Why Vivisection Exists

 

 

From Mobilise!, Nov 1992, the magazine of the New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society

 

Part One

 

 

As in ancient times the harbinger of bad news was nailed by an ear to a gatepost given a rusty knife and an hour to leave town, so the modern bearer of unpleasant tidings is hated, feared and demeaned. But popularity is not his motive. This truth is. We speak of our Patron, leader of the present-day abolitionist movement Hans Ruesch.

 

It was accidentally disclosed in an Italian newspaper by a naive reporter that Peter Singer's lecture tour of Italy was being sponsored by The Rockefeller Foundation (the owner of 200-odd pharmaceutical enterprises, and one of the long arms of the international Drug Trust, as revealed in Naked Empress and Hans Ruesch's CIVIS Foundation Report Nr. 13). Hans Ruesch wrote to the editor of the newspaper pointing out the irony of this acclaimed animal lover's pilgrimage being financed by the pharmaceutical outfits. The editor turned it into a full-blown article titled "Peter Singer is a Big Phoney". Singer takes Ruesch to court.

 

The trial, set for 9th July 1992 had to be remanded until 9th November because Singer, though in Italy at the time, failed to show up. Meanwhile your editor forecast in the early stages of the drama that in suing our Patron, Prof. Singer would merely be putting himself under the spotlight, something he could ill-afford to do. She is proved correct as Hans Ruesch's Foundation Report Nr. 13 reveals such overwhelming international support for Ruesch that if Singer is to sue everyone who claims his actions have been illogical, he is to be a busy man.

 

As master's degrees are not dished out at kindergarten, knowledge of the intrigues and intricacies being played out in the international conspiracy of vivisection is not acquired by the beginner without honest and diligent effort. Study of the facts is essential. These have been published in back issues of Mobilise! and in Hans Ruesch's publications. Members who are not prepared to read the evidence thus put at their fingertips are in no position to question the Society, no matter how gently, for the seriousness of its message. Throughout the years we have steadfastly refused to trivialise the issue to suit those too lackadaisical to read and heed the truth. Though we need members, with respect, we fear that those who must be spoonfed with constant reassurings about what could be "misunderstandings", those who write with boring regularity saying we should all work in harmony, loving each other even the vivisectors, and those who request more "laid back" articles in Mobilise!, like poems, prayers and kiddies' pages, have joined the wrong Society.

 

In Mobilise! 34, we inform newcomers for the first time and reassure others for the umpteenth, about events which for the past 14 years have been droned over repeatedly in a relentless and sometimes tiresome struggle to bring the truth to those with wits enough to join the Society in the first place. The word tiresome describes our reactions to some members' reluctance to accept the facts, which unpalatable as they are, could place those voicing them in the category of perverse trouble-makers or oddities. Nonetheless NZAVS members of long-standing should be aware that this Country, though small, vitally strategic, has been in the past decade the location of a behind-the-scenes struggle and manoeuvre between pro and anti vivisection factions, the one notoriously and cleverly indistinguishable from the other.

 

Neither will they need to be reminded, since they are in the enviable position of receiving, through Mobilise!, facts that never appear in the journals of a single animal rights/animal welfare society, that despite their claims of being "radical" not one of said societies supported NZAVS Petition to abolish vivisection 1989, by circulating information about the Petition, sending Petition forms to members with their mail-outs, or by sending supporting Submissions to Parliament, which could have been carried out with minimum effort, and should have been as a routine courtesy. And they will also know that the RSPCA, speaking on behalf of "53 local societies which are either Branches of the RSPCA or Member Societies" actually sent a Submission to Parliament opposing the petition.

 

In this Mobilise! we briefly examine how, in this advanced day and age, with our plethora of technology, if not of intelligence, the grotesque and unbelievably inefficient and hit-and-miss institution of vivisection continues, spreads and flourishes, unabated.

