CIVIS Answers Questions on Vivisection (Part Two)

 

 

Q: Is it not true that today's higher life expectancy is due to vaccination?

 

A: Medical historians take a different view, since the decline in the infectious diseases and the increase in life expectancy set in half a century before the introduction of mass vaccinations. They were the result of improved hygiene and better general living standards.

 

Q: Were not the great plagues and epidemics defeated by vaccination?

 

A: All the great plagues and epidemics evinced a certain cycle. Inoculations were only introduced when the cycle was already approaching its end. The devastating bubonic plague of the Middle Ages disappeared on its own without medical intervention and long before there was any talk of vaccinations. Puerperal (childbirth) fever which in earlier times snatched away the lives of so many newborn babies and their mothers and for a long time diminished general life expectancy was defeated solely by the hygienic measures introduced by Semmelweis many decades before Pasteur (for details, see SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT, chapter entitled, "Surgery").

 

Q: Was not smallpox, at least, conquered by vaccination?

 

A: Quite the opposite. Great Britain abolished compulsory smallpox vaccination towards the end of the 19th century, because its dangerous nature had rightly been recognised: and even in the 20th century Britain had fewer cases of smallpox than those European countries which had compulsory vaccination (for details, see SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT, chapters entitled, "Vaccines and other Confusions" and 'The Giants with Feet of Clay").

 

Q: Is it then not possible to establish beyond doubt whether an inoculation has achieved its purpose?

 

A: Proof of this can never be forthcoming. To get a statistically sound answer one would have to expose a large number of unvaccinated persons to a dangerous infection and then compare them with a corresponding number of vaccinated persons who were exposed to the same infection but had been vaccinated.

 

Q: Doesn't the rapid population explosion in the Third World prove that vaccination protects against disease?

 

A: The introduction of mass vaccination programmes is always accompained by improved hygienic measures and better living conditions. That more food and less filth have a positive effect on life expectancy is obvious.

 

Q: So it is not possible to prove any positive effects from vaccination?

 

A: That has never been achieved. The only thing that can be proven is the numerous instances of severe vaccine damage. Whole volumes have been written on this and are to be found in medical libraries. But we are not here questioning whether vaccination is useful or not, but whether animals need to be used. And again and again vaccines not developed on animals have shown themselves to be less dangerous.

 

Q: For example?

 

A: To produce vaccines one requires basic biological material, which does not necessarily need to come from animals. Thus, in the ex-Soviet Union almost all vaccines were developed using duck eggs; and this certainly not because the Soviet authorities were great animal lovers (in the Soviet Union there were very few pets, due to the enormously high animal tax imposed there), but because this production method had proven itself as much less dangerous for the user.

 

Q: Wasn't polio eliminated thanks to experiments on monkeys?

 

A: That is propaganda, deliberate misinformation. Precisely the opposite was the case. Massive polio vaccination programmes were only introduced when this extremely rare infectious disease was already dying out. Polio declined in all the countries that did not vaccinate against it, just as in those which did. These latter, however, witnessed a renewed flaring up of the illness every time after vaccination. Brazil was hit particularly badly, since there had previously been almost no polio at all in that country, until mass vaccination was undertaken.

 

Q: Did polio vaccination really cause provable health damage?

 

A: Certainly. In 1983, for instance - some 30 years after the allegedly so successful action against polio - there were major polio vaccination scandals in the USA, Great Britain and New Zealand. Of particular interest is the fact that the tissue cultures derived from monkey kidneys (upon which Salk and Sabin based their vaccines) proved to be very dangerous, and were so precisely because they were of animal origin. Recognition of this fact led to the production of a new vaccine, which derived not from animals but from human cell cultures (For details see SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT, chapters entitled, "Alternative Methods" and "Cancer-Causing Drugs").

 

A letter in the "Swiss Observer" stated some time back that to this day it is not possible to prove the presence of tuberculosis in a patient without doing animals tests.

