__________________________
Had the poet foreseen
the unending arguments between
animal advocates, and their opposition, he may have
said: 'be
aware when you speak on behalf of animals, that from
no point in
time can the unknown horrors that they suffered be
made known,
because the invisible cannot be made visible. That
insight
would bespeak a continuum from prehistoric times to the ubiq-
uitous tyrannizing of animals in our time, the year of 2004.
Thus any brief for animals must be a severely trun-
cated account of realities and there can be no Nuremberg
day of reckoning. “Probability,” as noted by Bertrand
Russell,
“is always relative to relevant data.” The data with
which we
are here concerned is the human abuse and killing of
billions
upon billions of animals, which will probably continue un-
abated sans rational humane intervention. As noted above,
there can be no tribunal for animals, but that doesn’t
pre-
clude the dissemination of truth, and responsible opinion
based on the quest for justice, to counter fallacy; and irre-
sponsible opinion.
We shall, in the following dialectic, “quietly hear
both
sides” in a manner calculated to accurately reflect the
thoughts
of persons, whose identities (with some exceptions) will not
be made public. However,
my attempt to invoke "both sides" can't
be fulfilled because of the scope of a
subject entailing pain,
misery, and death to animals in laboratories throughout
the "civilized" world, sanctioned by many of we
humans that can't long endure the pain of a
toothache. JBS
______________________________________________
1
Unfortunately,
truth is not always a corollary of sin-
cerity, a disparity exemplified by Mr. Journalist’s
frequent defense of vivisection.
His use of the testimony of the famous and knowledgeable
Dr. Partisan is impressive, but such evidence is not
always irrefutable. Dr. Partisan dogmatically claimed that
"there
is no substitute for the use of animals in medical
research."
His claim is not a value judgment, but a judgment about a
matter of fact that is either true or false. It is not only
false,
but reveals an unscientific attitude because it begs the
ques-
tion, and speaks with certainty, which is contrary to the
sci-
entific spirit. That spirit eschews certainty in favor of
probability in view of known facts.
My concern about the biomedical research that pre-
ceded successful coronary bypass graft surgery prompted me
to contact former vivisectionist John McArdle Ph.D., member
of
the advisory panel to the Congress of the United States Of-
fice of Technology Assessment. In his response June 26,1987
he wrote:
" All of the others did use animals, but that was a
reflec-
non of how primitive biomedical research was at the time,
and does not prove that animals are needed to answer bio-
medical questions today. The real alternatives for such work
today are clinical studies on sick animals and humans, and
the
use of clinically brain-dead human cadavers, which are
avail-
able and are being used at some university hospitals."
“I am troubled,” wrote Irwin D.
Bros Ph.d., by a paradox in cancer research today On one
hand, we have sophisticated scientific instruments,
computers, and the elegant lan-
guage of modern mathematics available for medical research.
on the other hand, the ritual slaughter of animals continues
to be practiced. ‘This ritual slaughter can serve little
or no scientific use for mutagenic diseases such as
cancer.” "We are,” claimed The New England Journal
of Mcdicine, “losing the war against cancer."
The foregoing testimony by Dr. McCardle and Dr. Bross,
as well as that of the New England Journal of Medicine, does
not prove Dr. Partisan’s contention to be erroneous. But
such evidence does serve to underscore the lack of complete
accord by respected authorities on a question of vital impor-
tance. The criterion for determining the validity of Dr.
Parti-
san testimony lies in the investigation of its literal
truth. One
counter instance proves it to be false. Section 8 below
provides considerably more than one counter in-
stance, and makes it clear that partisan testimony is not
valid.
We can best understand the graveness of such error, in terms
of the horror rituals that endorsement implies.
These rituals are more than an important controversial
issue. They are the source of mutilation, suffering, and
kill-
ing of animals on the one hand and the constant anguish of
grief inflicted on concerned people on the other hand. The
latter anguish, which is of secondary importance, will termi-
nate only when the former ritual of horror is no longer
toler-
ated: Abolished.
