CIVIS Foundation Report 9, Spring/Summer 1990 (Part One)

 

 

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF DOCTORS AGAINST VIVISECTION, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ISRAEL

 

Tel-Aviv, May 15-16, 1990 - with participants from USA, UK, Italy, W. Germany, Sweden.

 

 

ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION: A METHODOLOGICAL ERROR. Excerpts from the address of Prof. Pietro Croce, Italy:

 

"It is only recently that the anti-vivisection movement has been joined by a large number of doctors, veterinarians, biologists, and scientists active in the field of Medicine and Biology, and medical technicians. (I'll tell you later why I am including medical technicians.) That makes it possible and even urgent to give a name to this new aspect of our struggle against animal experimentation.

 

"The name I suggest for our movement is "Scientific Anti-vivisectionism" as a counterpart of that "traditional" or "historic" or "zoophilic" anti-vivisectionism that was founded 107 years ago by the widow of Claude Bernard. "Scientific anti-vivisectionism" differs from "zoophilic" anti-vivisectionism but is not in opposition to it. It differs in that it is based on the assumption that no animal species can be accepted as an experimental model for any other animal species. This statement introduces the concept of experimentation "inter species" (among the species) as opposed to experimentation "intra species" (inside one species).

"Experimentation "inter species" means experimenting on one animal species and extrapolating the results on a different one. This type of experimentation is theoretically and practically always an error.

 

"Experimentation "intra species" (inside one species) means experimenting on one animal species and to use the results for the same species. This type of experimentation is theoretically correct, even if not always morally acceptable.

 

"Another terminological distinction which regards both human and other animals should be made between: a) active experimentation and b) clinical experimentation.

 

"Active experimentation means causing intentionally a disease in order to study and possibly to cure it. This method must be rejected, both on ethical and on scientific grounds; on scientific grounds, because a disease caused artificially is not the same disease as one born spontaneously.

 

"On the other hand, clinical experimentation, which means investigating (in man or in other animals) a spontaneously born disease is perfectly justified, both from the ethical and the scientific standpoint. Clinical experimentation is not only legitimate, but also indispensable for the progress of human and animal medicine.

 

"We have in the "scientific anti-vivisectionism" a moderate and a radical current. The moderates are split in two groups. The one considers that animal experimentation has been useful in the past but is gradually replaceable by non cruel methods in the future. The others believe it is useful, or even indispensable, but we should eliminate disqualifying abuses.

 

"Let me tell you my own, matured, firm opinion: I disagree with both the aforementioned, moderate approaches. I am on the radical side, which means we must strive for the total and unconditional abolition of any experimentation on living animals as a method of research in human medicine. And this not so much for the sake of animals, as for the sake of humans.

 

"Any extrapolation from animal to man is arbitrary and, what is worse, misleading. That makes animal experimentation a "methodological error": and an error that is inborn in the methodology is an error at any time, in every place, and is not dependent on the amount of experimentation performed. Therefore we must reject the proposal of reducing animal experiments just as we must reject our opponents' provocations when they say: "You must admit that at least in the past animal experimentation has been useful."

 

"No, Sir! A science that employs a wrong method is an erroneous science at any time, past and present. And in fact, erroneous is a large part of modern allopathic medicine, as more and more people are discovering every day at their own expense.

 

"Again, our opponents will object: "But medicine has made great advances in recent years."  True, but no advance can be proved to be due to animal experimentation. Now I will tell you something that will please you, that happened very recently in Bologna, among the medical technicians (that is why I mentioned technicians at the beginning of my speech) of the Institute Rizzoli, which is a leading hospital for orthopedy in Italy. A few months ago the directors decided to open a new department, a whole new building, for "experimental orthopedy", which is an euphemism for "vivisection in orthopedy".

 

"They needed some technician for the department of radiology of the new building. But out of 29 technicians (that is all the technicians who were already regularly employed at the Institute), not one, I repeat, not one accepted to collaborate with the vivisectors. They refused on the grounds of being "'conscientious objectors", which in Italy is admitted by law against compulsory military service. The event made all the main newspapers of Italy and was broadcast in a television program that has an audience between 5 and 6 million. I hope to tell you more in the second issue of this congress of Tel-Aviv, which, I hope, will be held in 1991. Thank: you Murry Cohen. Thank: you Nina Natelson. Thank: you Andre Menache. Thank you all, and arrivederci in 1991."

