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"Doctors Speak Out Against Animal Testing The genetically engineered monkey experiments now underway at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) bear as much resemblance to bona fide medical research as a circus sideshow does to a legitimate museum. Fall for the hype, and you'll believe OHSU's bizarre assembly line of designer 'monkey models' will actually help cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, and who knows, even male-pattern baldness.
Apparently, OHSU is undeterred by the dismal results from decades of genetic engineering of mice, who have been inserted with human genes to study human cancers and other human diseases. What did we learn? That treatments which may work in transgenic mice fail in humans. Nothing relevant to treating human disease has resulted." -Neal D. Barnard, M.D., President-Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, January 2001 "Animal experimentation is not necessary. It is expensive. It is inaccurate. It is misleading. It consumes limited resources. And further, it is detrimental to the very species it professes to be working to help -- humankind." -Dr.s Ray & Jean Greek, Sacred Cows and Golden Geese, 2000, p 223 "What good does it do you to test something (a vaccine) in a monkey? You find five or six years from now that it works in the monkey, and then you test it in humans and you realize that humans behave totally differently from monkeys, so you've wasted five years." -Dr. Mark Feinberg, a leading AIDS researcher, Atlanta Journal Constitution, September 21, 1997 "Because of the irreconcilable biological differences between animals and human beings, the results of animal tests cannot be applied to human beings with any degree of confidence. Dr. Ralph Heywood, past scientific director of Huntington Research Centre (U.K.), stated at a 1989 scientific workshop held at the Ciba Foundation that: ‘…the best guess for the correlation of adverse reactions in man and animal toxicity data is somewhere between 5% and 25%.’ " -Dr. Andre Menache, speaking at the 10th World Congress on Law and Medicine, held in Jerusalem, Israel, August 29, 1994. "There is no doubt that the best test species for man is man. This is based on the fact that it is not possible to extrapolate animal data directly to man, due to interspecies variation in anatomy, physiology and biochemistry." -Dr MacLennan and Dr. Amos, Clinical Sciences Research Ltd., UK, Cosmetics and Toiletries Manufacturers and Suppliers, 1990; XVII: 24 "The findings were that if you enclosed animals in a field armored vehicle and set off an explosion inside, that the ear drum and the middle ear mechanism may be damaged... More valid information regarding sound pressure levels presented to the middle ear could have been much more easily obtained by the use of a Kemar mannequin placed in the appropriate position in the vehicle." -J. William Wright III, M.D., The Ear Institute of Indiana, October, 1990 -Henry Heimlich, M.D., from the "Proceedings of the First International Medical Conference Against Vivisection", Israel, 1989 -Les Stewart, D.D.S., February, 1987, Last Chance for Animals, Tarzana, California "I cannot recall a single instance where my clinical judgment was even remotely influenced by the results of a psychological study using animals as subjects or 'models.' " -Michael Klaper, M.D. "Not only are the studies themselves often lacking even face value, but they also drain badly needed funds away from patient care needs." -Neal D. Barnard, M.D. "Most important, I agree with your position re the utter uselessness of vivisection. When I first left the laboratory, I remained skeptical, stating, "there are some good experiments to be sure, but the majority are worthless", or words to that effect. Now after years of looking for those "good" experiments, I have long since concluded that they do not exist. But I had to do the looking myself. I was simply too conditioned to the "Party Line" to accept anyone’s word for this." -Donald J. Barnes, after experimenting on rhesus monkeys for 16 years, from a letter to Hans Ruesch of December 31, 1987 "Unfortunately these experiments will continue in a self-proliferating manner until they are curtailed by brave and innovative decisions on the part of people in positions of authority who have the courage to declare openly that the emperor has no clothes and that it is time to stop wasting money and animal lives on the pretense that manipulating several variables in rats, dogs, cats or monkeys has anything to do with human psychology." -Dr. Murry Cohen, M.D. "Animal models differ from their human counterparts. Conclusions drawn from animal research, when applied to human disease, are likely to delay progress, mislead and do harm to the patient." -Moneim A. Fadali, M, D., Cardiac/Thoracic Surgeon, UCLA Faculty, Board of Directors, Royal College of Surgeons of Cardiology, Canada, UCLA Clinical Staff, as reported in Fur ‘n Feathers, Oct. 1987 "The growing opposition is understandable both on ethical and biological counts. However, a certain scientistic culture says they serve to save human lives. But reality is quite the opposite." -Prof. Gianni Tamino, biologist, Padua University, a Congressman in the Italian Parliament, in Gazzettino, Venice, Oct. 8, 1987. "Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it." - Dr. A. Sabin, 1986, developer of the oral polio vaccine "The abolition of vivisection would in no way halt medical progress, just the opposite is the case. All the sound medical knowledge of today stems from observations carried out on human beings. No surgeon can gain the least knowledge from experiments on animals, and