"The vaccination myth is the surest money-getter for the chemo-medical establishment, even more so than the cancer racket"
- Hans Ruesch in Naked Empress

Initial tests of leprosy vaccine will be carried out in U.K., USA and Norway and churned out by the giant pharmaceutical laboratories of Britain's Wellcome Foundation. (Which has suffered several unWellcome visits from the Animal Liberation Front since last Mobilise!.) Animal torturer Richard Rees of Britain's National Institute for Medical Research is now growing M. leprae in the footpads of "laboratory mice" whilst American vivisectors are at it growing M. leprae in the bodies of armadillos (small wonder that New Zealand vivisectors had to get in on the act). In Laboratory News, March 1983 it claims:

"It will be about ten years before doctors will know if the vaccine is effective in giving protection against leprosy, and therefore ten years before large-scale vaccinations can begin - assuming that the vaccine is effective..."

Leprosy and the Armadillo

The armadillo sounds like an unlikely laboratory animal but they are now being extensively employed to develop a vaccine against leprosy. According to an article in Nature (18 June 1981, 527) an effective vaccine made from human tissue already exists . However no animal is safe from the vivisector and the armadillo-derived vaccine, assuming it turns out to be as good as the human one, is expected to be far more economical. Wellcome Laboratories are plundering the armadillo and ten armadillo laboratories have been set up in the Caribbean and the Americas for rearing the animal for research.

"It is sometimes said that financial considerations can supply the necessary incentive to employ non-animal techniques. This can work both ways, however, and the unfortunate armadillos provide a clear example."
- Dr Robert Sharpe, Scientific Adviser, National Anti-Vivisection Society, London.

Dr Sharpe continues:

"Whilst on the subject of leprosy we should mention that several strains of M. scrofulaceum group mycobacteria, isolated from human leprous tissue, can be used to screen drugs against this disease. (L. Kato et al, Experentia , 1978, 34, 1322-1323) The localised disease in the foot-pad of mice has been used for this purpose, but some drugs, whilst showing anti-leprosy activity in the mouse foot-pad, have no therapeutic effect in human leprosy. As Kato et al (ibid) have explained: 'The only reliable subject for screening drugs against leprosy is the human lepromatous leprosy patient.'... The in-vitro model is relatively inexpensive and can process a larger number of compounds."

Medical Miracles or Monetary Madness?

Through taxes and prescription charges you are paying for cruel animal experiments in the vain hope that lives are being saved. Animal tests are morally wrong and produce misleading results.