 

On 16th July 1992, a World in Action documentary initiated by the BUAV titled "The Monkey Trade", brought into viewers' living rooms those pathetic victims of the monkey trade unfortunate enough to survive the ordeal of capture, imprisonment, stress, starvation, thirst, separation from their families, over-crowding and suffocation in the holds of aircraft, to be delivered up to painful and lingering death by torture in the laboratories of the pharmaceutical companies, the potions of which we are constantly being urged by smooth and silky-voiced operators are as gentle to our stomachs as they are to our pockets. The cameras went behind the scenes with the trappers in Mauritius where thousands of monkeys are caught by enticing them into nets. They did not visit the east where the wide-spread practice is to shoot the mothers and tear their babies, many un-weaned, from their dead and dying bodies. The viewer is then witness to gruelling scenes of the monkeys going insane in the cages of Shamrock Farms' animal clearing house discreetly tucked away in the countryside of Southern England. And there we must leave those doomed victims of the most vicious and profitable industry on Earth, and turn to the most respected and influential and wealthy representatives of the "animal welfare" brigade who have the sacred trust and grave responsibility, both to the animals and their financial donors, of shrieking to the world with all their might that... Vivisection is scientific fraud.

 

The first person interviewed on the programme spoke thus:

 

"These monkeys are the closest models to man, (NZAVS emphasis) and as such we use them for studies such as reproduction, vision work, for studying different areas of the brain, for studying behaviour, and for testing drugs, and even for dental studies. The very fact that these animals are so similar to us also raises the serious ethical question about whether we should be using them at all."

 

Whereas one could be forgiven for assuming that this endorsement of vivisection came from one fully fledged in the trade, in reality it came from none other than Judith Hampson, Animal Research Consultant for the British RSPCA. Her next comment was a eulogy of vivisection, which, in less time than it took to utter demolished all hope and sealed long into the future the fate of hundreds of millions of animals incarcerated in the world's laboratories:

 

"We are concerned that they are housed in single cages with no enrichments, not even a perch or natural light."

 

And thus, despite the vast number of doctors and scientists, and even the vivisectors themselves, as readers will learn when they eventually get to read 'Animal Research Takes Lives - Humans and Animals Both Suffer', who are publicly and vociferously stating that there is no animal model for man, this representative of the most powerful animal welfare body on Earth, the one in the best position to carve public opinion, and the one with the ability to abolish vivisection forever, was, before an audience of millions of viewers worldwide, struck as if by lightning at the crucial moment with a lapse of memory so devastating that instead of hotly denouncing vivisection, evidence in hand, sought instead to enrich the lives of the animals on the vivisection assembly line.

 

Judith Hampson has previously been introduced to Mobilise! readers. Firstly through Hans Ruesch's CIVIS, the journal of his International Center of Scientific Information on Vivisection. For members who have not read the vitally important exposures in CIVIS Bulletins 1 and 2, which are advertised in every NZAVS mail-out, (and are available through NZAVS), we repeat that in 1982 Judith Hampson, then Chief Scientific Officer of the RSPCA, was a delegate to the European Parliament in Strasbourg which investigated vivisection in order to create policies to be adopted by a unified Europe. An avid advocate of breeding animals specially for vivisection, she was there instrumental in master-minding, with accomplice Clive Hollands, Director of the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection and other animal lovers including ex-vivisectors Richard Ryder and Dr Robert Sharpe (remember these names for they crop up later) the notorious and fraudulent new British Bill, or the Animal Scientific Procedures Act, which after a long grind and hardly a murmur from the British Societies, eventually gained the Royal assent and came into being on 1st January 1987. The Act guarantees the perpetuation of vivisection in the U.K. and all the EC Countries for generations to come, and makes legal many additional cruelties which were banned under the previous law.