all the great surgeons of the past and of the present day are in agreement on that…Animals are completely different from Man from the anatomical standpoint, their reactions are quite different, their structure is different and their resistance is different." -Prof. Dr. Bruno Fedi, in an interview with CIVIS in Rome, January 11, 1986, At the time of the interview he was the director of the Institute of Pathological Anatomy at the General Hospital in Terni, Italy "The reason why I am against animal research is because it doesn't work, it has no scientific value and every good scientist knows that." - Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, M.D., 1986, Head of the Licensing Board for the State of Illinios, paediatrician & gynaecologist for 30 years, medical columnist & best-selling author, recipient of numerous awards for excellence in medicine. "I am against vivisection because it is immoral and completely useless for the progress of human medicine. Animals have a physiology and reactions quite different from ours. I am of the opinion that all experiments on live animals should be abolished because they only lead us into error." -Dr. Marie-Louise Griboval, Paris France "The wellbeing of man takes first place in the ladder of human values. Today, in 1986, after years of practice as a physician, I am convinced that any result I might obtain from experimentations on a dog, a cat, or any other animal, will be misleading, damaging and even disastrous for human beings. There is no question of any advantage to be gained at all. Animal experiments confuse the issues and their results will never have scientific precision. There is absolutely no connection between vivisection and human health. The general belief in the value of animal experimentation is the result of brainwashing that the public has been submitted to for a long time. Behind it are the pharmaceutical industries, which spend fortunes on publicity and finance the research in institutes and the universities." -Dr. Arie Brecher, M.D., extract from a lecture to the Medical and Juridical Society at the Hotel Dan-Panorama of Haifa in Israel on November 1, 1986. "Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organizations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them." -Linus Pauling, PHD, two time Nobel Prize Winner "It could be argued that this (cancer research) is a field of research which has consumed an enormous number of animals without any tangible result." -Professor D.H. Smyth, Alternatives to Animal Experiments "From an animal one can get only a very approximate indication of how a human will react under similar circumstances. But this is not science-it’s a lottery. However, we are not playing games. At stake are health and life. There is absolutely no connection between vivisection and human health. The day it was decided to develop medicaments using animal models, it was a sad day for mankind. People began to get sick and to die due to medications." -Dr. Arie Brecher, M.D., the Israeli physician, held on August 12, 1986 at Tel Aviv "I have been in medical practice for 38 years. I have never done any animal experiments, neither during my studies nor subsequently, and have also never been inside an animal laboratory. Animal experimentation represents a fallacious practice. I cannot name one single case in which experiments on animals may have led to a useful result. I think vivisection is a crude, archaic method which must be completely reconsidered. I am convinced that we are approaching a quite differently conceived form of research method, based on cell cultures." -John A. McDougall, M.D., article, "The Misguided War on Cancer" in the Vegetarian Times, September 1986 "The statement that the prohibition of animal experiments would result in a deterioration of medical care and knowledge is not tenable, and quite clearly a view with overtones of self-interest…" -Dr Werner Hartinger, Specialist in General and Accident Surgery, practitioner for the Industrial Injuries Insurance Institutes, with 25 years’ experience at the hospital and in private practice, in an interview with CIVIS, April 29, 1986 "The facts continue multiplying that refute the barbaric practice of animal experimentation in the name of human health and longevity. Yet the efforts by the medical establishment to justify this practice continue unabated…The medical establishment threatens us with dire consequences if animal experimentation is stopped. This is a shame, a weapon being used to ensure continued funding to the tune of $6 billion a year by the National Institute of Health and Mental Health to the nation’s universities." -Murray J. Cohen, M.D., in the Chicago Tribune, April 8, 1986 "The question was, can we give up animal experiments without halting medical progress? My answer is that not only one can, but that one must give up animal experiments not to halt medical progress. Today’s rebellion against vivisection is no longer based on animal welfare…But we have now become convinced that we should put an end to animal experimentation not out of consideration for animals, but out of consideration for human beings. I won’t speak now of the pharmacological disasters due to animal experiments, that would be too simple. I mean the constant, daily harm caused to medical science by the belief in the validity of animal tests." -Prof. Pietro Croce, M.D., in an interview with CIVIS, Jan 11, 1986 "It would be very difficult to find anything that could be more misleading for biomedical research than animal experimentation." -Prof. Pietro Croce, M.D., Vivisezione o Scienza, (Vivisection or Science- a Choice), 2nd edition, 1985
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