Myths about animal research

You guys really don't understand where Lady of the Lake is coming from.
For her murder is murder, cruelty is cruelty. Taking one life to save another is not right.

While I do not agree with Lady of the Lake I do respect her position on the issue.

While I do agree with medical animal testing I do not agree with animal testing in the name of whiter teeth (Crest), fun floor sweeping (swiffer), or dandruff free hair (Head & Shoulders).

Many people don't know that product animal testing is still going on. The above mentioned products are produced by Procter & Gamble. P&G is the worst corporation for animal testing, and odds are you have several of their products in your home.
P&G refuses to stop animal testing while 600 other companys use safe and proven alternatives.

For a complete listing of P&G products visit their web site.
www.pg.com...

Some of us do, actually, know where LOTL is coming from, too

I (for one) see a difference between medical testing, and cosmetic testing; I'm actually in agreement that there are no good reasons why cosmetic testing on animals is still going on; we've known for many years now that there are better options for all concerned. Also, fwiw, P&G are by no means the only company still guilty of this; when you see "no animal testing" on the package, that can mean something as deceptive as "well, we can promise that the END PRODUCT wasn't tested on animals, but please don't ask us about the ingredients...".

Just another reason why I've been buying The Body Shop stuff for years and years now...there truly doesn't seem to be any justification for animal testing where cosmetics are concerned.

Still though, when it comes to medicines, it seems to be "the ends really does justify the means". As tragic, sorry, brutal, cruel as it is, without animal testing (for medicines, again, I hasten to add), many many people (including virtually every type I diabetic, for example) would never have gotten past childhood.

And this is coming from a die-hard pacifist (oh, the irony in that statement) who abhors the idea of doing harm to others

Originally posted by Lady of the Lake
deadlynightshade. There are as many counter claims against animals research and the value thereof. At the end of the day there are those who support this practice and those such as myself who do not.

I am pleased that you feel comfortable that an animal has been sacrificed to help you. For myself, I would not want an animal to die to save me.

Dear Lady of the Lake,
I am perfectly comfortable with the "sacrifice" of an animal purposefully bred for medical research. I am a animal welfarist not an animal activist. You are entitled to have your own opinion on this matter. I just hope that you remain a healthy human for the duration of your life or use herbal remedies to cure ailments of the future, because if you use modern medicine and cures then your opinion becomes pointless and moot, and that is just my humble opinion on this matter.

Originally posted by WolfofWar
You know, alot of herbal treatments are tested on animals too. I mean, alot of people back in the stone age and copper ages, to figure out what would be safe to eat, would have a domesticated animal eat it. If the animal lived, and wasn't sick, it would be okay to forage and consume.

My, what an excellent point! How else would we know what herbs, vitamins, and minerals are good for us and which ones are not. Also, what is the safe dose to take and what is the lethal dose. Hmm.... I wonder how we figured that out.....

Originally posted by eazy_mas
Animals created in this Earth to help us humans.

So its not big deal if one or two apes die in expirment for HIV vaccine because maybe its a cure for millions in Africa

Did you know that the west nile virsus is know by the birds

The catch the bird and see if has a west nile virsus then they release it

Speaking of West Nile virus, I am proud to say that the animal studies performed at the facility I work at have now found a vaccine for the West Nile Virus. It is currently being reviewed by the FDA and should be allowed to go on to the human testing stage after approval. Special thanks to mus musculus and rattus norvegicus (mice and rats).

Originally posted by Umbrax
You guys really don't understand where Lady of the Lake is coming from.
For her murder is murder, cruelty is cruelty. Taking one life to save another is not right.

While I do not agree with Lady of the Lake I do respect her position on the issue.

While I do agree with medical animal testing I do not agree with animal testing in the name of whiter teeth (Crest), fun floor sweeping (swiffer), or dandruff free hair (Head & Shoulders).

Many people don't know that product animal testing is still going on. The above mentioned products are produced by Procter & Gamble. P&G is the worst corporation for animal testing, and odds are you have several of their products in your home.
P&G refuses to stop animal testing while 600 other companys use safe and proven alternatives.

For a complete listing of P&G products visit their web site.
www.pg.com...

I totally understand where Lady of the Lake is coming from in this discussion and she is correct in saying that I will not change her mind on this matter and vice versa, and you know what? That's ok, it's cool by me. I like hearing what the opposition has to say. I may not agree with it, but at least I get an idea of where they train of thought it coming from.
The object of this post was to clear up some discrepancies and myths that have been bored into the minds of the less educated in this matter. Lady has done her research and homework on this matter and has based her decisions on what she believes to be right in her mind :Applaudes her:I myself, do not think that product testing is acceptable and I certainly do not agree with people abusing or neglecting their pets- that is simply wrong. As I have said before, I am an animal welfarist just not an activist. I think it is important that people know the difference.

Is not the level of care provided to these animals at least as much about the preservation of experimental integrity, or around the maintenance of a [the animal as] commercial product as it is about the welfare of the animal concerned ?

Is there a logic in the provision of a level of humane care to an animal on one hand, and then in the subsequent execution of experiments upon the same animal in the other ?

