PASTEUR AND VIVISECTION
Those in favour of vivisection frequently point to Louis Pasteur and his use of lab animals as proof that both mankind and animals benefit from animal experimentation. However, it may come as a shock to pro-vivisectionists to read Dechamp or Pasteur? by E.D.Hume; Pasteur - Plagiarist Imposter! by R.B.Pearson; and Dechamp - An Appreciation by Dr. Hector Grasset. Previously I had read The Life of Pasteur by Rene Vallery-Radot, Microbe Hunters by Paul DeKruif and other books glorifying Pasteur, and so was surprised to discover the other side of the question in the Hume, Pearson and Grasset volumes.Credit for discovering that airborne organisms cause fermentation actually belongs to Professor Dechamp (a contemporary of Pasteur). Because Pasteur tirelessly publicized his own worth, whereas Bechamp was not interested in notoriety, Pasteur is often credited with the findings of Bechamp.
Although there had been a vague notion for centuries that atmospheric organisms exist, the invention of the microscope definitely revealed their presence. There were many theories concerning these organism, but no one understood their nature until Bechamp brought order out of chaos by demonstrating that these organisms are living beings capable of inverting sugar, and in some cases causing it to ferment. Pasteur misinterpreted these findings. He erroneously classified germs of fermentation as germs of disease, and came to the conclusion that all infectious diseases were caused by airborne germs. In fact, he concluded that all disease is a fermentative process, and compared a human body to a cask of beer. So he spent the rest of his life searching for germs - not in the air, but in diseased bodies, and labeling them with the names of various diseases.
Before Pasteur's time, many ideas were postulated concerning the cause of disease. Then Pasteur formulated his germ theory, which claims that infectious disease is caused by an attack on our bodies by germs, each disease caused by its own specific germ, and that we can't contract an infectious disease unless that particular germ has invaded our bodies. This theory is really an outgrowth of ancient superstition, i.e., that evil spirits cause disease. Bechamp taught that bacteria are greatly influenced by environment (our bodies), not vice versa. Our living habits, not bacteria, determine our health. Pasteur's germ theory, on the other hand, makes man and animals helpless victims of germs, unless given "immunity" by vaccines derived from sacrificial animals - immunity brought about by way of hypodermic needles, not by way of rational living!
In practice, Pasteur's germ theory has accounted for the lives of millions of lab animals in the development of vaccines - which only make money for their makers. In The Difficulties of Dr.Deguerre, by W.R.Hadwen,MD, it is brought out that Pasteur did not belong to the medical profession - he was a chemist. At the age of 52, Pasteur wrote: "How I wish I had enough health and sufficient knowledge to throw myself body and soul into the experimental study of one infectious disease." It was the next year, 1874, that he did begin studying disease. He had been "struck down by hemiplegia on October 19, 1868, so that he had been paralyzed for the previous six years..." As Dr.Hadwen points out, a man with a semi-paralyzed brain and in advanced years was hardly in condition to begin the difficult study of infectious disease.
In the book Louis Pasteur by S.J.Holmes, the author endeavors to whitewash vivisection by citing Pasteur's "success" against anthrax. He claims that Pasteur used "a few sheep and rabbits" to develop his anthrax preventative which has "saved thousands of sheep and cattle." But DeKruif pointed out just how disastrous this preventative was, including the deaths of flocks of sheep from anthrax - although supposedly immune as a result of the vaccine. Finally Koch, supposedly the most accurate microbe hunter in the world, wrote a scientific report which ripped the practicality of the anthrax vaccine to tatters. The Hungarian government eventually outlawed the vaccine and professors at the University of Turin, Italy, found it to be worthless. In 1888, in Russia, of 4,564 sheep vaccinated against anhtrax, 3,696 promptly died.
Holmes asserts that it "required the sacrifice of several rabbits and dogs to discover the cure for hydrophobia." But in the same book, an illustration shows Pasteur in his lab at work for a cure of hydrophobia (rabies), with rows and rows of caged rabbits, some apparently dead, and a muzzled dog strapped to a table. Pasteur injected into rabbits saliva from rabid animals and also from a girl who had died from hydrophobia, which killed the rabbits. This did not prove that rabies "germs" were involved, but it did demonstrate the cruelty of the vivisector, since the author admits that even the saliva from healthy humans could kill rabbits when injected.
