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Coincidentally, as this article is written, the Listener, January 16-22 1993 reveals that during the second world war the DSIR Animal Research Station at Wallaceville in the Hutt Valley, at the request of the chemical warfare wing of the NZ Army, used animals for experiments into the effects of mustard gas on the eyes and skin. Proving for the umpteenth time that the researchers find animal tests inconclusive and irrelevant, in conjunction with the U.S. and Australian Governments, experiments were then carried out on 'volunteers' who entered gas chambers

"moving sandbags from one end of the chamber to the other until they collapsed and went to hospital... some suffering permanent and serious damage to their health"

The article goes on to say:

"thousands of other human guinea-pigs, victims of the same bloodcurdling experiments have now applied for disability benefits".

(It would be interesting to learn who the 'volunteers' were, why they 'volunteered', and where and how they were 'recruited'!)

"Let us be under no illusions - the reputation of the guinea-pig is without foundation."
- Medical Press, 19 January 1955, p 45.

Guinea pig a "fossil"

Guinea pigs, unfortunate furry animals synonymous with experimentation, suffer from a bad case of mistaken identity and are not suitable for medical research, according to an Israeli zoologist. "The guinea pig is a living fossil, a survivor of a world that existed 100 million years ago," says Tel Aviv University's Dr Dan Graur. That makes them virtually irrelevant to medical research on human disease, Dr Gruar argues in the latest edition of the university magazine Ha'universita.

(Northern Advocate Nov 1992)

Whereas we could be forgiven for believing experiments on volunteers are legitimate, even acceptable, this is not the case. In such trials researchers cannot take into account the all important spirit, or psyche, of those involved. For example the volunteer undergoing exposure to mustard gas in WW2 was acutely aware that the conditions were simulated. He would have been carefully briefed and mentally and physically prepared. At a given signal he would have been withdrawn from the trial. He was also motivated by incentive or reward. And uppermost in his mind he knew he would survive. The mental state of this test subject cannot be compared with that of the soldier in the slit-trench, who, the victim of a surprise attack from which there is no escape and over which he has no control, panics, suffers terror, grief, hopelessness and perhaps a total break of spirit. The vastly different circumstances of the one in the laboratory and the other in real life situation are so pronounced that it could obviously result in the former surviving large exposure to the gas and the latter being destroyed by a small one. The only aspect of which there is no doubt is that both the 'researcher' and the chemical company made a profit!

These volunteers are the victims of an institution skilled in the arts of deception, persuasion and emotional blackmail which dangles the false promise of hope to the sick. Some are misfits who craving the acceptance and admiration of their peers are easily flattered into offering themselves up to science. Others can be prompted by fear to believe they should participate in trials "for the common good". And there are those who are unfortunately reduced to such desperate financial circumstances they would sell their souls. Whatever the circumstances all volunteers are made to feel important in their sacrificial role, which will be made sweet and easy in order to pave the comfortable way for offerings on the same dubious altar of 'research', our aged parents, retarded children, inmates of institutions and other 'useless' members of society. Political undesirables and the ethnically 'inferior', including the inmates of the WW2 concentration camps have 'volunteered' en-mass for 'medical trials'. Some of spine-chilling nature.

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