 

This and similar medical nonsense is propagated by Dr Carl Stemmler, collaborator on the "Swiss Observer" - a newspaper which likes to present this gentleman as a great animal lover, evidently all the better to deceive the public on the subject of vivisection. Stemmler is a passionate advocate of animal experiments and was for years president of the state commission for the control of animal experiments in the city of Basle: that is, a commission which routinely approved even the most senseless, most cruel experiments. Unfortunately, public opinion is helplessly exposed to the deceptions of such pseudo-experts, since all other sources of information and contrary views are denied free expression.

 

Q: Is it not true, then, that one cannot prove the presence of TB without animal tests?

 

A: It is most definitely not true. In earlier decades they knew no other method than injecting a small amount of material including the phlegm, saliva, stomach juices and urine of a patient into guinea-pigs and then waiting for weeks to see whether they developed TB. The results were - as always with vivisection - unreliable. But since then, more skilled researchers have developed a means of culturing TB bacteria "in vitro'" i.e. outside the animal body in an artificial culture medium, so that examination now proceeds using the microscope alone and the animal tests have been obsolete for well over 20 years.

 

Q: Okay, granted that animals are useless for human medical research. What, though, about surgery? Surely a surgeon needs to practise his manual dexterity by operating on animals?

 

A: Allow me a counter question: Would you let yourself be operated on by a vet? Why not?  We shall answer you with the words of Lawson Tait, the famous British surgeon, who at the end of the 19th century developed fundamental operative techniques which are still in use today. After years of experimenting on animals, Tait gave up this method and started to speak out forcibly in a veritable campaign against vivisection. He wrote, for instance: "As a method of research, experimentation on living animals has led all those who have practised it to quite wrong conclusions, and the reports abound with cases where not only animals are uselessly sacrificed but where, because of the errors, humans have been added to the list of sacrifices too." A whole host of authoritative surgeons of today and yesteryear have expressed similar views.

 

Q: How, then, does a surgeon develop the necessary manual skill?

 

A: Abel Desjardins, the best-known French surgeon of his time and professor of surgery at the University of Paris, answered this question unequivocally and logically. In a lecture in Geneva he stated, amongst other things: "First one must be an assistant to an experienced surgeon for a long time. Then one takes up simple cases under the supervision of one's teacher, who can warn about every wrong move or give advice. Gradually one moves on to more difficult cases. That is the true method of training up a surgeon, and I state categorically that there is no other. Any training based upon operations upon dogs cannot but lead to lamentable errors. The surgeon who knows his art cannot learn a thing from such exercises, and the trainee does not learn correct surgical technique from them but becomes a dangerous surgeon." (For details, see SLAUGHTER Of THE INNOCENT, chapters entitled, "Surgery", "Surgical Training", and "Major Surgeons Speaking").

 

Q: If the situation really is as you state it, why are these facts not more generally known?

 

A: Because public opinion is manipulated by the vested-interest groups of the chemical industry and the doctors, who constantly back each other up. In Switzerland, for example, the chemical industry is well known to be the dominating force, with the pharmaceutical branch being the most lucrative. The chemical and arms industries are not subject to the politicians, but rank above them in real power. They also influence the attitudes of the opinion-forming Press, which depends for its survival on advertisements - approximately 80-90% of all ads stem directly or indirectly from big business, which exerts an effective form of censorship, so that our ads (the ads of CIVIS) are simply refused by the great press barons of Switzerland, even though we are trying to point out the deplorable state of affairs that exists in matters of public health.

 

Q: Do you mean to say that not even doctors are all inspired by high ideals but are manipulated by industry?

 

A: Exactly. Through generous endowments to universities, the chemical industry buys the indebtedness and dependency of relevant university departments, not to mention the doctors, who have become assiduous propagandists for the disastrous but lucrative products of the chemical industry. Intelligent, brave and honest doctors who prescribe cheap, tried-and-tested, safe natural medications are denounced as "quacks" by the chemical pushers who dominate orthodox medicine, and nature-cure physicians are often thrown out of the medical fraternity altogether. By means of generous donations, the financial powers of the chemical industry have won over the leaders of all the big animal-protection societies and have even bribed the leaders of some anti-vivisection societies, so that they now see their main role as hushing up the truth about vivisection's uselessness and ever attendant dangers. In other words, their task is to hold anti-vivisectionism in check.