 

Mission accomplished, the eyes of the vivisectors then roved to Australasia, where irritatingly, NZAVS under the patronage of Hans Ruesch, was successfully rallying the public with its fearless policy of abolition on grounds of medical and scientific fraud. With one Petition under its belt, NZAVS was, on WDLA 1987, launching a second which would be signed by 100,640 New Zealanders asking for total abolition on the grounds of medical and scientific invalidity.

 

Members will now recall that Judith Hampson cropped up in Mobilise! No. 20, January 1988 where it was revealed that in 1987 she had been invited, expenses paid by ANZFAS (The Australian and New Zealand Federation of Animal Societies), with accommodation courtesy of Dr Margaret Rose, one of Australia's most enthusiastic vivisectors and author of the Animal Research Bill 1985, which gave protection to the researchers if not the animals. Her purpose for the visit was to consolidate Australia and New Zealand under the same legislation she had enacted in her home-ground. And now we examine briefly events running up to this time, her accomplices in ANZFAS, and what makes that organisation tick.

 

The driving force behind what a few years earlier had been AFAS (The Australian Federation of Animal Societies) was Professor Peter Singer, acclaimed author of Animal Liberation, Professor of Philosophy, guru of the animal rights movement. A popular figure, Peter Singer had, in the mid 1980s the grave responsibility of choosing two representatives of the Federation of which he was Vice President, to accompany him to the Senate Select Committee Hearing on Animal Experimentation. An historic first, Australian animal welfare societies were agog with excitement about the strides about to be taken to shut down the down-under laboratories. Though at that time Professor Pietro Croce, notable for his history-making Vivisection Or Science - A Choice to Make, and other fearless and dedicated doctors and scientists were busy forming the International League of Doctors Against Vivisection, confident and outspoken in their demand for abolition on scientific grounds, strangely it was not to these great advocates of abolition that Singer cast his eye but to the following:

 

Richard Ryder, Clinical Psychologist, past Chairman of the National Council of the British RSPCA, then Chairman of the RSPCA 's Animal Experimentation Committee. For 20 years a vivisector at Cambridge and Edinburgh Universities, at the now failed hotbed of vivisection the London Zoo, and in various laboratories in the USA.

 

Former vivisector Joseph Barnes, Clinical Psychologist, who by his own admission tortured monkeys in barbaric procedures for 16 years at the U.S. School of Aerospace Medicine as an experimental psychologist before seeing the light and conveniently landing a job as Director of the Washington D.C. Office of the wealthy U.S. National Anti-Vivisection Society.

 

And now we briefly examine the environment which spawned these unlikely candidates selected by Professor Peter Singer to espouse, on behalf of his Federation, the case for laboratory animals in Australia.

 

Richard Ryder and the RSPCA

 

Time Out, 23rd May 1985, revealed, to the embarrassment of the RSPCA, (which that very week, with Richard Ryder as chairman of the RSPCA's Animal Experimentation Advisory Committee, announced details of the new White Paper on the Scientific Procedures Act brought about with the enthusiastic assistance of that Society's Scientific Officer, Judith Hampson, who we have learned helped frame the legislation) that the RSPCA had an excess of eight million pounds sterling in public donations and legacies - with massive investments in vivisection laboratories:

 

(Company and money invested by the RSPCA)

 

* Imperial Chemical Industry (ICI): Major vivisectors.  Uses more than 100,000 animals a year.  Many beagle dogs.  Tests dyes, paints, industrial and agricultural chemicals... and much more. (£124,481)

 

* Beechams Drugs: Uses many thousands of a wide range of animals, including dogs, monkeys, mice.  Toxicity tests and others. (£65,204)

 

* British Petroleum: Uses thousands of animals by testing cutting oils, lubricants, brake fluids, poured into their eyes and made to inhale.  Toxicity tests. (£134,307)

 

* Fisons drugs (Loughborough, Leicestershire laboratories): Uses thousands of rabbits, beagles and monkeys.  Rabbit blindings. (£71,500)

 