2
How can a sane person object to and to do away with
medical testing that is in the interest of people? Thus
agonized Mr. Jones. His attempt to characterize a humane
and moral outlook as something irrational is a paradigm of
self- deceptive obtuseness. He is certain of the rightness
of
his beliefs, and implies that A advocates have no moral
right to
speak or act as they do on behalf of animals, and that there
is
one, and only one method of medical testing in the interest
of people. We don’t have a moral right to be crusaders for
what we believe to be the true and the good? Mohandis Gandhi
wouldn't agree with Mr. partisan; neither would Moses, Mar-
tin Luther, or the late Martin Luther King Jr.
“Like man,” wrote Jones “animals are unique, butdoes
that logically lead to the conclusion that they are
sacrosanct, that they must be totally protected from man?”
The logical conclusion that animals (or man) are sacrosanct,
cannot be derived from facts apparent or real, because
of the unbridgeable logical gulf between empirical facts and
moral judgments. : contrary to what is dogmatically
claimed-we can’t logically conclude that animals do or do
not have soul.
To cite the obvious, animals must be protected from
man, by man, for the same reason that the environment must
be his constant concern: because there is no alternative
other
than the agents responsible for the wrongdoing. That the ob-
vious must be cited, is another of the dismal facts of life.
3
The argument for vivisection as made by Alfred
Partisan and other advocates of vivisection is based upon
the
generalization that the practice is an unmitigated blessing.
Such arguments seek what in the very nature of the case can-
not be obtained: unqualified scientific affirmation and
moral
sanction.
According to Partisan, animal research is by and large
a humane practice in which animals are treated well.
The perusal of relevant literature will convince one with an open
mind that this partisan’s testimony is outrageously
mislead-ing.
Anesthesia is incompatible with many post-operative
observations:
With experiments on the nervous system.
Or pain or behavior or stress.
Or all experiments of long duration.
Or all those that induce any disease,
for the purpose of studying it.
Or with the preventive efficacy, and
toxicity of all new drugs.
Anesthesia is usually administered to animals prior to a
seri-
ous surgical procedure and mainly to keep them still. But
since
the animal is totally immobilized by a restraining device,
and
solidly muzzled, or surgically devocalized, there is no way
to
show any discomfort or severe pain. And nobody knows bow
effectively, and for how long the animal is unconscious.
Arguments to defend such barbarism are calculated to en-
sure acceptance and avoid censure. Thus we are told that
nearly all discovery in human and animal health care, can be
attributed to a great degree on animal research. Such words
can mean anything proclivity wishes them to mean. My read-
ing of medical history is less ambiguous. It is there that
we
learn that clinical observation and epidemiological studies
account for most of what we know to sustain human health
and prolong life.
The unspeakable things we have done to billions of ani--
mals as if they unfeeling stones did elicit some knowl
edge, which is not to say there was no other way But an~
other way was not an attractive option in a world with no
shortage of helpless animals and people who could benefit
academically and economically from their vile exploitation,
as uninformed publics silently consented to what they could
not, and would not bear to witness.
4
Professor Edward Loin’s article “Animal lovers and
Misanthropes” is in the main at odds with the facts, but
the facts exist regardless of what anyone thinks of them.
“It is a commonplace of biological research,” the Report
of the British Pharmaceutical Industry’s expert committee
on drug toxicity has admitted, “that information from one
animal species cannot be taken as valid for any other.
”Loin has characterized animal advocates as "man
haters,” which is an ad hominem (name calling) attack.
"The animal rights movement is based on the premise,
claims Loin, that animals must be protected even if it means
that people must suffer and die." Can we believe that
many
thousands if not millions of A- advocates and Albert
Schweitzer,
who admonished the world to not impose suffering on animals,
can be credibly classified as misanthropes? Myth refuses to
be
eluded; here we find it in a professor’s irresponsible
words. Loin the professor is also a prophet. He predicts
that many human beings will perish if vivisection is
terminated. The
prediction is not in the form of a well qualified opinion
but
of irrefutable dogma. He can not know that many people
will perish because of the termination of vivisection
because
that knowledge is not logically derivable from any
combination
of facts.
Animals are crying and screaming all over the world
because of such speculation and the inertia of a world that
perceives it as unquestionable truth.