 

Q: How can that be done?

 

A: By asserting that at least a certain percentage of animal experiments "are still essential" and that one cannot therefore press for total abolition. But through this means, any experiment can be justified, since it is the pseudo-scientists of the chemical and medical industry who claim the right to decide what is and is not "essential". Experience has shown that for them everything is ultimately deemed "essential". That is why we insist on total abolition of all animal experiments, instead of regulation, which already exists and has proven itself utterly inadequate. The vivisectors are only too keen to "regulate" themselves.

 

Q: Didn't the Swiss Academy of Medical Science recently publish certain ethical guidelines to protect laboratory animals?

 

A: That is revealed as just another deceit when one realises that this high-sounding organisation, disguised as a "Foundation", was actually set up by the chemical industry and is financed by them: their only purpose is to propagate their harmful, sickness-generating poisons.

 

Q: So you don't ascribe any philanthropic motives to the chemical industry?

 

A: What would YOU say about an industry that does not hesitate to dump drugs onto the peoples of the Third World - drugs which have long been withdrawn from the manufacturers' own markets because of their devastating side-effects?

 

Q: Haven't the chemical firms in Basle threatened to relocate their factories abroad if vivisection is abolished?

 

A: That is just empty propaganda to intimidate the politicians and the people. Organisations which have succeeded in foisting poisons and carcinogenic ''medicines'' as "anti-cancer" drugs onto the world will certainly manage to sell less dangerous products if they wish to. We do not demand that they stop selling medicines, but that they change their methods of research. The turnover of Basle medicines could even become greater if on the packets was written: "The efficacy of this medicine has not been tried out on animals."

 

Q: Another point occurs to me: the rhesus factor was discovered by animal experiments, as the name indicates.

 

A: Not at all. The rhesus factor, like everything else, was first discovered in the human being and then sought after in the animal. In 1939 Levine and Stetson had discovered a new antigen (substance that causes the formation of antibodies in the blood) in the serum of a woman who, after a still birth, had had a blood transfusion from her husband, with grave consequences.* They described the agglutinin (substance that causes the sticking together of red blood corpuscles) without giving a name to it. Had they done so, the "rhesus factor" would have a different name today. A year later, Landsteiner and Wiener discovered that when one injects blood from the "Macacus Rhesus" monkey into the peritoneum of a rabbit, an agglutinin appears in the blood of the rabbit which is similar (but not identical) to the agglutinin described by Levine and Stetson, and they gave it the designation, "RH", which is short for "Rhesus".**

 

Q: A final question: Why don't you concern yourself more with the well-being of humankind rather than that of animals?

 

A: From all that has been said so far you will be able to see that we are also concerned for the good of humanity, and actually a lot more than the chemical industry, the media, the doctors and the governments all put together. With such organisations, the "good of humanity" and "our children" are welcome pretexts for boosting their own power and wealth. This question is usually put to us by people who have never done anything for either animals or people. There are adequate statutes in our legislation for the protection of people. But the same legislation has seen to it that not the laboratory animals but solely their torturers and ruthless exploiters are protected.  And animal experimenters exploit humanity too.

 

Q: Do you believe that all this can be changed? If so, how?

 

Only through a thorough re-education of the whole population. And that is precisely what CIVIS is attempting to achieve. Would you like to help us?

 

 

* Levine p. and Stetson R.: "An unusual case of intra-group agglutination, Journal of the American Medical Association 113: 126 (1939).

 

** Landsteiner K. and Wiener A.S.: "An agglutinable factor in human blood recognisable by immune sera for Rhesus blood", Soc. expo BioI. Med. 43: 223 (1940)