.. read by Bette Overell and handed to Mr John Terris - at Parliament:

On behalf of the hundreds of millions of animal and human victims of vivisection, we express our appreciation to you Mr Terris for receiving us at Parliament on this World Day for Laboratory Animals nineteen hundred and ninety. We ask Mr Terris if you would kindly deliver to Mr Palmer, the following open letter to the Prime Minister and kindly permit me to read the letter to the assembly.

In nineteen hundred and thirtyeight, Albert Einstein wrote:

"A fashion rules each age, without most people being able to see the tyrants that rule them."

Mr Prime Minister, the fashion of this age is the shameful institution of vivisection , and in New Zealand we see the tyrants quite clearly, as petitioners endeavouring within the law to present their case for abolishing vivisection are begrudged their right to legislative processes by a Government which can only be described as tyrannical.

On 24 April last year, a Petition was presented to the New Zealand Government signed by one hundred thousand six hundred and forty people seeking the abolition of vivisection in New Zealand. When accepting this Petition on your behalf Mr Terris said he believes we have 'right on our side', that our cause is 'right and just', and that he wanted to 'encourage us to continue'. Mr Prime Minister we are very aware that we have right on our side, we are very aware that our cause is right and just. But we are also aware that profitability erases 'rights', that 'rights' are only acknowledged when profits cease. Used in conjunction with animals the concept of 'rights' is a cruel and hypocritical myth, but used in conjunction with human health we are here today to demand our right to a health service which is not based on scientific fraud. The fraud of vivisection.

At Pigeon Park, Fiona Tait outlines to an angry crowd the poor treatment dished out to NZAVS by the Primary Production Committee.
(Photograph Melanie Bromley)

And we ask Mr Terris to where does he suggest we continue since your government consistently refuses and begrudges access to the legislative processes to those who wish to express opinion or give evidence.

This Society has now exhausted every legal avenue in its attempts to have petitioners' Submissions registered by Parliament. Unless the Primary Production Committee validates these Submissions how can the government assess the feelings of the people or debate the evidence they offer?

Mr Prime Minister this Society has repeatedly informed you and your Parliamentary colleagues, including the Minister of Health, of the increasing number of doctors that are denouncing vivisection by admitting that the vivisection method is nothing more than a legal technicality essential to the production of pharmaceutical medicaments. These doctors say that vivisection is inconclusive, wrong methodology, that it is merely the key to marketing cures that are usually worthless and often dangerous. dangerous because they are based on a scientific fraud... the fraud of vivisection. These doctors give undeniable evidence that all animals give different results. That medicaments are not 'tested' until they are taken by the human patient. That a valid method of 'testing' would quickly expose the worthlessness and danger of cures which are not designed to improve health, but to improve profits. On an almost daily basis the news-media give details of illness and catastrophe linked to modern drugs.

The animals we campaign for are the vital alibi in that drug production.

(Continued next page)