 

CIVIS addicts are proud of Prof Croce who so persistently and persuasively sustains, with his authoritative voice as an internationally renowned medical researcher, our demand for immediate and total abolition based primarily on scientific grounds, which CIVIS had launched in Rome in 1975 with the publication of its first Italian Technical Report. Although it quoted 150 international MDs and scientists who had denounced the fallacy and errors of animal experimentation, it had been ignored not only by all the media makers, but also by those who should have been the first to welcome and spread it: the big AV leagues and animal welfare societies. Those medical voices have meanwhile swelled to more than a thousand, and the list keeps growing. The long awaited English version of Prof Croce's comprehensive, brilliant book, VIVISECTION OR SCIENCE: A CHOICE, already out in Italian and German, is soon to appear under the CIVIS imprint and is certain to represent a new landmark on our uphill road to Abolition. So will the proceedings of the other speeches delivered in Tel-Aviv, according to the enthusiastic report we received from Marion Bienes, our Amsterdam representative who had flown in to Tel-Aviv to attend the meeting.

 

 

HOW TO CREATE DISEASE PANICS

 

We feel that the late Dr Robert S. Mendelsohn will be remembered long after the official "medical giants" of today will have disappeared in word and thought. There was also another such veritable giant in America several decades ago, whose name has survived and keeps popping up more and more often these days: Dr Herbert Shelton. From the States we lately received another very timely correspondence concerning Dr Shelton.

 

In June 1951 Dr Shelton published in his Hygienic Review a description of the hysteria and panic that was being created by the American media, as if they were all members of a nationwide symphony orchestra, who all obeyed the directives from the same conductor's baton. The tactics used in 1951 to scare and stampede people into physicians' offices to see if they had cancer - tactics at once adopted by other industrialized nations - are appropriately remembered today when the same forces are foisting upon the world a new panic.

 

Apropos cancer, there are 420,000 deaths a year allegedly due to cancer in the U.S.A. Autopsies reveal that two-thirds of all those who die have cancer. But you don't see any campaign to generate hysteria and panic as with so-called AIDS, which is relatively negligible - only 6,000 people died of it in 1986. Why? The cancer business is safely within the medical corral, whereas AIDS is a "promotion" to generate increased business for the CHE-ME-VI Syndicate (see NAKED EMPRESS for the Chemical-Medical- Vivisection Kombinat, which Shelton was still just calling "the drug/medical system").

 

Now read Dr Shelton's revealing article: "April 1951 was set aside by presidential proclamation as "Cancer Month," the purpose being to keep the people thinking about cancer, to frighten them more and more over cancer and to get them to give as much money as possible to the cancer fund that is collected each year by the American Cancer Society. The plea for funds with which to carry on what is called "research" is never-ending. The method is always the same, no matter what the disease for which a cure is sought: it is that of frightening the wits out of the people and then picking their pockets before they have time to regain their wits. April 1951 was a month of fear propaganda devoted to the "killer", as they call cancer.

 

"An example of how this fear appeal is working is supplied by an article in the San Antonio Express April 8, 1951, which covered more than half a page. The article starts with the following sentence, which is deliberately designed to strike terror into the hearts of readers: "Somewhere in the city of San Antonio at this very moment, the nation's Number Two Killer may be about to strike - a silent killer, armed with agony and fear and shrouded in mysterious origins". That most of the deaths of cancer patients and at least ninety percent of their sufferings are induced by drugs, knives, X rays and radium rays is completely ignored in this screeching about the "killer", is merely one phase of the dishonesty practiced by the fiends who beg for more money with which to finance their torture of animals.

 

"In the article under consideration cancer is also referred to as a "national killer". Somebody slipped a cog when he penned that line - else he would have called cancer a "global killer". This fear-creating propaganda, designed to loosen the purse strings of gullible people as well as to get them into physicians' offices, is euphemistically called, in the article in the Express, "an intensive education and fund-raising crusade against cancer". To call it an education crusade is to do violence to both the terms education and crusade: It is an intensive fear-creating propaganda campaign, a panhandling program.

 

"Aside from this, all of this deliberately created panic is a crime against the health and mental integrity of the people of the country, which, if we had intelligent and honest men in high office in this country, our rulers would oppose instead of aiding and abetting the rapacity of the medical trusts. We are a fear-driven nation - the capitalists frighten us with the bogey of communism; the militarists frighten us with the threat of atomic war; the theologians frighten us with imaginary hells, purgatories, devils and demons; the medical gangsters frighten us with cancer, germs and viruses, and all of them for their own purposes, namely picking our pocket in one way or another".

