Hans
Ruesch
VIVISECTION – Questions and Answers
Q: Would you prefer that
humans were experimented on, rather than animals?
A: Far
from it. On the contrary, we wish human experimentation to cease. Experiments on
humans are constantly being performed, and precisely because animal experiments
are inconclusive. Any claimed need for animal experiments would thus be
invalid.
Q: How, then, are we to
develop new drugs?
A: Your
question assumes that we actually need ever more new drugs and that animal
tests can give us accurate information about their effects. Both assumptions
are false.
Q: Are you saying, then,
that we do not need any more new drugs?
A: Only
the pharmaceutical industry needs more and more drugs to replace those whose
uselessness and dangers can no longer be hushed up. The vast majority of the
205,000 medicaments and their combinations, which have so far been developed,
have already been withdrawn. Animal experiments led the naive researchers to the
wrong conclusions.
Q: How many drugs do we
actually need?
A: The
World Health Organisation (WHO) has published a list of around only 250
essential drugs. Even this modest number is ten times higher than that
specified by the medical commission of
Q: Is it possible to
establish the efficacy of a medicament without doing animal experiments?
A: In
point of fact, most of the few medicines which have provable therapeutic value
were never tested out on animals at all. They are of plant origin and were
known as early as antiquity, when, very sensibly, people did not test them out
on animals.
Q: Haven't these useful
medicines also been taken up by the pharmaceutical industry?
A: A
few, it is true; but in quite the wrong manner. In order to mass produce them
(that is to say, in order to make money as quickly as possible), the drugs
industry has synthesised these healing agents -.... attempted to reproduce them
artificially but with the usual devastating results.
Q: Can you give more
information on this?
A: Rauwolfia serpentina is a native
Indian herb of the apocynaceae family which has been
used for centuries and contains various therapeutically important alkaloids,
including the blood-pressure lowering reserpine and
the heart-regulating ajmaline. In its natural state
this medicinal herb contains numerous trace elements and salts, which make it
easily assimilable, in addition to the usual
"vital" substances which chemical analysis simply cannot lay hold of
and thus not reproduce. Then the businessmen of the laboratories set about
isolating reserpine, creating it synthetically and
prescribing it in its pure form, until 20 or more years ago it became clear
that this artificially produced preparation i.e. the chemical imitation of the
valuable natural product causes breast cancer and severe depression in
humans conditions which years of animal tests had been unable to predict and
which are not caused by the natural plant.
Q: But supposing for a
moment that we had to test out a new medicine, shouldn't we first try it out on
animals?
A:
Certainly not. All the numerous drug disasters of the last few decades only
occurred because of reliance on the results of animal experiments. Before the
massive introduction of animal experiments there were no drug catastrophes.
Q: Cannot animal tests tell
us, for instance, whether a new drug will cause birth defects?
A: Not
at all. They only lead us astray, as happened in the Thalidomide case, which
was only the first and best known example, but by no means the only one of its
kind. Thalidomide was, on the basis of animal experiments, specifically and
expressly recommended for pregnant women. Since then animal testing has much
increased, under the pretext of avoiding further tragedies, but unfortunately
the very opposite result has been achieved: malformed babies have enormously
increased (for more details, see Hans Ruesch's
SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT, chapter entitled "10,000 Little
Monsters"). Conversely, if aspirin had first been tried out on animals,
this most frequently used and (relatively) most harmless of medicaments of the
20th century would probably never have got onto the market, as it spells death
for many animal species. Thus animal experiments can also block the possible use
by us of valuable medications.
Q: So you regard research
using animals as erroneous?
A:
Thousands of medical experts not subservient to the pharmaceutical industry
will confirm this view most emphatically. But they are not allowed a voice by
the venal media, who are in the pay of the chemical industry, and the mass
media only ever disseminate the untruths that come from the industry's
spokespersons.
Q: Why, then, do the Health
Authorities require animal experiments?
A: The
so called Health Authorities employ medical pseudo-experts who are forced on
them by the chemical industry. Animal experiments only serve an alibi function.
Whenever a new drug disaster strikes, the manufacturers can exculpate
themselves by insisting that they had conscientiously carried out the
"statutory safety tests". But they fail to disclose that it was they
themselves who demanded that these misleading and deceptive tests be enshrined
in law.
Q: Do you mean to say that
these tests do not guarantee public safety?
A:
Worse than that drugs tested in this manner have caused a whole host of
new, previously unknown illnesses.
Q: For example?
A: Subacute myelo optic neuropathy
(SMON for short) is a completely new and severe disease of the nervous system which
has led to paralysis, blindness and even death in tens of thousands of human
beings. It was caused by medications containing the chemical, clioquinol (developed in Basle), and this drug was spread
around the whole world under false pretences. It was established in a court of
law that clioquinol possesses no therapeutic value
whatsoever. So deadly "side effects" without any benefits except, of
course, for the manufacturers.
Q: Another example?
A: Stilboestrol, a synthetic hormone tested on animals for
decades and specially recommended for pregnant women to prevent miscarriages,
was later proven to cause cancer in those women's children, particularly their
young girls (for details, see SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT, chapters entitled,
"Cancer causing Drugs", "The Stilboestrol
Case" and "Sorcerer's Apprentices"). These are only a couple of
examples (out of many). The American FDA, a kind of medicine police, recently
admitted that in any given year around one and a half million Americans have to
be hospitalised because of the adverse effects of medicines. And once in
hospital, as is well known, their health is frequently damaged further by wrong
therapies, which can even kill them.
