"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 continues unabated.... The medical
establishment threatens us with dire consequences if animal
experimentation is stopped. This is a sham, a weapon being
used to ensure continued funding to the tune of $6 billion
a year by the National Institutes of Health and Mental
Health to the nation'suniversities." - From an article
by Murray J. Cohen, M.D., in the Chicago Tribune, April
8, 1986.
"At the time when millions are starving in the world,
and our economy is in great trouble, Congress is allocating
billions of dollars annually in grants for "basic",
no-goal research on living animals. Careers in torture
are as financially rewarding as they are morally bankrupt.
Reports in the medical journals recorded by the experimenters
themselves are indisputable indictments of their gross
inhumanity." - Barbara Schultz, a member of the Attorney
General Louis Lefkowitz's advisory committee on the treatment
of animals in New York State, writing in Newsday,
July 12, 1974.
"In
all ages Man has sought to justify the cruelty of his
actions by decking them out under the mantle of a lofty
ideal...
In our present age, in which cruelty has in fact only
changed its form, but in which we profess to be more enlightened
than in former times, living creatures are tortured in
the name of the higher interests of humanity, in the name
of Science... It goes without saying that today's torturers,
like their predecessors, boast of the gratifying results
of their cruel methods. Thus, in all the journals at their
disposal, in all their classical works, they turn the
heads of the young by asserting that it is thanks to vivisection
that Harvey discovered the circulation of blood, Galvani
electricity, Claude Bernard the causes for the formation
of sugar in the human organism, and so forth. Finally,
in order to prove the triumph of their method, they remind
us that it resulted in the invention of the "healing"
sera for disease. Well, we are not afraid to say that
all these statements are in fact false, and that tortures,
whether for religious, legal or scientific purposes, have
always produced only hideous results, and that they have
led only to error, disaster and degeneration..."
- Dr. H. Boucher, physician, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France
- From his lecture at the Fifth International Anti-Vivisection
Congress in Zurich, 1912.
Dr.
med Gustav Riedlin, Freiburg im Breisgau, Der Versuch
am Lebenden Tier (Research on The Living Animal): "We
anti-vivisectionist doctors oppose the abuse of pure research,
the "scientific" animal torture, and we demand
its banning under criminal law. We demand its total abolition
and would also demand this even if - which is not the
case - some great use for suffering mankind were to emerge
from it. Apart from the depraving cruelties and the impossibility
of carrying out most experiments without causing pain,
experimentation on the weak body, i.e. the torture of
the defenseless animal, is unreliable and misleading in
its results on the part of ambitious pushers and illusionists
with no moral scruples.
....But we do not content ourselves with condemning animal
experiments from the standpoint of sympathy, moral laws
and religion; we wage our fight against animal torture
also from the purely scientific standpoint, and can prove
that it is superfluous, useless, harmful and disastrous
for our race."- From Der Arzt, August 1930,
No. 8, special issue.