 

Dr. Shelton continues evoking some of the dirty tactics used by the medical system to scare the pants off people with the cancer scourge. However, what we printed above says enough to alert you to the fact that, in the present AIDS hysteria, the press, TV and radio are merely responding to their masters' and fellow cartel members' orchestrated campaign to milk us through their various governments, each tied up in a love marriage with Big Business: the Che-Me-Vi kombinat.

 

 

CFS - NEW DISEASE ARRIVING?  WELCOME!

 

CIVIS was expecting to get plenty more play out of the AIDS scare, when up comes TIme magazine, whose editorial offices are in New York's Rockefeller Center (same building that is believed to be home to the Drug Trust), with still a new disease scare in the Medicine Section of its May 14, 1990 International Edition. Dramatically titled "Stalking a Shadowy Assailant" and camping a luridly colored, red-and-yellow, Western movie type "WANTED" sign, the article identifies the "shadowy assailant" as CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME. Now hold on to your hats, folks: the subtitle says, "The U.S. tries to find the cause of a devastating fatigue".

 

Of course it would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic: now the taxpayers and god knows how many naive do-gooders and Maecenas will be milked again of millions of dollars with which the cunning hominides of the laboratories will go shopping for more millions of mice, dogs, and monkeys, which will have to undergo "stress" experiments at the hands of the torture specialists until they develop the "same symptoms", and yet not the same, that seem to worry the TIme copywriters and obviously due - take your pick - to too much alcohol, too much coffee, too loud rock music, too many vitamin and pep pills combined with too many sleeping tablets and tranquilizers, too much meat and animal fats, too many dairy products, too much cocaine or heroin or crack, and maybe most of those excesses combined. This is serious business, as Time writers Linda Williams and Cheryl Crooks report, without laughing:

 

"The symptoms are bad enough: sluggishness, sore muscles, fever, headaches and depression. But on top of all that, people who suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome often have to endure the accusations of hypochondria. Now, years after the mysterious CFS gained notoriety as the "yuppie disease." the U .S. Government is finally starting to take it seriously. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, which has been receiving about 1,000 calls a month from people who claim to be CFS victims, has launched a $1 million 'surveillance' program in which 350 physicians will study CFS cases in Reno, Nev., Atlanta, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Wichita, Kans. 'We're sort of starting from ground zero with this illness,' says Walter Gunn of the CDC's viral diseases division.

 

"To many experts, the CDC program comes none too soon. Last month, when 50 researchers gathered at the world's first CFS symposium in Cambridge, England, Dr. Byron Hyde of Ottawa called the illness "a major health and economic threat, second only to that of AIDS", and berated governments for "turning their backs to this health disaster".

 

"No one knows how prevalent the illness is. Many doctors believe a plethora of past and present ailments, given such names as Royal Free disease, neurasthenia, myalgic encephalomyelitis and chronic mononucleosis, are all forms of CFS. (CMS: Shades of AIDS?) The first documented CFS-like epidemic occurred in Los Angeles more than 50 years ago, and a serious one struck 1,136 people in Iceland in 1948. A huge outbreak in 1984 affected as many as 100,000 people in the U.S., Canada and New Zealand, and fresh reports have popped up steadily since then.

 

While CFS seems to strike young professionals with energetic life-styles particularly hard, CDC's Gunn says it was a mistake to label it a yuppie disease, since it affects "people of all ages, from all walks of life".

 

"Researchers have yet to pinpoint the cause of CFS. The Epstein-Barr virus is active in some, but not all, sufferers, and experts doubt it is the root of the trouble. The illness seems to involve some malfunction of the immune system, perhaps triggered by stress, that can allow any number of normally dormant viruses, including Epstein-Barr, herpes VI and even polio-like pathogens, to become active.

 

"The illness is hard to diagnose, but fevers, swollen lymph nodes, muscle weakness, headaches and bouts of fatigue that last for six month or more can all be signs of CFS. Many patients are unable to work and even become bedridden. Alan Tolkoff, a Los Angeles management consultant who has recovered from CFS, got so weak that his wife had to spoon-feed him. With no specific tests to pinpoint the syndrome, patients having milder symptoms can go through several physicians before finding one who believes something is seriously wrong. However, more and more doctors are listening to the complaints and learning to distinguish CFS patients from people with tendencies toward hypocondria and depression.

