In the United Kingdom, the country recognised worldwide for its sophisticated laws in which accountability of animals used in laboratory experiments demands neat lists of figures to be meticulously recorded and supplied to the Home Office, infant animals' eyes are stitched closed, hundreds of thousands of gentle creatures are routinely poisoned to death and young wild-caught primates are tortured to death to test weapons of war and man-made killer diseases. In the stranglehold grip of British vivisectors practising within this law over four million animals are done to death every year.

The legislation which is the vehicle for these vile crimes is emulated worldwide by naive and misguided but possibly well-intentioned individuals who attempt to introduce reform in countries where no laws to protect such animals exist. Since politicians operate within self-imposed constraints the new law must be carefully tailored to suit many extremely powerful pro-vivisection faculties and must cause no ripples. Ideally it will be loudly acclaimed by the animal welfare lobby and the rising apprehensions of the public will be appeased.

In Great Britain a tragic Bill of betrayal is due on the statute book by mid-May 1986. The document stipulates the importance of continued animal experimentation and draws attention to the vast workforce employed in the vivisection industry. When implemented the Bill will worsen and perpetuate the suffering and misery to such a degree that even moderate and conservative societies are rising in anger and indignation. The animal liberation front supported by thousands of sympathisers is accelerating its opposition to violence against animals and for the first time in history all British leagues (bar one) are working in unison to stop the Bill.

In the past eight years since our Society's beginnings the anti-vivisection movement has evolved out of all recognition. It is now a vast international network, fast breaking away from old conventions, better informed, sharper in its demands. The moderate old-established organisations are hard-pressed to keep up with the new movement but are aware that they must do so or sink. Individuals until comparatively recently leaders in the field (usually qualified in ethics or philosophy) are being left behind. In Europe any hint of attempt to regulate, control or to introduce reform based on policing the system, accountability or the adoption of interim measures is considered betrayal. Over 4,000 abolitionists from France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Finland, Australia, Britain, Israel, Peru and other countries marched in a massive rally of support of the Swiss referendum on 19 October 1985. Their target: - total and immediate abolition of vivisection on the grounds of invalidity.

"It is well-known that animal effects are often totally different from the effects in people.
- A.L. Cowan, Acting Medical Officer of Health, New Plymouth, New Zealand. NZ Listener 31 August 1985, page 10.

New Zealand's bill of betrayal

The introduction of regulatory legislation in New Zealand is based on the false assumption that vivisection has value. Accountability of experiments after the event is of academic interest only and tantamount to asking the Mafia to present annual audited accounts of its affairs. It has dangerous and far-reaching implications. The Bill will entrench, establish and lubricate the vivisection machinery and veil the most diabolical evil in the history of the human race in a cloak of respectability and legality. Vivisection is the last abuse that will be abolished if the myth of its usefulness is kept alive. The proposed bill keeps that myth alive. Conversely it is the first abuse that will go if its invalidity is made known. In Italy politician Filippo Fiandrotti exploded the myth and won a majority vote in the Chamber of Deputies to ban all experiments for a period of three years. New Zealand is ripe for a Filippo Fiandrotti.

I have endeavoured, through the limited medium of this Mobilise! to present the fallaciousness and inconclusiveness of applying results of animal trials to the human circumstance and to this end my investigations were extremely diligent and thorough resulting in a mountain of incriminating evidence to support our claim that:

Vivisection kills - animals and people

My conviction that nothing short of total uncompromising abolition must be our target has been reinforced. Certainly if human health were to take consideration over industrial profits and political expediency dismantling of the vivisection machinery would be immediately set about and superseded with replacement techniques with which we should be proud to enter the 21st Century.

It is with pride that I record yet again our Society's objective of total abolition without compromise and with pleasure and confidence that I acknowledge my executive's unequivocal support of this policy.

Bette Overell

"Each treatment (of the patient) becomes a pharmacological experiment."
"But you don't tell the patient that they might drop dead... you tend to keep those obscure ones under your hat."
- A Lower Hutt (New Zealand) GP... writing under the hypothetical name of Dr Richard Gange... NZ Listener, page 29, 7 September 1985.