There is a growing movement of health care professionals including doctors, (See Americans for Medical Advancement) scientists, and educated members of the public who are opposed to non-human animal based experimentation on specifically medical and scientific grounds. They argue that animal research is based on a false premise, that results obtained through animal experimentation can be applied to the human body. Animals not only react differently than humans to different drugs, vaccines, and experiments, but they also react differently from one another. Ignoring this difference has been and continues to be very costly to human health.

The most famous example of the dangers of animal testing is the Thalidomide tragedy in the 1960s and 1970s. Thalidomide, which came out on the market late in the 1950s in Germany, had previously been safety tested on thousands of animals. It was marketed as a wonderful sedative for pregnant or breast feeding mothers and it supposedly caused no harm to either mother or child. Despite this "safety testing", at least 10,000 children whose mothers had taken Thalidomide were born throughout the world with severe deformities.

Clioquinol is another example of a drug that was safety tested in animals and had a severely negative impact on humans. This drug, manufactured in Japan in the 1970s, was marketed as providing safe relief from diarrhea. Not only did Clioquinol not work for humans, it actually caused diarrhea. As a result of Clioquinol being administered to the public, some 30,000 cases of blindness and/or paralysis and thousands of deaths occurred.

Are these two examples just isolated cases? Even though pharmaceuticals are routinely tested on animals, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that 100,000 people every year are killed by prescription drugs and more than 2 million are hospitalized with serious complications from prescription drugs. The British Medical Journal recently reported that four out of every ten patients who take a prescribed drug can expect to suffer severe or noticeable side effects, while numerous clinical observers agree that the incidence of iatrogenesis ( medically induced disease) is now so great that approximately one in every ten hospital beds is occupied by a patient who has been made ill by their doctor.

What about all the important breakthroughs, as a result of animal research, that have aided human health? The research and health industry cite many examples of treatments or cures for illness that have been found using animals. The claim is then made that if animal research is discontinued, it will be at the expense of human health and life.

Industry groups, such as the Americans for Medical Progress credit animal research with advances such as the development of the polio vaccine, anesthesia, and the discovery of insulin to name a few examples. But a close examination of medical history clearly disputes these claims.

Two individuals, Salk and Sabin, are credited with the development of vaccines to combat poliomyelitis (polio). Yet in the medical industry itself there is a dispute as to the means by which the development of the polio vaccine occurred and whether or not it even played a major role in stopping the virus.

Dr. John Enders, Dr. Thomas H. Weller,and Dr. Frederick C. Robbins won the Nobel Prize in 1954 for proving for the first time that it was possible to grow poliovirus in laboratory cultures of non-nervous-system human tissue. This team stopped just short of creating the polio vaccine that would be released to the public.

Around the time Enders, Weller and Robbins won the Nobel Prize, Sabin and Salk began using monkey kidney cells to produce their polio vaccines despite better alternatives. It was unknown at the time that viruses commonly found in monkey kidney cells are now known to cause cancer in humans.

The claim that the polio vaccine was developed through the use of animal experimentation is misleading. Furthermore, as far as the benefits are concerned, there is ample evidence demonstrating the harmful effects the polio vaccine had on human health. Deborah Blum, in her 1994 book, The Monkey Wars, wrote, "In the late 1980s, scientists tracking the life histories of 59,000 pregnant women all vaccinated with the Salk polio vaccine found that their offspring had a thirteen times higher rate of brain tumors than those who did not receive the vaccine"(P. 229). Many historians believe that the decline in cases of polio, like many epidemics of the past, must be attributed to factors such as improved hygiene and not vaccination.

 Surgical anesthesia was discovered when Crawford Williamson Long observed the effects of ether on humans during "ether parties". In the mid 19th century a popular form of entertainment involved inhaling ether. Long observed that while etherized, people appeared impervious to pain. He transformed this observation into a more practical use in surgery. The discovery of A. Fadali, M.D., in his book Animal Experimentation; A Harvest of Shame reports, "Despite screening over half a million compounds as anti-cancer agents on laboratory animals between 1970-1985, only 80 compounds moved into clinical trials on humans. Of these, a mere 24 had any anti-cancer activity and only 12 appeared to have a 'substancial clinical role'. Actually these so-called 'new' active agents were not so new: they are analogs of chemotherapeutic agents already known to work in humans" (p. 25).

With billions of dollars, countless animals, and well over 30 years spent on the war on cancer, concrete results should have been seen if animal research was actually working. On the contrary, the incidence of cancer continues to rise.

The progress that has been made in the study of AIDS has come from human clinical investigation and In vitro (cell and tissue culture) research. Animal models continue to be used even though they do not develop the human AIDS virus. Dani Bolognesi, AIDS researcher, states in the Journal of NIH Research, "No animal models faithfully reproduce...HIV-1 infection and disease in humans, and the studies of experimental vaccines in animal models...have yielded disparate results" (1994;6(6):55, 59-62).

Clearly, if we are going to make medical progress a new approach is needed. Human medicine can no longer be based on veterinary medicine. It is fraudulent and dangerous to apply data from one species to another. There are endless examples of the differences between humans and non-human animals. Aspirin kills cats yet is relatively safe in humans. Penicillin kills cats and guinea pigs but has saved many human lives. Arsenic is not poisonous to rats, mice, or sheep. Morphine is a sedative for humans but is a stimulant for cats, goats, and horses. Digitalis while dangerously raising blood pressure in dogs continues to save countless cardiac patients by lowering heart rate.

When animal research is abolished it will mean that the enormous chunk of the federal budget that is spent on animal experimentation, well over $5 billion per year by the National Institutes of Health alone, could be placed into prevention and clinical research which actually has a chance in progressing human health.

~Distribute these brochures to the public at grocery stores, hospitals, veterinary offices, cafes/coffee shops, book stores, etc.
~Set up information tables at schools and community events.
~Attend anti-vivisection demonstrations.
~Complain to facilities that continue to engage in or fund animal experimentation.
~Only give donations to charitable organizations that don't fund animal experimentation.
~Further educate yourself on the medical and scientific arguments against animal experimentation.
~Organize your local community against animal experimentation.
~Donate and financially support CAAT's work to end animal experimentation.

 Suggested Reading:

• Why Animal Experiments Must Stop Dr. Vernon Coleman

• 1000 Doctors Against Vivisection Hans Reusch

• Slaughter of the Innocent Hans Reusch

• Lethal Laws Alix Fano

To become involved or to distribute these brochures in your area, please contact: