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History repeated
The hostile attack from the media and the public ensuing from NZAVS Daffodil Day protest reminds your editor of New Zealand's first campaign against cosmetic testing - about 14 years ago. When NZAVS organised a nation wide boycott of Avon products your editor was ridiculed, threatened with court cases on an almost daily basis for months, swamped with telephone calls from Company day and night and accused by the public at large of being illogical, a liar, a charlatan and an odd-ball. It was even ruled on a certain tv discussion panel by famous and respected females of the era that animal experiments were essential to produce safe cosmetics. Thousands of people, including chemists, cosmeticians - even the buyers and certainly the public, had never even heard of animal testing. Determination in spite of extreme difficulty finally led to our desired shift of policy - mainly brought about by fear as directors of cosmetic companies worried in anticipation of his Company being next in line for NZAVS attack. Years later the medical foundations, like the Cancer Society of New Zealand, which pass money donated by a trusting public straight to the coffers of the vivisectors will be on edge in case they are selected to be next inline of fire for NZAVS attention.
How many of today's multitudes, who with ease and simplicity, without a sideways glance, meaningful tap of forehead or look of total incomprehension from the shop assistant, purchase their non-animal tested toiletries, spare a thought for the ravers of earlier days who made it possible? Meanwhile NZAVS urgently requires more people of the raver calibre as its campaign for valid and non-aggressive medicine gathers momentum.
"It is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion in regard to cancer in man, by experimenting on animals."
- Robert Bell, M.D., Vice President, International Cancer Research Society. "Animal Research Takes Lives - Humans and Animals Both Suffer" (http://www.health.org.nz/cover.html) page 345.
New Zealand's Propaganda Machine at Work
The following comments were made by famous New Zealand public figures and media personalities... Will you attach any importance or give credit to any statement they utter in the future? (Let's hope they have red faces at some distant date when confronted with their own words.)
Dr Brian Edwards: Past presenter of Fair Go a consumer rights programme. Current host of celebrity game show Give Us a Clue, member of the Ralston Group Panel. (In the latter show 27 August).
"I hope all the anti-vivisectionists' pussy cats break their legs."
Bill Ralston: Political commentator, former radio talk-back host, newspaper columnist, hosts his own tv programme, 'The Ralston Group', a tv panel which discusses current affairs... (and who, as he had previously interviewed Bette Overell and viewed "Animal Research Takes Lives - Humans and Animals Both Suffer" (http://www.health.org.nz/cover.html) with interest and sympathy... should have known better). (On the show of 27 August)
"I give this week's brick-bat to the anti-vivisectionists. Don't forget to buy your daffodil tomorrow."
Frank Haden: Columnist in Wellington's Dominion and Dominion Sunday Times. (In Dominion 28 August.)
"It's just as well that the early vivisectors stuck to their task because very few medical discoveries would have been made without experiments on animals."
George Balani: Sunday News Columnist. (Sunday News 29 August.)
"If animal rightists don't want to be labelled hypocrites, they must volunteer themselves for these experiments in the interest of the animals and the human race."
Geoff Sinclair: Radio talk-back host Radio Pacific, Columnist Sunday Star. (In Sunday Star 4 September.)
"Wouldn't you like to thank those loonies who attacked the Cancer Society giving them such great (if misguided) publicity that their Daffodil Day raised an extra $100,000?"
Gordon McLauchlan: Co-host of 5.30 Live and Columnist in Wellington's Evening Post... (in "Opinion", EP, 27 August) (Copy available NZAVS, send SAE.) Saving the best to last this must undoubtedly be one of the biggest ignoramuses to crawl out of the woodwork on Daffodil Day 1993. Lacking the knowledge even to make a stupid comment, McLauchlan, in his cheap-jack article titled: "The decent unsex life of the amoeba", highlights
- his omission to as much as glimpse his subject prior to sounding his "opinion"
- his eagerness to exploit for a fee those who struggle without thought of financial remuneration to effect abolition, and
- the depths to which a "columnist" will sink to get his "work" published.
"Today's medicine is at the end of its road. It can no longer be transformed, modified, readjusted. That's been tried too often. Today's medicine must die in order to be re-born. We must prepare its complete renovation."
- Speech at the inaugural session of the Academy of Bourges (France), by Dr M. Delort 16 December 1962... Prof. Pietro Croce's Vivisection or Science - a choice to make, page 54.
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