In a scenario that is not confined to NZAVS but occurs universally on a regular basis, abolitionists are organising protests for which the "animal rights" people repeatedly reap the publicity. This is because in many instances the media finds the animal rights argument more acceptable and easier to understand than the complicated scientific argument which severely tests intelligence and extremely limited knowledge of the subject of media employees while threatening their jobs which are often reliant on revenue obtained from the advertising of chemi/medi/vivi multinationals. In New Zealand NZAVS has time and again organised protests for which SAFE as an "animal rights" group got the publicity... which has invariably generated substantial publicity, free of cost or effort, for the vivisectors. To quote a couple of examples:

If the writer lives to be a hundred she will never forget the morning of the NZAVS March to launch the NZAVS Petition to Abolish Vivisection in New Zealand in 1987. The event had taken months for our hardworking team to organise and had almost crippled the Society's bank balance. Just prior to leaving home to gather at assembly point our party was thunderstruck to hear the voice of Adrienne Hall speaking on behalf of SAFE from the studio of National Radio from whence she was giving the public details of the march, and a dissertation on speciesism, cruel and unethical experiments and animal rights. When asked if she was the march organiser after a momentary pause Hall answered... "no, but we are all the same" !! The embarrassed interviewer afterwards admitted and apologised to the writer for inadvertently contacting the wrong party. This of course was not the fault of the latter but the fault of Hall, who, though she had worked against the Petition and was later to bitterly criticise the marchers for wearing leather boots and funny hair-styles, wasn't adverse to grabbing easy publicity, in a fashion which, though despicable was true to form.

In 1994 NZAVS organised a protest against the Red Nose Day Appeal. The writer in a recorded radio interview gave details of the amounts of money spent on animal tests in cot-death experiments listing the names of the vivisectors and the official results which pronounced their work useless. She emphasised that those who insisted on donating to the appeal may like to specify that their donation be spent on researching the link between vaccination and cot-death, an area of research which, for obvious reasons, has been pointedly neglected. The interview was never broadcast.

The following day, 15 August 1994, an article appeared in the Wellington Evening Post with bold headlines: "Red nose day organisers defend animal testing". With no less than seven paragraphs devoted entirely to Dr Tonkin of the Cot Death Association this heart-rending article urged that the animal experiments were carried out

"trying to save a child's life"..
"There are still babies dying. We're still the worst in the developed world for cot death and this will help us keep the numbers down."

Dr Tonkin was referring to comments made by Rosemary Cummings, current spokesperson of SAFE, who, when contacted by the Evening Post about NZAVS protest is reported to have said:

"The question has to be asked whether humans had the right to use non-humans for their own ends."

Wow! If the old die-hard representatives of organisations do not understand that they should be exposing the lie of vivisection and not endorsing it by airing their animal rights philosophies where they have no meaning, they should be asked to make way for those who are capable of debating the scientific argument. Not only do such comments (which were repeatedly made by Hall) fail to inflict damage on the credibility of vivisectors, but they actually generate free publicity for them as the vivisectors are the first to agree that cruel though experiments on rats, piglets and other animals are... they save babies' lives.

"Simon Cottle... opposes vivisection because of medical and scientific fraud not because of the speciesism displayed by human beings toward animals in their cruel and unethical treatment of them. SAFE on the other hand opposes animal experimentation first and foremost because of our belief that it is unacceptable to use and abuse other sentient beings in situations which would be considered unethical to humans."
- Adrienne Hall for Save Animals From Experiments: In a letter to Wellington Evening Post, June 1987 in criticism of NZAVS Petition to Abolish Vivisection on grounds of scientific fraud.)

The subject of "anti-vivisection" should not be addressed by animal rights/animal welfare groups where it has no place. It does not fit into any category of the long never-ending list of animal issues. the archaic and hollow arguments presented by a succession of SAFE representatives and the resultant free publicity for the vivisectors demonstrates the disastrous consequences when anti-vivisection is assumed by the animal rights mindset.

Certainly the large and lucrative glossy-literatured poems, prayers and recipes organisations which make the fatal error of adding vivisection to their long list of animal rights issues continue to perpetuate their existence by growing in membership and increasing their funds through legacies of the well-meaning... but they will never bring abolition.

For potential members and leaders in the abolitionist movement there has been much to learn in this narration of memorable events and experiences in the writer's long and bitter struggle on behalf of NZAVS. She gives a final word of warning. Careful judgement and consideration should be applied before paying subscriptions to organisations whose actions are discrepant and in direct opposition to their claimed policies.

Abolitionists do not oppose the concept of animal rights. But to apply the animal rights argument to vivisection spells suicide for the entire abolitionist movement. Vivisection is not related, applicable or subordinate to the animal rights agenda.

Abolition will be fought and won by abolitionists on the vivisectors' own turf, on the grounds that it is one of the world's largest and most powerful industries based on fraud, greed and deception which includes massive systematic invidious and merciless infiltration of animalistic groups. Organisations which assume responsibility for anti-vivisection along with their already crippingly overburdened quota of genuine animal rights issues are either grossly and unpardonably ignorant of the facts or more than likely have a hidden agenda. Either way they should be avoided.

With courtesy of SUPRESS (producers of Hidden Crimes) the writer reproduces the thought-provoking hypothetical front page of your daily newspaper on Saturday January 1 in the year 2000. If we wake that day to the news that vivisection has been abolished, which one of these newspaper front pages do readers think they will be reading?