(From previous page)

This replaces the Medical Research Council which now no longer exists
Peter Gluckman, Director of Animal Research at the University of Auckland wrote this submission. Gluckman is also:

"Prof. of Pediatrics at the University of Auckland, a member of the biomedical research committee, member of the animal ethics committee at the University of Auckland, author of over 400 scientific papers of relevance and has been involved in biomedical research (vivisection - NZAVS) for the past nineteen years."

This, New Zealand's greatest exponent of vivisection, writes about the important experiments on pregnant sheep to study respiratory distress syndrome in premature babies which..

"saved hundreds of thousands of lives"

The..

"prevention of diabetes in children accomplished through experiments on rats and mice"

The treatment of keeping blue babies alive through experiments on piglets which..

"saved hundreds of thousands of babies"

The importance of using mice in cancer research, The..

"famous work at Greenlane Hospital on dogs in congenital heart surgery experiments"

The sheep and rats..

"used to help people afflicted with mental retardation and epilepsy"

The..

"thousands of human babies saved by experiments on sheep in the study of toxaemia of human pregnancy"..
"The vital experiments on rats and sheep to study oxygen starvation of human babies at birth"..
"All the work on animals which perfected major bowel, cardiac and chest surgery"...
"The work achieved to work out how to preserve heart valves carried out on pound dogs who were going to be sacrificed anyhow"....

Next comes a section on the vivisectors' ability to develop experimental hypertension in rats. Gluckman then challenges..

"any of you to risk being the first recipient of an AIDS vaccination without it being shown in animals that it doesn't have side effects."

he goes on

"Measles and smallpox"
.. "wiped out hundreds of thousands of Maoris"

About Thalidomide he says:

"At that time medical knowledge didn't recognise that drugs could form malformed foetuses"

This indicates that had the firm Chemie Grunenthal known that the drug caused malformation in foetuses of animals it would not have been used.

What, NZAVS would ask Prof. Gluckman... about the many drugs which were known to cause malformations in animals - like accutane, depo-provera, debendox to name a few... Wherein those malformations were ignored and the drugs put on the market to cause tragedy after tragedy... Indicating that the vivisectors don't have faith in their own animal experiments?

Gluckman then treats his readers to the details and statistics of the numbers of animals vivisected at his university per year. This includes cats used to study human cot-death, opposums for brain research, mice, rats, guinea-pigs, rabbits, dogs, pigeons, fish, lizards, the whole Noah's ark. "New Zealand" says this leading vivisector "can be proud that it's made more than its fair share of contributions to the health research development around the world".

He then writes of vivisection...

"It's a pain in the neck... exhausting."

Gluckman concludes his submission thus:

"The Health Research Council submits that the Petition is fundamentally erroneous and should be rejected out of hand... Progress in health and in the New Zealand economy (which remains based on the pastoral industries) will rely significantly on animal research for the foreseeable future."

NZAVS would like to see Prof. Gluckman challenged by any of the One Thousand Doctors Against Vivisection (http://www.nzavs.org.nz/materials/1000doctors.html) (Ruesch), or the members of the International League of Doctors Against Vivisection in Switzerland, or the Doctors in Britain Against Animal Experiments, or the prestigious physicians, scientists and other health professionals who recently wrote an open letter to the American people challenging those who pursue the business of vivisection (see page 7).

Gluckman's claims will be demolished in NZAVS rebuttal to ARSL (http://www.health.org.nz).

The RNZSPCA

This Society writes a substantial submission outlining its policy of the 3-Rs principle: Refinement of scientific techniques; Replacement of animal procedures with non-animal procedures; Reduction in the number of animals used:

The RNZSPCA says it:

"is confident that the National Animal Ethics Advisory Committee is competent to fine-tune the current system to make it more widely accepted... It believes that this is being achieved through the present system of ethical committee control and through the inter-agency network that exists."

The submission concludes:

"The RSPCA does not seek any change to the basic law on the control of animals in research and teaching."

The introduction of this submission says:

"The RSPCA is the national organisation representing all 53 local Societies which are either branches of the RSPCA or member Societies."