In other experiments dogs were chloroformed and a portion of their skulls was removed so that a bit of substance from a rabid animal could be inserted directly into the dogs' brains. After the operation, the victims acted normally at first, but finally developed rabies and died. Pasteur wanted his findings proved by a commission, so one was formed constituting several medical authorities and the director of agriculture. It performed many experiments according to the method of Pasteur, subjecting dozens of treated and untreated dogs to the bites of rabid animals and to intra-cranial inoculation. Pasteur wished to try out his new preventative for hydrophobia on condemned criminals; fortunately the law prevented it.
Considering the amount of suffering (none of it Pasteur's, it goes without saying) involved in producing this preventative for hydrophobia, how effective was it? Holmes says that perhaps only 16 to 15 percent of people bitten by a rabid animal develop the disease, but a person "might be given hydrophobia by the preventive inoculations..." (Some authorities state that you cannot "catch" rabies from animal bites! In fact some doctors tried, but could never locate one authentic case of hydrophobia caused by a specific rabies germ!) In Pearson's book it is brought out that in England 3,000 persons died after being bitten by dogs and then taking Pasteurian treatment. In 1902 a British commission investigated the issue of rabies and, consequently, Pasteur Institutes were abolished. Subsequently, a London hospital did not use Pasteur's method in treating 2,668 persons bitten by dogs - and not one developed hydrophobia!
Even though some of Pasteur's patients died after receiving his anti-hydrophobic treatment, the dogs that bit them remained well, and the danger of this "preventive' became obvious. Dr.Charles Bell Taylor furnished a list of these fatal cases in The National Review for July 1890. Dr. Hadwen remarked that this situation became so notorious that Pasteur refused to administer treatment unless the dog were destroyed. Hypocritically, he said he didn't want the poor dogs suffering from their rabies!
Such concern on the part of this vivisector is belied by the description in Dr.Hadwen's book of a visit by a friend to Pasteur's cellar laboratory. He witnessed dogs suffering in circular cages, some no longer able to bark naturally, and one emitting sounds like a fowl, which made the others tremble with terror. Some could no longer eat food but would ingest large quantities of hay. Chickens, rabbits and monkeys were also present, awaiting their sad fate. Regarding his laboratory victims Pasteur said: "These poor animals suffer, it is true, but that is the law of nature(!) - it is necessary that the few should be sacrificed for the safety of the many." It must be remembered that Monsieur Pasteur was deliberately creating this misery; so that by this piece of sophistry he really meant that as many should suffer as would make him a handsome living - that "the few" (or rather "the many") should be "sacrificed" to him! Furthermore, if animals really can contract rabies by being bitten, what connection would that have with a dog poisoned through a hole cut into its skull? In addition to the cruelty involved, how could that be considered accurate research - exact science?
Dr.H.M.Shelton quoted a newspaper clipping in his Hygenic Review, to the effect that in the 1940s, in Alabama, 130 dogs were "violently ill" after rabies vaccination and 100 of them died. Shelton commented that these dogs would have suffered from serum poisoning before death.
Much more could be written regarding mortality to man and animals caused by the Pasteurian treatment: E.D.Hume said Pasteur introduced a new disease into the world - "Paralytic Hydrophobia" - by his inoculations. Finally, Professor Michel Peter summed up the situation thus: "Pasteur does not cure hydrophobia; he gives it!"
Is it possible for persons to dissociate themselves from products of vivisection such as drugs, vaccines and surgery? Anyone wanting to "kick the habit" of the deadly "wonders" of animal research should investigate Natural Hygiene. By living hygienically we eliminate the demand for "cures" that never arrive precisely because of the cruel, tyrannical and misleading methods by which they are sought. Our lives may be thereby be saved; for cruelty has a way of reacting cruelly upon the perpetrator, causing illness and premature death.
Morarji Desai, who had imposed the first export ban on rhesus monkeys in spite of his country's dire need for foreign currency when he was Prime Minister of India, imparted a fine lesson in humanity, ethics and medicine to baffled U.S. newspeople at the National Press Club in New York on June 21, 1978 -
Question: "Mister Prime Minister, considering your deep concern for human needs, can you explain your stand against exporting rhesus monkeys for research?"
Answer: "If we're real human beings, we ought not to inflict cruelty on any living being. This is the philosophy which India has always had. It is therefore that we do not want to subject any animals to cruelty and that is why we refuse to export them. Research is not the only answer to human welfare. Human welfare or human health can be achieved more by following natural laws: for this no medicines are required. I have not taken them for years and I don't now."
Health depends on correct living habits, not on animals tortured to death in laboratories.
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