New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society Inc.
PO Box 9387, Addington, Christchurch 8243, New Zealand

NZAVS - against experiments on animals, as results from one species can not be predictively applied to any other species.

Vivisection Info

Other vivisection info from NZAVS:

• Xenotransplantation
• Human Embryonic Stem Cells
• Diabetes - Vivisection: Bad News for Diabetics
• Can you tell the difference between rodents and humans?
• Vivisection in New Zealand
• Why Vivisection exists
• The 3Rs - why we don't support that policy
• Alternatives to Vivisection
• Human Vivisection
• Animal Experiments, Farming and Vegetarianism
• Media Censorship
• The ALF?
• Submissions made by the NZAVS

What is Vivisection?

"The term 'vivisection' is now used to apply to all types of experiments on living animals, whether or not cutting is done. So states the Encyclopedia Americana (International Edition 1974). And the large Merriam-Webster (1963): '... broadly, any form of animal experimentation, especially if considered to cause distress to the subject.' Thus the term also applies to experiments done with the administration of noxious substances, burns, electric or traumatic shocks, drawn-out deprivations of food and drink, psychological tortures leading to mental imbalance, and so forth. The term was employed in that sense by the physiologists of the last century who started this kind of 'medical research', and so it will be used by me. By 'vivisectionist' is usually meant every upholder of this method; by 'vivisector' someone who performs such experiments or participates in them."
- Hans Ruesch, Slaughter of the Innocent

"Vivisection is an industry. Those sufficiently interested or concerned about animal experimentation, animal research, or animal trials (all euphemisms for vivisection) should be mindful of the gigantic financial enterprises operating under its name, on the premise that it is bona-fide. These businesses depend for their very survival on continued public acceptance of the belief that vivisection is authentic."
- Bette Overell, Animal Research Takes Lives - Humans and Animals Both Suffer

"Animal studies are done for legal reasons and not for scientific reasons. The predictive value of such studies for man is meaningless."
- Dr James D. Gallagher, Director of Medical Research, Lederle Laboratories, Journal of the American Medical Association, March 14 1964.

Animal tests are fallacious and merely serve as an alibi - an insurance against the day when it is no longer possible to conceal the disastrous side effects of a drug or product. Then they - those gaining financially from the drug or product - can say that ‘all the required tests have been made’ - that they have obeyed the law.

Animals are different from humans and from each other:

• Genetically;
• histologically;
• anatomically;
• physiologically;
• immunologically;
• emotionally;
• psychologically;
• sexually;
• and socially.

It is clear that human medicine cannot be based on veterinary medicine.

Select this link to see what happens if human medicine is based on veterinary medicine

An example of the dangers of basing human medicine on animals is the heart drug Eraldin. ICI carried out toxicity tests in rats and mice, in monkeys and rats for 2 weeks, in 70 rats and 24 dogs for 13 weeks, in 100 mice for 18 months and in 3 groups of 13 pregnant rabbits. Results from these tests led them to believe that Eraldin is "remarkably free from toxic effects". In just over 5 years, 1970-75, it claimed 7,000 victims in the UK alone. Causing severe damage to eyes, blindness and many deaths. By 1990 no one had been able to reproduce the harmful effects in animals.

Apart from failing to reveal many of the hazards of drugs "tested" on animals, such "tests" might also lead to the rejection of potentially valuable medicines because they produce side-effects in animals which never occur in people. For example penicillin which is lethal for guinea pigs, Frusemide which causes severe liver damage in mice but is a diuretic for human beings and iron sorbitol which causes cancer in rats and rabbits but which is used successfully in treating iron-deficiency anaemia in people.

"Animal experimentation inevitably leads to human experimentation. That is the final verdict, sad as it is. And the toll mounts on both sides."
- Dr Moneim A. Fadali, MD, Diplomate American Board of Surgery, Diplomate American Board of Thoracic Surgery. In the Foreword to Heart Research on Animals - by Brandon Reines.

To find out more about the invalidity of human vivisection and how the only area in which experimentation is scientific and ethical is the science of clinical investigation and that its principle applies equally to all species, refer to Mobilise! No. 35: "What is Vivisection".