Animal Experimentation: The Hidden Cause of Environmental Pollution? Absolutely!

 

 

Have you ever wondered why the air we breath, the food we eat, the water we drink, and the ground we walk on are contaminated? The highly suppressed answer is simple: Also known as vivisection, animal experimentation is the hidden cause of environmental pollution and public health problems. Animal research is an unscientific methodology for chemical assessment. The non-conclusive, erroneous nature of animal testing creates a smoke screen - an alibi which permits the continued manufacture of all kinds of toxic and hazardous chemicals. Vivisection conveys a false illusion of safety, but all it ensures is a continued demand for ever “newer” and “improved” poisons which end up polluting our planet.

 

HOW IS ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION GENERATED?

 

Each year, tens of millions of various types of chemical products are manufactured for commercial, industrial, agricultural, military, household, and personal use around the world. Although the exact number is unknown, it is estimated that as many as 70 million different types of toxic and hazardous products are used just by U.S. industries each year.(1) Pesticides alone make up 40,000 different formulations.(2) Prescription drugs add up to over 205,000 different types.

 

It is these chemicals that contaminate our air, soil, streams, oceans, and underground water supplies, as well as our food and bodies. They do so while they are being manufactured, as they are used, and when they are disposed of. They pollute the air when chemicals escape into the atmosphere from factory stacks during the process of production, use, and disposal. They pollute streams when industries release contaminated waters into stormwater channels and when chemicals are intentionally poured down street gutters, or are washed into them by rain. Chemicals pollute the ocean waters when streams empty into them, and when chemicals flushed down sewer pipes are released into the ocean. They pollute the ground and underground water supplies when chemicals are  intentionally poured onto soil, such as with pesticide application onto agricultural land, when they leak out of broken pipelines and underground storage tanks, and when chemicals thrown out with garbage leach out of the landfills.

 

THE ROLE OF VIVISECTION

 

In order to make these poisons acceptable to the public, the chemical, pharmaceutical, and petroleum empires take refuge in vivisection. Look around you, in your home and your workplace there are scores of chemical products that have been proclaimed “safe” and/or “acceptable” for our use.

 

Have you ever wondered where these safety assurances come from? These “safety” assurances have all been fabricated in vivisectionist laboratories.(3) Rats, mice, guinea pigs, hamsters, squirrels, gerbils, rabbits, fish, toads, frogs, lizards, insects, dogs, cats, monkeys, apes, wild birds, quails, pigeons, turkeys, ducks, chickens, cows, goats, and horses are among the animals used.

 

Numerous types of toxicity tests (LD, LC, LDLo, TDLo, TCLo, MTD, etc.) are performed under the banner of toxicity testing. Other research includes skin and eye irritancy tests (the infamous Draize Test), carcinogenicity (cancer)  and mutagenicity (genetic mutation) studies, teratogenicity (birth defects)  and reproductive toxicity studies, hepatotoxicity (liver damage)  and nephrotoxicity (kidney damage) studies, neurotoxicity studies, etc. From these studies, staggering amounts of ambiguous, contradictory, and invalid data are compiled which allows the “scientists” to draw their “scientific” conclusions. For example, if they want to “prove” that a particular chemical is not a carcinogen, all they have to do is present the evidence from those animal tests that supports this view. On the other hand, if they wish to prove that the same chemical is a carcinogen, they produce other laboratory tests that show the product to be carcinogenic.

 

This is what Dr. Bruce Ames, Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center at the University of California at Berkeley has to report: “Of 392 chemicals in our database tested in both rats and mice, 226 were carcinogens in at least one test, but 96 of these were positive in the mouse and negative in the rat or vice versa.” Dr. Ames continues: “Conversely, important human carcinogens may not be detected in standard tests in rodents; this was true for a long time for both tobacco smoke and alcohol, the two largest identified causes of neoplastic death in the United States.”(4)

 

A simple analysis of Dr. Ames’ findings proves that, for all practical purposes, there is a 50:50 chance that a mouse carcinogen would be a rat carcinogen as well - this amounts to the flip of a coin. This means that there is absolutely no correlation between the rat and the mouse. If there is no correlation between two such “closely” related animals, there certainly can never be one between the rat and the dog, or the dog and the cat, let alone any correlation between any of these animals and the human animal.

 

It is not surprising that thousands of “known” animal carcinogens are routinely used and/or found in our drinking water, food, and the chemical products we use. Chloroform is one such carcinogen, a by-product of useable water supply chlorination. Pesticides declared carcinogenic following animal tests, and yet routinely sprayed on crops, is another example.(5) Triethanolamine, an ingredient in many laundry detergents and Perchloroethylene, the commonly used dry cleaning agent, are amongst the countless “animal carcinogens” which we consume.