Can the basic techniques used for survival by early man really be compared to vivisection, any more than having a few chickens hanging around the place for eggs and a bit of insect control on your garden veg can be compared to industrial level battery farming ?

Originally posted by 0951
Can the basic techniques used for survival by early man really be compared to vivisection, any more than having a few chickens hanging around the place for eggs and a bit of insect control on your garden veg can be compared to industrial level battery farming ?

I thought this discussion was dead and buried but obviously not. Good point. Just another point that appears to have been missed. There are any number of things that are safe for animals to eat that will kill a human.

Originally posted by Lady of the Lake

Originally posted by 0951
Can the basic techniques used for survival by early man really be compared to vivisection, any more than having a few chickens hanging around the place for eggs and a bit of insect control on your garden veg can be compared to industrial level battery farming ?

I thought this discussion was dead and buried but obviously not. Good point. Just another point that appears to have been missed. There are any number of things that are safe for animals to eat that will kill a human.

Lady of the Lake - I don't think that this discussion will be dead and buried for a good while yet.

I'd imagine that a fair number of early humans were the test subjects of their day, although I'd imagine that there was already a good food / bad food kinda sense about them anyway - look at the stuff that will do us considerable harm, take the Aminita's for an example - they actually look like they'd kill you, so you'd be more inclined to keep away (even from the edible varieties).

Like any unknown foodstuffs you'd try a bit at a time, see what happened, learn and move on.

How does the difference in human and animal physiology feed into the vivisection argument, I'm not clear on how results from one species can be shown to relate to another ?

Clearly at some levels it will do, (like the use of pigs to test the effects of trauma from car impact collisions until the mid 1990's) but what about in detecting more subtle changes, such as in drug trials ?

I'm going to bump this thread, almost a year after the last post, because of its relevance to the current PTS discussion regarding PETA, eating meat, and medical testing on animals.

The current thread is here: What PETA Doesn't Tell You

I feel that this thread debunks most of the current arguments against animal testing of medicine, and deserves a second look.

Some Animal testing truths and myths...

less than one of the four potential drugs that successfully negotiate the initial animal tests are ever approved by the FDA...
Of those drugs that are safe and efficacious in animals, the animal trials are no better than 50 per cent accurate in determining a drug's safety and efficacy.

Hugh LaFollette and Niall Shanks, Brute Science (London: Routledge, 1996), pp.27-28.

If testing drugs on animals is so good for us why do so many get withdrawn from use once they are found to course harm to Humans? Animal lives were wasted and Human life was put at risk, for what? Profit, as usual, not health care.

Testing drugs on animals does not predict the effect it will have on Humans.

only one in 10,000 research programmes make it to the market'. Moreover, the number of clinical trial failures is certainly not a new phenomenon; for example five years ago, a writer commented: 'After all, at least 30% of all drugs fail clinical trials in phase III' (Peter Mitchell, 'Crash and boom: the rise and fall of biotechnology', Lancet, Vol.350, No.9073, 26 July 1997).

Phase III dosage and effectivemess testing on Humans after animal testing is done.

'...Biotechnology stocks have slumped about 30 percent so far this year after a series of *clinical trial failures and rejections from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration...'.

'U.S. stocks cling to gains, biotech, job data weigh', Yahoo News, 16 May 2002.
* Note: These would have been first tested on animals.

'Vivisectors can quote hundreds of ideas concerning human medicine obtained with the help of animal experimentation. They omit, however, to tell us that these ideas proved useful in understanding human illness only after they had been confirmed by clinical observation: at the time of their formulation, they told us nothing useful whatsoever about human beings'.

Professor Pietro Croce, Vivisection or Science? (London: Zed Books, 1999), p.60.

I love this letter sent to the Derby Evening Telegraph

I would like to thank the Research Defence Society for their interesting revelations but I am a little confused. You see I suffer from arthritis, and nothing my doctor has given me works. In fact, the side effects of some treatments have been very distressing.
My cat also has arthritis, yet the tablets my vet gave her appear to have worked wonders. So, after reading the articles (of the Research Defence Society) I went along to see my vet and asked him for some of these tablets for myself. He laughed at me and said that just because they had cured my cat, that doesn't mean that they are suitable for me.
Last week my neighbour's dog strained his shoulder and could barely walk, but after pain-killing injections he was jumping around like a puppy. I went back to my vet and asked if these injections would do the same for me. He was quite rude and said that medication used on animals and humans are so different.
This has left me very puzzled, because according to the RDS letters, if it's safe for animals then it's safe for us! I'm not sure what to do the next time I'm ill: should I see a doctor or a vet? After all, the principle's the same...isn't it?
Mrs D M, Hucknall

Examples of drugs first tested on animals and then withdrawn...

The Drug Information Bulletin (Il Bollettino d'Informazione sui Farmaci, No. 8 August 1983).
This reports that the registration of 22,621 medical preparations had been revoked i.e., prohibited. All of these had passed the animal testing stage.

