In these days of high technology which makes miracles commonplace, why, one might ask, are there not laws banning the grotesque and obviously fraudulent method of destroying animals, ostensibly to produce health. Hans Ruesch gives the answer at the first page of 'Naked Empress' where he tells us that the health authorities (ie agents of the pharmaceutical empires) and governments, are one and the same. As shown below "laws" appertaining to vivisection are in a turmoil.

Animal Research Takes Lives - Humans and Animals Both Suffer reveals on page 268 (http://www.health.org.nz/draize.html#footone) that there is no legislation in the USA stating cosmetics and household products must be "tested" on animals. That the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority merely stipulates that some kind of safety test is carried out and for reasons of complicity it lobbies for tests involving animals. The article (http://www.health.org.nz/draize.html#footone) explains why the EC failed, at the last minute, to go ahead with a proposed law to ban testing cosmetics on animals... because it interfered with big business.

It has been revealed that in the UK and the EC astoundingly there is no law stating that drug companies must test their products on animals. But animals are used. This too is to protect the industrial, political and academic profiteers.

In New Zealand there is no legislation which says consumers must be provided with anything other than brief information on labels. Changes to the legislation would be required to make it mandatory for patients to be supplied with appropriate information about the drugs they are prescribed. Such changes would mirror those in the European Community and Australia. The Medicine Act review is looking at providing comprehensive labelling to inform consumers about their prescriptions. Perhaps future labels will read along the following lines:

• Prozac
  Anti-depressant:
  Will possibly make you extremely violent and agitated, may give you suicidal tendencies and the impulse to murder. Recommended dose two tablets after meals. Produced by Eli Lilly by driving barnyard fowls, ferrets, frogs, cats and dogs insane with electric shocks:
  Sales in 1993 $US 5 million.



• Tagamet (Cimetidine)
  For ulcers:
  Produced for human consumption by SmithKline & French by forcefeeding in bulk down the throats of rats, mice, rabbits, dogs and cats. Could give you headaches, dizziness, skin disorders, psychiatric disorders, liver disorders, tremors, abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhoea, joint-pain, joint-swelling, muscle-pain and sometimes stomach cancer. Take three times a day. In case of adverse effects double the dose.
  The world's 7th best selling drug. Sales in 1985 $US 900 million.

In Vivisection or Science - a choice to make, on page 86 Prof. Croce asks:

"Who cares about the people we administer drugs to?"     "How do these deadly drugs act?"     "They cause hundreds of deaths due to liver, kidney and heart-failure, respiratory diseases, destruction of the bone marrow, brain damage, paralysis, apoplectic strokes and coma."

The answer appeared in the Auckland Star, 9 March 1991, under 'World News':

"We have to remember that the main aim of pharmaceutical companies is not to make drugs for the good of mankind, but to make profits for their share-holders."
(Brewster Ashley, Director of the Therapeutic Goods Administration Drug Evaluation Branch, Australia.)

New Zealand is world famous for drug trials.

• $NZ 17 million was spent on research and development of drugs in New Zealand in 1993.
• An expected $NZ 72 million will be spent over the next three years.
• Internal drug company reports indicate a determination by the firms to maximise sales to ensure a return on that investment.

(Sunday Star-Times, 29 May 1994.)

In Italy, the leading country against vivisection, a law passed in October 1993 gives citizens the right to refuse participation in animal experiments. This includes physicians, researchers, health-care providers, technicians, nurses and university students. Prof. Croce emphasises that this is not merely a symbolic victory. It is an undermining of the tacit assumption that the use of animals is essential for medical progress. It also breaks down the subtle process of brainwashing that begins with school dissection, continues with repetitious demonstrations on living animals in physiology departments (which has a tragically desensitising effect on medical students) and ends with professional vivisection.

In a letter to Cynthia O'Neill dated 10 March 1994 the Royal National Institute for the Blind in London says it is no longer accepting research applications which involve experiments using live animals. (This is contrary to its former policy of a year ago which claimed "it is necessary to use animals".)

Dr Andre Menache, Israel's famed advocate of veterinary medicine without the use of animal experiments, member of the Doctors in Britain Against Animal Experiments (http://www.dlrm.org) writes:

"The end of animals experimentation is in sight. This will open the way to change in direction towards meaningful, scientific research and new hope for health and life. With the ending of animal experimentation a great evil will be lifted from the earth, with untold and far-reaching benefits to health and life on this planet. Throughout this century thousands of doctors have spoken out against animal experiments in medical research. It is only latterly that they are joining together internationally to present publicly the facts on the invalidity of such research methods and thus to bring about the removal of this obstruction to medical progress and danger to human health. These doctors are the courageous and honourable pioneers of a movement which, it is estimated statistically, represents the views of thousands more - whose numbers would undoubtedly embrace every single member of the medical profession were it not for the stumbling block of vested interests or of ignorance of the fact. The children of future generations will not thank those who fail to stand up and be counted now."
(and the doctors who are indebted to, or bribed by, the pharmaceutical companies... editor.)

Vivisection is not about health - it is about profits, and the "laws" favour the profiteers.