 

An interesting distortion of the system surfaces when, occasionally, a carcinogenic product is marketed with a “warning” label. An example of this is the case of a most popular artificial sweetener, Sweet’N Low, which bears the following label: “Use of This Product May Be Hazardous To Your Health. This product Contains Saccharin Which Has Been Determined To Cause Cancer In Laboratory Animals.” Of course, it should be pointed out that saccharin is regulated in California as a carcinogen. The supporting evidence for such a regulation: cancer in bladders of male rats as a result of ingestion of saccharin at doses equivalent to human consumption of 800 to 1,000 cans of diet soda per day for an entire lifetime.(6) Incredibly, many similar “research projects” are conducted all over the world with concentrations of test chemicals which exceed those consumed by humans by a factor of more than one million.(7)

 

Not only does overdosing contribute to the fallacy of vivisection, but the issue of inter-species variation makes all types of vivisection inherently erroneous. Since each species of animal is a different biochemical entity, it follows that each species will react differently to various substances, not only from another species of animal, but also from the human animal. Even two “closely” related animals such as the rat and the mouse react differently from each other. Variations on the order of magnitude of many thousands are commonplace between different species.(8)

 

The principle of inter-species variation is not the exception, but rather the rule. The Egyptians knew about inter-species variation thousands of years ago. In order to find out whether the Pharaoh’s food was poisoned,  they would first feed it, not to the rat, but to the cook. In fact, almost every toxicological book, report, or article published today inevitably addresses “scientists’” serious concerns over the issue of inter-species variation. Yet, practitioners of “modern” science and medicine have chosen to ignore, defy, and/or conceal their own observations and findings, as well as the most basic laws of nature which govern the endless biochemical differences between different forms of life.

 

ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS

 

The fraud of animal research extends beyond the process of chemical production and marketing and applies to the entire field of “environmental protection.” Risk assessment studies, aimed at proving or disproving the dangers associated with toxic emissions from an incinerator into the air, discharge of wastewater from a sewage treatment plant into the ocean, discharge of chemicals from an industrial plant into a creek, or application of pesticides on crops, are examples of environmental research where vivisection is routinely used to justify varying and contradictory conclusions--depending on the vested interests of those who foot the bill.

 

Other cases of environmental laws and policies which involve vivisection, are the government established/enforced safe drinking water standards, safe air quality limits, safe worker exposure levels (TLV’s, PEL’s, TWA’s, and STEL’s), regulation of pesticides, and the requirements of Material Safety Data Sheets for tens of millions of industrial chemicals.

 

Unfortunately, far from safeguarding the public and the environment, these “safety” measures make it very safe and very legal for polluters to pollute - so long as they do so within the boundaries of the law. The reason is as follows: In order for any regulation to protect the public and the environment, it must be founded on sound scientific grounds. The scientific community claims to accept this basic premise. In fact, it is often in conflict with the regulatory community because it claims that instead of establishing regulations based on scientific knowledge, regulators establish them based on economic considerations (i.e., cost to industry for compliance with the laws).

 

However, what the scientific community fails to admit is that what it calls “science,” is nothing but fiction. And, since today’s environmental laws are based on unscientific data obtained from erroneous animal tests, the tragic result is that far from protecting the public and the environment, such laws and regulations protect the industry and allow the existence of carcinogens, teratogens, and toxicants of all sorts in our food, air, water, home, and workplace.

 

Clearly, policies genuinely intended to protect the environment and the public would have to be based on true science. Thus, eliminating reliance on animal research and banning the production of tens of millions of poisons, while responsibly controlling the use of those absolutely “essential” ones to which humankind has managed to addict itself. It is amazing how such research and policies are instigated and supported by self-proclaimed “environmental” and “green” institutions and, in general, by the “environmental movement.”

 

THE PROBLEM

 

The problem is that there is an intentionally created vicious cycle that supports many interest groups. These groups, which are all interrelated, consist of the following: the chemical empire, the petroleum empire, the pharmaceutical empire, the food industry, the tobacco industry, the research institutes, the “health” institutes, the military, the government, and even the so-called environmental movement. In other words, one group creates the problem, one group claims to be assessing and studying the problem, and yet another one pretends to be fighting and solving the problem.