5
Ms. Journalist is allegedly an animal lover, and her lat-
est rhetoric makes one question the validity of that claim.
"People" she says, "don’t like to torture
animals this way." What way, did a paragraph get lost?
By “this way;” the lady means: Take a few albino rabits,
confine them to restraining hutches with only their heads
showing, and pull the lower lid away from the eyeball of
each
rabbit to form a cup. Into this cup drop a few milligrams of
whatever it is to be tested for toxicity, hold the
rabbit’s eye closed for one second and then let it go. A
day later come back to see if the lids are swollen, the iris
inflamed, the cor-
nea ulcerated, or the rabbit blinded in that eye.
Alternatively their eyes may be permanently held open
by the use of metal clips, which keep the eyelids apart, in
which
case the rabbits can obtain no relief at all from the
burning
irritation of the substance placed in their eyes. As Ms.
Jour-
nalist explained, people don’t like to torture animals in
this way. And I must ask, why do they? one must have reasons
to not condemn, but defend such procedures, and Ms.
Journalist
did have two reasons.
1 She believes that in the foreseeable future there will
probably be improvements in various cosmetics and house-
hold products. 2 Kids tend to eat cosmetics and even drink
shampoo or cologne.
We can be sure that unrelenting competition will fos-
ter improvements, but how that can justify what they do to
animals is perhaps clear to Ms. journalist, but not to this
advocate. It is quite clear however that giant
corporations
would not spend huge sums of their precious money to torture
ani-
mals, if they did not deem it to be in their interest to do
so,
i.e., interest defined as necessity in a litigious world.
The ani-
mals can only scream, and struggle, but a scream that is not
heard can’t awaken a somnolent world.
Concerned A advocates however, could he heard and seen
when they demonstrated, as reported in Peter Singer’s
“Ani-mal Liberation,” second edition. And, it is very
clear, Ms. Journalist, that what was once
a routine ritual of torture by Mary Kay, Avon, Amway,
Revlon,
Faberge, is apparently no longer deemed necessary, from
which
it follows that our mercenary, vain, caustic, toxic one-way
trip through hell for animals exemplified the power of the
untrue plca of necessity.
6
One of our persistent beliefs is that we humans are mor-
ally superior to all other forms of sentient life that, in
self
contradiction, we routinely brutalize. Thus proponents of
vivi-
section often have their day in the mass media, which cannot
be said for their frustrated opposition.
“I’m a lover of dogs,” says Detective Jones, “but
not an antivivisectionist. I think experiments on animals is
a necessary evil.” “Perhaps,” replies Officer Plennik,
“but not on my poodle.” Is vivisection “evil,” and
“necessary” as Jones claims. The cop is not entirely
wrong. If it’s “evil” to sometimes burn, cut, crush,
poison and microwave live animals, with and with
out anesthesia, then vivisection is “evil.” But the
relevant contrary evidence tends to refute the claim of
“necessary” as a condition of medical discovery and
knowledge.
Jones is a good cop, but betrays his ignorance of the
contradiction entailed in his declaration of love for dogs,
and
sanction of vivisection as a “necessary evil.” From the
time of the tyrants of Rome until the tyrants of our not so
brave new world, necessity has been an instrument of
persuasion
and influence, and the concept still works. Officer
Plennik’s emotional display of selective concern for his
poodle is a paradigm of stunted and seemingly moral concern.
A stray dog, or cat, or unloved pig trapped in a labora-
tory cage, can be subjected to as much agony as a beloved
poodle. However, to perceive an animal to which we have a
strong emotional attachment as something special,
not to be one of millions of animals condemned to the
research mill is a common, if not the predominant attitude.
But, should another animal that we have never seen,
whose cries we can’t hear, not also our concern and
compassion? Is that which we don’t experience but are
vaguely aware of, nonexistent and not worthy of our concern
and compas-
sion?