Q: Is this true of Europe
too?
A: Of
course. And above all in those countries where the propaganda of the chemical
industry and the doctors, in collaboration with the state authorities, have
succeeded in palming off "official" medicine onto the superstitious
public as a kind of new religion. This is the case here too.
Q: Do you mean to say that
people are being deliberately misled?
A:
Precisely that. In the interests of the chemical industry. Jobs are more
important to governments than the people's health. That is why as early as
infancy the population is made dependent on medicines. The parents help along
with this too. Of course they were themselves brought up in this way. A
congress of specialist German doctors for internal medicine in Wiesbaden,
Germany confirmed in 1977 that 6% of all illnesses resulting in death and 25%
of all organic diseases are caused by medicines. Moreover, 61% of all
deformities at birth and 88% of all still-....births are caused by drugs.
According to Professor Hoff and many other health experts, therapy damage is
today the most frequent cause of illness.
Q: How about in
Switzerland?
A: How
could it be any different in a land dominated by the chemical industry? In
Switzerland there are, in percentage terms, just as many instances of harmful
therapy and just as many venal politicians, opinion formers in the media and
journalists as in other industrialised nations. That is why CIVIS has set
itself the task of publishing and disseminating sources of information like the
present one.
Q: Is the war against
cancer, heart disease or high blood pressure possible without animal research?
A:
Although millions of animals are sacrificed each year in research on cancer and
circulation ailments, these illnesses are constantly increasing. Their causes
are well known and could be avoided by preventative measures, which are in fact
the only valid approach and do not cause dangerous side-effects. But of course
there is no money to be made out of prevention. So people are wrongly persuaded
that they don't need to make any personal effort or sacrifices to stay healthy
all they need do is swallow pills, which the philanthropic pharmaceutical
industry puts at their disposal. The taxpayer picks up the tab.
Q: Hasn't diabetes been
cured through animal experiments?
A:
Diabetes is one of those illnesses which are best avoided by preventative
measures, namely a suitable diet. The longterm use of animal derived insulin (a catastrophically
harmful approach) leads to blindness, circulatory and other problems and early
death, as well as encouraging the insulin-user to neglect the appropriate diet.
What is more, long term insulin use leads to the total atrophy of the already
malfunctioning pancreas gland. No wonder that since the introduction of
insulin, diabetes has not decreased but increased enormously. Now can we speak of
success here?
Q: Wasn't penicillin
discovered by animal experimentation?
A:
Penicillin was discovered by pure chance and would probably not have been
employed as a medicine, according to statements by its co-discoverers, had it been
first tested as intended on guinea pigs since penicillin is fatal to
guinea-....pigs. But at the time there were no guinea pigs available in their
laboratory, so mice were used instead and they weren't killed by it.
Q: But is it not true at
least that the correct dosage had to be tested out on animals?
A: How
can that be true when some animals can tolerate 100 times more or less of a
given substance than human beings? In any case, to this day there is still no
universally "correct" dosage of penicillin. Some people are extremely
allergic to penicillin and can be severely harmed by it, while it remains
ineffective in others. Moreover, more and more doctors are agreed these days
that penicillin has caused more harm than good.
Q: How is that possible?
A: The
thoughtless, massive over prescription of penicillin, using it even as a
preventative medicine, has over time led to the development of particularly
resistant strains of bacteria which are immune to all penicillin treatments.
The same applies to other antibiotics produced after penicillin and its
antibiotic offspring began to lose their efficacy. It is one of the
achievements of modem medicine that it has succeeded in creating ever-weaker
human beings, and ever stronger strains of bacteria. "Antibiotic", by
the way, means "hostile to life". And it is no secret that all these
wonder drugs have only worked wonders for the bank balances of their
manufacturers (for details, see SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT, chapter entitled
"The Pushers").
Q: What types of non animal
methods of research exist?
A: The
most important is intelligent clinical observation, which has solved so many
major medical problems in the past. Further, one can use human
cell/tissue/organ cultures, painlessly available from biopsies, aborted
foetuses, umbilical cords, placentas, etc. They all produce more reliable
results, precisely because they are of human and not animal origin. Also,
computer technology is now highly developed in this field. Computers can be
used not only for diagnosis and data analysis, but also in areas of the testing
of medicinal preparations, conditioned reflexes, kidney function, heart disease
and growth studies (for details, see SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT, chapter on
"Alternative Methods"). These methods are not only more reliable, but
also more economic than animal experiments.
Q: Then why are they not
more widely used?
A:
Mainly because our teachers have not been adequately trained. They are still
living in the last century. The use of progressive research methods needs to be
learned; it requires hard study and at least average intelligence whereas any
idiot can cut up or poison animals and report what he sees. Whether such
experiments have any validity for human medical research is of no interest to
these gentlemen. Clearly, there is no obstinacy greater than that of academics
mired in their set ways. But in addition, over the last few decades a gigantic
industry has developed around animal research: manufacturers of restraining
devices, cages and torture instruments, as well as animal breeders, all of whom
together constitute a most powerful lobby who influence the media and the
politicians.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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 highsounding 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.[1] 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".[2]
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?
[translated
from the German by Tony Page, of UKAVIS, 1998]