 

Animal research is presented to the public as a scientific methodology for the assessment of chemicals. Manufacturers claim that they identify chemical hazards through animal testing. Government agencies claim that they minimize hazards through enforcement of regulations (established through animal tests). Health institutes claim that if we don’t give them carte blanche to conduct animal research, we and our children are destined to die miserable deaths. They claim that civilization and progress go hand in hand with chemical growth. They claim that without animal research, life on planet earth is destined to cease. The fact is that animal research is responsible for the devastation of life on our planet, as well as the disaster caused to our health and the collapse of our economy.(9)

 

Unfortunately, most people as well as the majority of the environmental organizations fail to make this vital connection. It should not be difficult to realize then that the millions of synthetic chemicals to which we are routinely exposed, cannot possibly be harmless to our organism. Yet, the nature and extent of the damage is evident only after the human “guinea pig” has been exposed to the toxicant. It is because of this fact that,for example, an animal carcinogen may not be a human carcinogen after all. Conversely, chemicals found safe through animal tests routinely damage untold numbers of human beings. Proof of this is the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) withdraws as many as 12,000 prescription drugs (found “safe” based on many years of animal testing prior to FDA registration) from the marketplace every single year.

 

THE SOLUTION

 

The solution to our environmental and related health problems does not require a return to the “dark ages” as some may fear. Once we realize that a million animal tests are just as worthless (and, in fact, hazardous) as one single animal test, and once we accept the fact that animals cannot and will not warn us, let alone protect us, against the inherent dangers of toxic chemicals, pollution, and disease, the responsibility of protecting humankind will fall upon ourselves.

 

Instead of demanding more “research” and “study” from chemical manufacturers, instead of pushing our government for more “regulations” and “safety limits,” and instead of trying to reverse the problem after the fact, let us begin with ourselves in our own homes. Let us cut down on the source of pollution by eliminating the many poisons which we use in our everyday lives. It is said that today’s home contains more chemicals than a laboratory at the turn of the century. So, let us begin by getting rid of all toxic products that we have stored underneath our kitchen sink, in the medicine cabinet, and in the garage. We can replace these products with simple, natural, and effective solutions for our personal and household cleaning needs.

 

Let us eat poison-free food out of poison-free containers. Let us wear poison-free clothes. Let us drive poison-free cars. Let us watch television programs which do not bombard us with countless commercials peddling “new and improved” poisons, day and night. There will be a time when recycling, living green, vegetarianism, and anti-vivisectionism will not be a matter of choice, but a matter of survival. There will come the time when progress and modernization will not be equated with the existence of more chemicals and drugs. It is not difficult to see that the only “progress” which the use and misuse of chemicals has to offer is the progress toward the total destruction of our health, economy, and planet.

 

Vivisection is the hidden cause of our environmental pollution and public health problems. Let us destroy the myth and medieval ritual of vivisection for the sake of pursuing real science, true progress and civilization, and the assurance of a safe and poison-free environment for ourselves and the generations to come.

 

REFERENCES

 

1. OSHA staff estimates that there are between 40 and 70 million Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) in use nationwide.

 

2. Registered by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and regulated under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).

 

3. Under the Toxic Substances Control Act; the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act; etc., the U.S. EPA is authorized to require the animal testing of “new” chemicals, old chemicals that are proposed for new uses or for which there is a suspicion of adverse health effects, and new mixtures of old or new chemicals. In other words, any and all chemicals may be tested on animals.

 

4. Bruce N. Ames, Renae Magaw, Lois Swirsky Gold, “Ranking Possible Carcinogenic Hazards,” Science 236 (1987), p. 275.

 

5. “Food Use Pesticides Which Have Been Evaluated For Carcinogenicity,” U.S. EPA, Office of Pesticides & Toxic Substances, Reto Engler, Ph.D., July 1992.

 

6. For example, see Edward J. Calabrese, “Animal extrapolation. A look inside the toxicologist’s black box,” Environmental Science & Technology 21, No. 7 (1987), p. 618.

 

7. For example, see Environmental Science & Technology, p. 618.

 

8. For example, see Human Health Risks From Chemical Exposure: The Great Lakes Ecosystem, R. Warren Flint and John Vena, Lewis Publications Inc., MI, 1991, p. 34, which states, “The toxic potencies of 2,3,7,8 TCDDD [Dioxin] and related compounds exhibit profound interspecies variability. For example, there is an approximately 5,000-fold difference among laboratory mammals in the acute LD50.“

 

9. In 1994, the annual “health care” cost in the U.S. was 1.2 trillion dollars.

 

This article is a condensed version of the original booklet entitled, Animal Experimentation: The Hidden Cause of Environmental Pollution? Absolutely! by Hoorik Davoudian, Vice President of The Nature of Wellness