7
Dr. Partisans’ article maintains that the
anti-vivisectionist position is erroneous because it is
sullied by emotion. He insisted moreover, that the
vivisection issue does not en-
tail the rights of animals, or the take-home pay of
scientists,
but is simply an issue of human health and well-being. Can
indiscriminately equate emotionalism with error? Can we
reduce the controversial subject of vivisection solely to
the
issue of human health and well being? A mothers love for a
child, a child’s love for a parent, the feeling of elation
imparted by beauty in its myriad forms are all
examples of positive emotions that can not be classified as
error. And not all
negative emotions such as hate, fear, outrage, and rage can
be called error because of the possibility of justification
of
such gut reactions.
Emotionalism can lead one astray, but it can also in-
tensify understanding. A measure of emotion apropos of the
evils of vivisection is a prerequisite, if language is to
reflect
to more than a degree the reality of such horrors. To label
burning, blinding, gassing, poisoning, fracturing, cutting,
drowning, crushing, and the whole hideous inventory of
cruelties that constitute vivisection as merely an issue of
human
health, and well being, is crude anthropocentric fiction. I
have
an interest in health and well-being and I love life. But I
would
not defile myself by advocating the vivisection hell for
reasons of health, well being and long life, not even with a
guarantee from the vivisection enterprise.
Dr. Partisan’s negative allusion to the take-home pay of
scientists is not a self evident truth the human pursuit of
interest has prevailed, and will continue to do so ad infini-
tum. And that pursuit is a causal factor, that contributes
to a
significant degree to the vivisection enterprise. In the
words
of George Washington,... Few men are capable of making
continual
sacrifice of all views of interest or advantage to the
common good .
It is vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature
on this
account; the fact is so, as experience of every age and has
proved
it and we must in a great measure change the constitution of
man
before we can make it otherwise.
Such words bring to mind what we know; but tend to
forget, and are applicable to both saints, and sinners of
medi-
cine and science.
There can be no denying that people often exhibit
emotion when discussing vivisection. And there can be no
denying that there are people working for what they be-
lieve to be in the interest of the race, in a manner not
per-
ceived as evil. And there can be no denying, that there are
people that have left the laboratory to crusade against it,
because they believe it to be an immoral abomination. Be-
cause animals, as well as humans, have a property in thcm-
selves there can be no shirking the conclusion, that animals
have a moral right to not be the property of, or
relentlessly
tyrannized by humans, from which it follows that they should
have a statutory right unambiguously reflecting that fact.
8
"There is a compelling reason for using animals in
research. The reason is that we have no other choice. Virtu-
ally all medical knowledge and treatment, certainly every
medical breakthrough of the last century has involved re-
search with animals. Without animal research, all of the
medi-
cal advances of the last century might never have
occurred”.
Such statements are an amalgam of opinion, fallacy and im-
plied necessity, and, as we shall see are repudiated by
medical
history and common sense.
It was through the use of voluntary human subjects,
some of whom paid with their lives, and not animals that we
learned to cope with:
Yellow fever
Malaria
Dengue fever
Round worm
Tapeworm
Typhus fever
Infectious hepatitis
Small pox
A “Partial listing of Advances Made without Animals,”
compiled by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medi-
cine, also serves to disprove the testimony of The Founda-
tion for Biomedical Research:
• “Discovery of the relationship between cholesterol and
heart disease, the number one cause of death for Ameri-
cans.
• Discovery of the relationship between smoking and can-
cer, the number two cause of death for Americans.
• Discovery of the relationship between hypertension and
stroke, the number three cause of death for Americans.
• Discovery of the causes of trauma, the number four cause
of death in the United States, and the measures to prevent
It.
Elucidation of the causes of many forms of respiratory
disease, Americans’ number five cause of death.
• Isolation of the AIDS virus.
• Discovery of the mechanism of AIDS transmission.
• Discovery of penicillin and its curative effect on
various
diseases.
• Development of x-rays.”
• Discovery of the relationship between chemical expo-
sure and birth defects.
• Development of hormonal treatment for cancer of the
prostate and breast.
• Interpretation of the genetic code and its function in
pro-
tein synthesis.
• Production of Humulin, a synthetic copy of human Insu-
lin, which causes few allergic reactions. Humulin is widely
available and the product of choice for insulin-dependent
diabetics”. JBS
