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"I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty. The whole thing is evil."

— Charles Mayo, MD, founder of the Mayo Clinic

 The reference to Canada Geese is at the bottom of the article.

SPINAL CORD INJURY

ARSL PAGE 17

ARSL 2nd Edition Page 19

Regardless of major anatomical differences between the four-footed and two-footed spinal column, cats, because of their exceptional resilience and ability to withstand acute traumatic injury, are the chosen victims of spinal cord injury experiments, and to this end they are being subjected to slow and systematic torture.  The Canadian international health rights organisation Lifeforce video Broken Promises, filmed secretly (available for viewing from NZAVS) shows vivisectors severing the spines, paralysing the legs, inflicting head injuries and inducing shock into cats and newborn kittens.  These procedures coincide with Webster's definition of torture, "to punish or coerce by inflicting excruciating pain."

Piglets, dogs, ferrets, monkeys, rats, rabbits and other animals are also used in this fraudulent and deceitful "research", which ostensibly carried out to help victims of spinal cord injury, in reality, like all other vivisection, is motivated by the promise of academic recognition and advancement, and research grants.  New Zealand's veterinary school receives massive injections of money from overseas multi-national companies and governments, including the U.S. National Institute of Health.  This in addition to acting as a passport facilitating interchange laboratory to laboratory of vivisectors and their ideas, guarantees there will be no geographically-based dissension or criticism within the enclosed brotherhood.  Far from condemning the obscenities carried out under the camouflage of helping victims of spinal cord injury, the publishers of ARSL glorify them.

Throughout the world, an increasing number of people are confined to wheelchairs because of spinal cord injuries due to automobile, diving and other accidents.  There are also thousands of unfortunate people in wheelchairs for life because of animal tests.  Drugs which proved to be safe in animal models have caused new disorders of the central nervous system.  One such drug, Oxychinol, or Clioquinol, a "cure for diarrhoea" was responsible for thirty thousand cases of blindness and/or paralysis in Japan alone (Hans Ruesch, Naked Empress, pages 19-21.).  Agent Orange, Malathion, Diazion and Capstan were all tested on animals before paralysing people for life.

Spinal cord experiments on animals are part of the medical fraud of vivisection.  We are told that animals must be used in this horrifying way in attempts to understand physiological mechanisms and to test surgical procedures, but extracts from articles written by those undertaking this "research" show that spinal cord research with animals is obviously not working.

"A wide variety of experimental models and species have been utilised to study the patho-physiological consequences of spinal cord injury and its therapeutic management.  Such diversity of experimental models has resulted from the relative incompatibility of the two major theoretical considerations underlying experimental work in this area:

  1. that the model be relevant to human spinal injury
  2. that the effects of experimental spinal injury in control animals be reproducible.

Models which have closely approximated the effects of blunt traumatic injury in humans have generally caused unsatisfactory degrees of variability in the injury sustained by control animals; conversely, models showing reproducibility have been criticised as showing little relevance to human spinal injury... Species utilised have included rat, rabbit, ferret, cat, dog and nonhuman primate.  Additional variables in the experimental design have been the site of injury (i.e. cervical vs thoracic vs lumbar), the time at which pharmacological interventions are begun and their duration, the sex of the animal, the outcome measure (function, morphological change, blood flow change, etc.) and the length of time injured animals are followed.

 

Given the extraordinary number of variables, it is perhaps not surprising that no therapy to date has proved efficacious across experimental laboratories."
(A.I. Faden, "Recent Pharmacological Advances in Experimental Spinal Injury: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations", Trends in Neurosciences, Vol. 6, No. 9, September 1983, pages 375-377.)


In the Los Angeles Times, December 19 1985, page 34 an article entitled "Spinal Cord Research" by Dr Eugene Flamm, Vice Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at the New York University Medical Center.  Talking of spinal cord experiments on cats Flamm says:

"In the end, we might be able to cure the cat model but it might have nothing to do with the patient situation."

The abolition of spinal cord experiments on animals would not only prevent the suffering of animals, but it would help the handicapped by redirecting funds for humane and beneficial projects.  Human engineering has freed people from their wheelchairs and put them into swivel walkers which allow them to move in an upright position.  Improvements could be made in perinatal care, geriatric care, surgical treatment, trauma centres and rehabilitation care.  In vitro (non-animal) research employing human nerve cell and tissue culture and human cadavers, as well as the study of the many accident victims would also benefit.  The handicapped could be better helped to cope with their disabilities, money could go into counselling services, symptomatic care and greater accessibility to public buildings.  In addition better preventative measures could be put into operation.
 

"The only way to answer medical problems is to study spontaneous occurring disease.  There are many compounding variables when using non-human animals as models that have made the interpretation of results of animal experiments impossible.  The mysteries of human physiology will only be solved by the study of human physiology."
(Peter Hamilton, Lifeforce.)

"The fact is that the diseases of animals are so different from those of man, wounds in animals act so differently from those of humanity, that the conclusions of vivisection are absolutely worthlessThey have done far more harm than good in surgery.  In fact the late Sir William Fergusson, Sergeant-Surgeon to the Queen, declared in his evidence that vivisection had done nothing at all for surgery, and I think his authority on such a subject is beyond appeal."
(Lawson Tait, F.R.C.S., Birmingham Daily Mail, January 21 1882.)

 

"The difficulties which beset the licensed experimenter are many.  In the first place it is well known that it is impossible, in an experimental animal, to reproduce a lesion or a disease at all comparable to such as is found in the human subject."
(Dr Lionel Whitby: Practitioner, December 1937, from The Futility of Experiments on Living Animals, M. Beddow Bayly, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.)

"The most valuable things we have learned through animal experimentation are insights into the human mentality... We have learned that otherwise compassionate people can become remarkably desensitized and detached from the suffering they inflict on animals.  We have learned that highly intelligent people can be engaged in the most trivial or eccentric research yet convince themselves their work is important."
(Michael Giannelli, Psychologist,
A Critical Look at Animal Research, Medical Research Modernization Committee.)


An article in the journal of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, PCRM Update, September/October 1991, titled "Monkey Experiment Published, Fraud Lawsuit Continues", outlines experiments in which monkeys which had the sensory nerves to their arms cut a decade ago are now being killed in further gruelling experiments, which the Physicians Committee describe thus:

"No serious scientists would claim that the experiments have anything whatsoever to do with treatment for spinal cord injury... Such far-fetched speculations might help them in their public relations but have nothing to do with scientific integrity."

Meanwhile the Civil Abolitionist, Winter 1991-1992, page 10, contains a letter from the Director General of the Pacific and Yukon Region of Environment Canada, attempting to justify the use of wild Canada Geese in spinal cord research.

"The research carried out at the University of British Columbia is viewed by the medical and scientific community as important and relevant to improving our knowledge of spinal cord injuries in human beings.  Canada geese are ideal subjects for the experiments due to their size, robustness and their well-developed ability to both walk and fly."

(This is an example of the idiocy and audacity of the vivisectors for, without laughing, expecting us to believe that such nonsense can restore or rejuvenate human health AS IT RESTORES AND REJUVENATES THEIR PROFITS!)

REFERENCE:

"Overell, Bette. (1993)  Animal Research Takes Lives - Humans and Animals Both Suffer. Wellington, New Zealand: NZ Anti-Vivisection Society (Inc.), pp 234-6.  Available on-line at: http://www.health.org.nz/spcord.html"
 

 

 
 
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