The American General Accounting Office (GAO), announced that of all the new drugs that began to be marketed between 1976 and 1985, 52% of these were found to be more dangerous than the pre-marketing experimentation had suggested. Because of this, they were either withdrawn or required stronger warnings.

More here...vivisection-absurd.org.uk...

Animals have been killed in their billions in medical research, so it is only logical to suppose that some useful knowledge in the fight against human disease must have resulted somewhere along the line. Yet this neither automatically proves that these experiments were either vital or irreplaceable...Critics [of vivisection] have likened the success rate of animal research to putting money into a slot machine; put enough in and you will occasionally triumph, but this does not make it either a reliable or logical method of pursuing your goal.[19]

So animals are treated well in vivisection labs?

In one study, the USDA determined that Ohio State University had violated the Animal Welfare Act because approximately forty cats had been injured when identification tags became embedded in their necks. The Ohio State annual report to the USDA of animal use for the relevant period indicated that no animal (including these cats) were subjected to any unrelieved pain or distress. Apparently Ohio State vivisectors did not consider a chain embedded in the flesh caused any suffering or distress...
In another study, researchers did not consider that placing corrosive substances into the eyes or on to the shaved skin of rabbits caused any pain or distress.[66]

vivisection-absurd.org.uk...

the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act. Section 24 of the 1986 Act makes it a criminal offence to divulge information on animal experiments.

Isn't that interesting, 'we need to keep our really useful and loving care of our animals in our lab a secret.'

One myth that is supposedly busted is the use of cats and dogs in testing...

Cats were subjected to 1,580 'procedures' in 2001 (Note: animals can be and are used for more than one experiment.
7,945 procedures were carried out on dogs in 2001 - an increase of 4 per cent.
3,986 procedures were performed on primates in 2001 - an increase of 8 per cent.

vivisection-absurd.org.uk...

So not a myth after all...

Another myth from the pro-vivisectionists is it's either an animal or your child...

[One pro-vivisection group] 'produces a video that recounts the stories of numerous children saved, so it claims, as a result of animal experimentation...In sweeping generalities but without facts, the video assures us that the only way to save babies is through the use of animal models. It ends with the death of one child whose life, so it claims, could have been saved, with 'more animal experiments'.
Such scheming PR, which relies solely on emotional appeals, should raise this suspicion: if the facts of the cases are so persuasive and overwhelming, why are they not revealed? We wish to know, truthfully, what animal models have actually done for sick children. Tell us from where these supposed advances arose.
Without facts, vivisection makes no sense. Pick at the edges of the pro-vivisection argument and you will find researchers choosing what is expedient in the short term, i.e., grants and publishing papers, instead of what actually works in the long- term - human solutions'.[114]

So who is using your emotions now?

And your idea of the vivisectionist doing his good works for the good of you is a MYTH...

As Richard Ryder...pointed out, researchers are 'basically conformers who do not question what is expected of them...like most men, they seek security and success, and in order to achieve these ends, they know that it pays to toe the line'. So, if the truth be told, the real goal of animal research is the personal 'welfare' of those involved...
Ultimately, the desecrator of animal life ends up desecrating all life including his own, because he reduces life to discrete mechanisms of measurable quantity.

Andree Collard with Joyce Contrucci, Rape of the Wild (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p.70.

More here...vivisection-absurd.org.uk...

The whole pharma industry is about nothing but making money...

'When a drug's patent is about to expire, its maker tries to ward off competition by filing frivolous lawsuits against anyone looking to make a low cost, and perfectly legal, version of the pill. They don't really expect to win, but the suit can delay the generic version from hitting the market for up to 30 months - allowing the patent holders to rake in billions in additional, competition-free sales. And the public gets to pay twice: we pay for unnecessarily high-priced drugs, and we pay for the court system they're exploiting to keep us paying the high price'.

More... vivisection-absurd.org.uk...

The idea that testing drugs on animals has increased our health is a myth.
Life expectancy increased has improved considerably in the last hundred yrs, mostly due to improvements in health care, medical measures only playing a small part.
Hospital admissions are increasing, as is the level of chronic sickness in all age groups; more working days are being lost and the number of drug prescriptions issued per person has risen from an average of 4.7 in 1961 to 7.0 in 1985.
Animal experiments have little effect on our health.

'It takes a few decades for long-term side-effects to be revealed, and the biological theories that supported its safe use [HRT] have now been shown to be unfounded...My quote is from a leading article in the British Medical Journal'.
(Source: 'When doctors get it wrong - and drug firms get the profits', The Scotsman, 20 February 2004).

www.scotsman.com...

'Beagles have been gassed until they passed out in secret tests to monitor the effects of a chemical which was banned more than 15 years ago. Confidential documents reveal how the bodies of dogs would convulse violently during recent experiments at the controversial Huntingdon Life Sciences laboratory...'.
(Source: 'Secret lab notes reveal dog cruelty', The Observer, 22 February 2004).

There was no room for the last link, here it is...

www.guardian.co.uk...

I originaly posted the above in the what PETA don't want you to know thread...
I missed this thread somehow so I'm posting it here too

[edit on 20/7/2006 by ANOK]