 

It is obvious that the two never read SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT, which is the basis of the CIVIS ideology and policy, or else that they had received orders to ignore and falsify it, as Gill Langley & Co. are wont to do. In fact Ruesch never said "We must scuttle the moral foundation". On the contrary.  Whole chapters in SLAUGHTER are dedicated to the moral question. What we will say forever is that NOT using the formidable scientific arsenal at our disposal, lying there all ready to be used, but deliberately being ignored by the majority, or the totality, of the big organisations, is a veritable crime against humans and animals alike. Knowledgeable and honest people know that this and none other is the CIVIS stand.

 

Of course many angry letters from CIVIS addicts flooded the desk of Kim Bartlett, the magazine's ill-advised editor, to protest the falsification. Since the magazine didn't have the editorial courage of printing even just one of those letters, we'll do it here, starting with a letter from one of Bartlett's own friends:

 

"Dear Kim, I am writing you about the Cave and Burgos article in the January issue. I think you know I always have been quite honest and straightforward with you. I will not get into the motives underlying the articles; first because it would be improper for me to disclose confidences.  What I want to get into is the great disservice being done to Hans Ruesch. The most eloquent ethical argument against vivisection I ever heard was written by Hans himself.  It is on page 146 of SLAUGHTER: 'The first objection is a moral one. If vivisection were useful instead of damaging, that would be an aggravating rather than an extenuating circumstance, for it would sanction the principle that the end justifies the means - that well-worn picklock which has always opened all doors to wickedness, including those to Auschwitz and Buchenwald. If man accepts this principle, he can no longer consider himself a morally superior being.'

 

"Kim, in less than 70 words, Hans has stated the ethical argument completely and, I contend, convincingly. The problem is that scientists (or at least persons who hold out to be scientists) are not necessarily convinced by ethical arguments, be they about vivisection, nuclear power or whatever.

 

"Now, you yourself and many others oppose vivisection on ethical grounds, as you well should. What is it that some find so inappropriate that Hans also should oppose vivisection on scientific grounds? Hans never has taken issue with the ethical arguments. Indeed, as I have shown you, he himself advances them more skillfully than does practically anyone else.

 

"This is what bothers Hans, and I know it is the one thing that bothers him most (apart from vivisection itself; I don't think Hans would care one way or the other were vivisection nonexistent!): those who decry the absolutism of Hans' scientific position invariably fail to or refuse to cite even one example of vivisection directly resulting in a benefit to human health. They just sort of brush it aside, yet never disprove it. And, those who have attempted to disprove Hans, have been successfully refuted by him. Really, if a person is going to call another's reasoning wrong, the very least that person should do is cough up a bit of hard evidence. This does not happen, though....Jack Tanis, Hollywood, Florida."

 

Another protest was sent by Javier Burgos of SUPRESS. Excerpt: "When Wayne Pacelle called me to request the article from me, he promised that it would not be edited at all. The second paragraph was edited out totally. I wonder why the Animals' Agenda has not kept its word... I am extremely grateful to you, however, for George Cave's article. Now I do not have to tell everyone about it. George Cave said it himself. He believes with a passion that animal experimentation works. It is extremely interesting - and disturbing - to realize that your magazine and you also feel the same way and that all the philosophers and "ex-vivisectors" who are allowed to write rambling and unedited articles also share the same position which, surprise! surprise!, happens to be the basic position of the vivisectors: animal experimentation benefits humankind...

 

"I am sure that your readers will be quite puzzled. They must start wondering why everyone at the Animals' Agenda is so angry at Ruesch/Burgos who, after all, claim that experimental research on animals is not only useless but also counterproductive (this last point was ignored by Mr Cave, we wonder why). It would appear that in order to be liked and loved by the "animal rights" people one must say that vivisection is immoral but scientific...Javier Burgos, Pasadena."

Excerpts from another letter-to-the-editor:  "This letter is in reference to your January 1989 article, The Path to Anti-Vivisection, where Mr Burgos and Mr Ruesch are slaughtered for their claims that "not one experiment on animals has ever benefited humankind." If this idea is so ludicrous, why is the medical community constantly dodging television and radio broadcast invitations with these two gentlemen? If it is indeed true that there have been benefits from vivisection, one would think that the medical community would jump at the chance to silence these two gentlemen publicly and permanently. Yet, every attempt for a debate has been ignored by the medical community. It appears they are running scared. I'm also somewhat confused by the article's inconsistency. Several different times it purports that there have surely been SOME breakthroughs due to vivisection. Then, in obvious contradiction to these claims, states, 'Suppose the vivisection industry managed to produce an irrefutable case of human benefit...' Either they can or they can't. What is it? Sue Williams, Bristol, Virginia."

 

Since neither the letters above nor any other protest was published by the magazine, readers who wish to find out what Kim Bartlett, or "the mysterious power behind the editorial chair," don't want them to know are advised to subscribe to our Foundation Reports.

 

 

To Part 2