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The New Zealand Government demands in its regulations a procedure which is proven by experts in the fields of medicine, science and toxicology to be invalid. The procedure is known as the Lethal Dose 50 test. NZAVS Petition to Parliament signed by approximately 40,000 people therefore seeks on the grounds of invalidity the abolition of the LD50 being carried out in new zealand and a dropping of the government's regulations that the LD50 is carried out in countries from whence certain products are exported.

LD50: International regulations

The LD50 is recommended by the World Health Organisation in Geneva: Technical Report WHO No. 482 (1971). However in the WHO report entitled "Evaluation and Testing for Drugs for Mutagenicity: Principles and Problems"... subtitled "Report of a WHO Scientific Group"... the WHO includes in small print on the title page:

"This report contains the collective views of an international group of experts and does not necessarily represent the decisions of the stated policy of the World Health Organisation".

This possibly indicates that the World Health Organisation has reservations about the 'scientific group", which like other scientific groups very probably has vested interests.

Individual countries each hold specific and varying regulations regarding the LD50 therefore a company exporting to several countries adopts the demands of the Regulatory Authority with the strictest requirement. The animals used are not particularly expensive, the "test" is brutally simple to perform and is an ongoing practice, regulatory agencies are stagnant, profiting from the animals' misery and there is considerable money at stake.

The pharmaceutical industry made $75,000,000 in 1980 and will reportedly make sales of $270,000,000,000 by the year 2000. U.K. pharmaceutical exports to countries which demand the "test" pounds sterling 500 million in the U.K.. The chemical industry in the USA alone has a reported annual turnover of US$450 billion. Hundreds of thousands of animals are tortured to death in the LD50 "test" in the making of these profits.

The anti-vivisection movement alone, having no vested interests, provides the motivation for a change of scientific tradition and bureaucracy and it seeks the LD50 banished from international regulations.

LD50: Background

The LD50 was introduced by J.W. Trevern in 1927 as a temporary measure to give information on the then few drugs. It has since slithered, for various reasons, into becoming accepted as the recognised procedure for "testing" any and practically every given product marketed (which it does not). Clumsy and hit-and-miss to the point of being grotesque, until recent times the LD50 is the only system scientists have bothered to devise for attempting to establish toxicity and irritability.

LD50: Basic procedure

The acute toxicity "test" consists of forcing massive doses of test substance down the throats of large numbers of animals of many species to discover at what dosage level half of them die given a 14-day period. The other half teetering for days between life and death are then killed. The "test" is repeated with lower doses in fresh batches of animals until the laboratory assumes it has found the "safe" dose. This is ostensibly accomplished by multiplying the body-weight of the particular animal species proportionately to the weight of a human-being and hoping for the best. Other methods of application are to the animals' eyes, skin, rectum, vagina. In gas form the animals are placed in gas chambers or cylinders. As a variation some manufacturers force their products in large concentrations into the anus of animals and many world-renowned firms use this method. The results of LD50 include "unusual vocalisation", tears, diarrhoea, discharge and bleeding from the eyes and mouth, convulsions and death. No pain relief is given.