* Glaxo: One of Britain's most notorious vivisection laboratories.  Electric stimulation of the tooth pulp of beagle dogs.  Injection of toxic chemicals into the stomach membranes of mice, injection of inflammatory yeast solution into rats' hind-paws, which are then "subjected to pressure".  Hundreds of thousands of animals. (£199,940)

 

* Unilever: Performs experiments on an extensive range of animals. (£7,290)

 

* Boots Friendly Chemist: Notorious for tests on a wide variety of animals. (£236,000)

 

The RSPCA was reported to have undisclosed investments in a string of South African gold-mines and in the controversial British-based giant Rio Tinto Inc. But worse was to come for it was also revealed that the RSPCA Animal Experimentation Committee, of which few have learned Richard Ryder was Chairman, consisted of:

 

* Glaxo's animal superintendent;

 

* A member of the Animal Research Defence Society;

 

* The head of the Cerebral Functions Unit at University College, London;

 

* A research consultant with a background in testing drugs, cosmetics and toiletries;

 

* Other major vivisectors.

 

(The above information was in Mobilise! No. 15 of July 1986.)

 

Donald Barnes and the U.S. National Anti-Vivisection Society

 

Mobilise! 15 also revealed details of the hundreds of millions of dollars invested by the U.S. animal rights groups in firms practising vivisection, and the high salaries of their various Directors. We examine briefly the organisation which employed Donald Barnes:

 

The Managing Director of the U.S. National Anti-Vivisection Society (as revealed by Mobilization For Animals, PO Box 1679, Columbus, Ohio, USA ) was the highest paid of all the heads of anti-vivisection groups in America. In 1983 Managing Director George Trapp had a salary of $US 66,644 per year. Made head of the Washington NAVS office, Donald Barnes was employed at an undisclosed salary.

 

In 1983 the U.S. National Anti-Vivisection Society, based in Chicago, had a balance of $US 2,394,408 with incomings of $US2,675,071 and "excess profit" of $US 1,153,849 for that year.

 

The U.S. National Anti-Vivisection Society in 1983 had "substantial investments" in the following companies which carry out extensive experiments on animals, including toxicological testing: The American Cyanimid, General Foods, General Motors (the target of NZAVS recent campaign), Standard Oil of California and Union Carbide. The U.S. NAVS provides the money for Animal Rights Network to publish the Agenda magazine. The Agenda is criticised in Mobilization for Animals for being "simply a public relations tool of the large animal welfare corporations, and a narrow partisan device for the expression of its editor's personal likes and dislikes"...Donald Barnes became its editor!

 

(Prior to travelling to Australia to testify at the Senate Select Committee Hearing, Donald Barnes approached NZAVS to finance a side-trip to Wellington with his daughter, expenses and accommodation to be paid by NZAVS!  He had better luck with SAFE as we shall see.)

 

We now turn to the New Zealand animal societies, all of which received firm, flattering and persuasive invitations to become affiliated with AFAS in what ostensibly would become a powerful alliance as the two countries combined forces under the same policy on animal experiments. (The policy Singer, Ryder and Barnes were presenting to the Australian Government.) Prior to making this important decision NZAVS viewed the AFAS policy which left us so thunderstruck we are still reeling from the shock a decade later. The following samples summarised at random from the copious documents will explain why:

 

(Abstract) Recommendations to the Australian Senate Select Committee on animal experimentation:

 

* The setting up of ethics committees to decide which experiments are ethical and which are unethical;

 

* The provision of anaesthesia for experiments likely to cause pain;

 

* Accommodation, food and social contact be provided appropriate for the satisfaction of the behavioural and physical needs of the animals;

 

* The establishment of a system of keeping computer records of experiments involving live animals in order that they not be unnecessarily repeated;

 

* Labelling of cosmetics to indicate whether they were tested on animals;

 

* That animals used in experiments be obtained from special breeding centres licensed under the system;

 

* A system of random inspection of laboratories by suitably qualified inspectors.

 

 

Part 2