 

"With the CDC on the case, a better understanding of the illness may not be too far away. In the meantime, CFS sufferers are getting impatient. 'The surveillance program is better than nothing,' says 37 years old Barry Sleight, a CFS patient and lobbyist in Bethesda, Md., 'but it needs to be expanded. My God, this is an epidemic'."

 

This latest Time article arouses in us simple people a weird sense of deja vu , meaning "it seems to me, I've seen all this before, didn't I?" Now let us all get ready for a new funding drive for a vaccine against this brand new malady, "Fatigue", and we only wished we'd had it available in our school days. And according to our mole inside the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Ga., USA, a vaccine against stupidity is next on the drawing board.

 

 

HOW INFILTRATION PREVENTS INFORMATION

 

CIVIS is committed to revealing the great scientific fraud inherent in vivisection (animal experimentation). We said it before, we shall say it again: If this fraud - which a hundred years ago had been recognized by the majority of the great men and women of the time, including the best doctors, as what it is, namely a self-serving fraud that only intellectually limited or thoroughly corrupt individuals could commit or commission - has by now become tacitly acknowledged by all the governments and accepted by the majority of the Western world as a manifestation of humanitarianism, intelligence, and enlightenment, this could never have come to pass without the complicity of those organisations that were always in a prime position for attracting into their ranks the most enlightened humanitarians: namely the big animal welfare and humane societies.

 

The heads of the chemo-medical Syndicate, whose aim is not only the short-sighted, ruthless exploitation of all life on earth but also of the earth itself, had been quick to recognize this, to infiltrate the humane and protectionist organisations and to take them over, so as to prevent any concerted, effective action from the members, by discouraging and paralyzing them with constant misinformation, empty long-term promises, and pleas for “patience”.

 

No less effective than the organisations in blocking the spread of any honest medical information were, and still are, the much touted “idealists” and “moral philosophers”, who make it a point to deny the validity of vivisection from the ethical standpoint only. If ever they touch on the scientific aspect of it, then they cite the arguments of the vivisectionists.

 

There was a time, not long past, when almost all the cultural giants of the day would have felt ashamed NOT to thunder their indignation at the perpetrators of the sick practices. But where are their current counterparts? Where are today’s Victor Hugos, Richard Wagners, Tagores, Bismarcks, Garibaldis, Queen Victorias, Disraelis, Gandhis, G. B. Shaws? Have you ever heard from Norman Mailer, Alberto Moravia, Queen Elizabeth on the subject of vivisection in our days? Of Margaret Thatcher we know only that she is a particularly passionate propagandist of it.

 

Now how can a cultural mode shift so radically in the course of a few decades, although today far more undeniable evidence exists than ever before of the cruelty of the practice, and rapidly growing proofs of its damages to our health? Proof which in former times was lacking. We say it again: in our personal, considered opinion, because of the tacit complicity of the big organisations and philosophizing “moralists”, who are mostly guilty by omission rather than by commission.

 

When we chide some humane and AV societies for steadfastly refusing to touch the most effective weapons, namely the scientific evidence, against vivisection, then we don’t want to criticize the members any more than we mean the readers when we accuse the press organs of blatant corruption and of violating our constitutional right to free speech by systematically blocking all we strive to convey to the public. Our indictments are solely for the directors, the presidents, the editors, the proprietors, who play ball with the immensely lucrative medical system as they want to continue reaping the benefits and expand the power provided by their posts. This we can affirm with equanimity, having had close encounters with several of them.

 

Since vivisection doesn’t serve medical or scientific purposes, but the political, i.e. financial, establishment instead, its well-trained agents never had any difficulty in infiltrating and taking over any organisation that jeopardized those interests. Easiest of all have always proved the humane organisations, as they had not been started by avid go-getters but by naturally soft hearted, considered, even naive individuals, hardly experienced in the ways of the world, and of ruthless entrepreneurs in particular.

 

Because vivisection can only be abolished by the force of law, and lawmakers cannot act against it so long as it gets advertised as a blessing rather than a bane, it is the main task of the infiltrators to keep members and public opinion in the deep dark about the existing mass of scientific evidence against vivisection, allowing only its cruelty to be denounced, as it cannot be hidden anyway; but it can be minimised.

 

To part 2