In January 1979 Revlon admitted using thousands of guinea-pigs, rabbits, rats and mice in the following tests: Draize eye irritation, acute oral toxicity, primary skin irritation, sub-acute dermal toxicity, inhalation toxicity and guinea-pig immersion studies. (All without pain relief). Revlon also used a vast number of animals in the production of pharmaceuticals. Revlon's President was paid US$1,706,964 salary that year. NZAVS lead the New Zealand spearhead of protest which was undertaken by UK, Canada, USA, Germany, France, Australia and Ireland.

Straight from that campaign our young Society represented New Zealand in an international coalition against Avon, which also used thousands of guinea-pigs, hamsters, rabbits, rats and mice.

Few members realise that as NZAVS flooded New Zealand with "Boycott Avon" leaflets the Society was being intimidated with threats from Avon's solicitors who sought retraction, apologies and recall of leaflets. Despite demands and threats from Avon and their lawyers, we churned out and distributed thousands of leaflets drawing the attention of a (then) ignorant public to the crimes perpetrated by Avon Cosmetics.

Avon claim they have stopped testing on animals but this victory did not come easy. It represented thousands of hours working around the clock by our small struggling group with few resources, little money, inadequate premises... where every leaflet was hand-produced on an overworked Gestetner.

Avon's change of heart is not attributed to humanitarian reasons but for sales as an enlightened and discriminating public are beginning to demand cruelty-free products. We ask members to seriously consider before purchasing Avon products. There are many producers of excellent cosmetics who... have never...

We trust that the discriminating purchaser will still boycott Avon.

Lipsticks and shampoos aside, the swindle of vivisection used as an alibi in the production of medicaments has become so pronounced in New Zealand in recent years that even its most ardent advocates, on a regular basis, denounce its value. Between April and July 1989 New Zealand was shattered by the published findings of a team of medical investigators which declared the asthma drug Fenoterol (Boehringer) (also marketed as Berotec or Duovent) increased the risk of death from asthma. That asthma sufferers are between 2 to 13 times more likely to die of asthma if they are prescribed Fenoterol. An international conference immediately called for the drug to be banned. Our Health Minister said "no".

In a BBC debate entitled "Vivisection is Scientific Con" dated 22 June 1987 it was revealed that in the UK alone in 1966 aerosol pressured dilators caused at least six (known) deaths, in 1974 seventeen hundred deaths and that between 1975 and 1985 asthma deaths doubled as the use of aerosol pressured dilators trebled.

At a Congress organised by IAAPEA in Philadelphia on 24 June 1989 Dr Robert Sharpe said:

"Thousands of young asthma patients died in the 1960s following the use of isoprenaline aerosol inhalers. All aerosol pressured dilators are developed, tested and refined on animals."

In the last financial year $14,100,000 of the taxpayers' money was allocated to the Medical Research Council of New Zealand. Together with other contributions a total of well over thirty million dollars is spent annually on medical research in this country much of which is wasted on vivisection.

An increasing number of medical doctors are exposing the vivisection myth and joining the International League of Doctors Against Vivisection, which to date numbers 230 members on 4 continents in 17 countries.

NZAVS has made several unsuccessful approaches to doctors in New Zealand. However it takes a person of strong calibre to swim against the tide of industrialised vivisection-based medicine, and disappointingly those who sell natural cures, for whom NZAVS campaigns, have not yet come forward in New Zealand.

(Acknowledgements: Laurence Bacchus, Hastings; Henry Turtle, London; Dr M. Schar-Manzoli, Switzerland).