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There are no rich pickings ensuing from healthy populations whilst many are forthcoming from the presence and bogey of this killer dis-ease.

Not surprisingly the SPCA's fly their flag for Daffodil Day. The Timaru Herald, Saturday August 28 1993 reporting:

"The SPCA is the recognised 'animals' ombudsman and significantly it has raised no concerns or objections to the cancer research programme - no doubt because it has the common sense to appreciate the value of what is being done, and in the absence of alternatives."

A further example of the convenient and well-planned ignorance of the learned was aptly demonstrated in an interview between the Northern Advocate and Margaret Zieren of the Whangarei SPCA on Thursday August 26, 1993, which sums up the typical hypocritical attitude of the animal lovers thus:

"Daffodil Day is a necessity and the Society supported raising money for it. As a policy the SPCA is opposed to all animal experimentation that causes pain, suffering and stress, but we support the Cancer Society as long as the animals are not suffering... In many cases the animals are destroyed soon after having tests performed on them... A mouse may be injected with cancerous cells, but it will be put to sleep soon after so these cells can be studied... There are ethical committees set up to monitor animal experimentation like the National Animal Ethics Advisory Committee and we would assume that any cancer research will be monitored by those committees."

NZAVS members who have seen the photographs of animals suffering drawn out death by torture with tumours bigger than their own bodies are aware that Ms Zieren would be better to read and study the facts rather than rely on assumptions which have conveniently put her in a wit-less fairyland. They will also be aware that such ethics committees are operated solely by vivisectors themselves, their single claim to respectability being the presence on them of the RSPCA representatives and other phonies. Ms Zieren's public comments, as she construes the issue as animal cruelty versus human health is eagerly snapped up by the media... simply because not one of our adversaries is prepared or capable of debating the issue on its legitimate grounds... that vivisection in all its forms is scientifically invalid.

As in past protests on sticky subjects where NZAVS has always stood alone certain individuals leap onto the coat-tails of this campaign to grab the opportunity of publicity for their various groups, even writing letters to editors, implying their participation in the protest and belabouring their various policies, all of which were patently incorrect. No other organisation was informed of NZAVS protest against the Daffodil Day appeal.

Throughout the ten A3 pages of adverse publicity filed in NZAVS office, dissenters against the crooked, lucrative and patently corrupt 'health service' are labelled animal rights fanatics, loonie lefties and misguided idiots. Frank Haden, columnist in the Dominion, Saturday 28 August 1993 in an article which exposed his ignorance and bigotry called Phil Clayton a young raver, a compliment which puts him in the company of others who were courageous enough to stub their toes. Semmelweiss labelled a dangerous lunatic and imprisoned in a mad-house for insisting that his students wash their hands before examining women in childbirth, Galileo Galilei declared a heretic and tortured to the brink of death for saying the earth is round and not flat, Michaelangelo shunned as socially undesirable, Leonardo de Vinci dragged to court for extravagance and Giuseppe Verde firmly refused admission to the Conservatory because he was judged unmusical. When Gaugin and Van Gogh exhibited their early works the former was labelled a psychopathic mutilator, the latter a half-baked amateur whose work gives the odour of dead rats!

The vicious and repeated attacks on NZAVS during the Daffodil Day protest came not from the vivisectors but from the media. it was eagerly taken up by the conventional and mediocre giving a hint of the terrifying backlash capable from a community, which, content to be told what to think, eventually becomes incapable of thought. Clinging together in the safety of numbers, feet tucked up to save stubbing their toes it is carried along with the current... The majority!

Onco-Mouse debate

Press conferences were held in 11 European cities in February to draw public attention to the Onco-Mouse as an example of what is happening in the business of genetic engineering.

Harvard College/Du Pont claim to have 'invented' the Onco-Mouse as a useful tool in cancer research and have been granted a European wide patent for the Onco-Mouse.

Opponents of the patent question the use of Onco-Mouse to humanity claiming that animals have limited value in testing new anti-cancer drugs. They point out that the US National Cancer Institute recently decided to replace mice with human culture cells in their search for new drugs. Further that leading British cancer research organisations are fast reducing their reliance on animal experiments as other approaches at the cell and molecular level are proving more reliable, quicker and cheaper.

The very considerable suffering to the mice, opponents of the patent believe, was not properly considered by the Patent Examining Division.

Their opposition to the patent also covers the environmental risk should Onco-animals escape from the laboratory and breed with ordinary animals. Offspring could well inherit the onco-gene and large populations of animals would become 'genetically polluted' in this way.

Finally, the opponents believe 'that it is inherently contrary to morality to genetically engineer an animal with the clear intention that it should suffer and die'.

(International Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, April 1993)

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