By John Pranger

The great religions of the world are agreed in condemning cruelty and in teaching that power should always be tempered with compassion and mercy. Humanity today has infinite power over animals. Humans can do whatever they want with them. Animals have no effective means of resistance.

Animal research, also known as vivisection, is wrong because it is an abuse of power over the helpless—power which is used to inflict pain and suffering, as animals are deliberately mangled and made ill. Vivisection is often defended on the grounds that cruelty to animals is justified if advantages to human beings derive from it. But such advantages are highly dubious at best, while the argument is only the old doctrine that the end justifies the means, a doctrine more dangerous in the present day than ever before, threatening the very continuation of life on Earth.

Supporters of vivisection often defend it as though a human life—perhaps a child’s life—is saved every time an animal is tortured. But the millions of animal experiments have resulted in no real medical progress. It is probable that there has been a net loss of ground, because clinical study, which might by this time have brought a solution to many of the great problems of health and disease, has been neglected in favour of vivisection.

Government authorities have become locked into outmoded regulations, which are almost impossible to change because of the immense power of the pro-vivisection lobby groups opposed to any diminution of their power. Laws, codes of practice, and ethics committees are designed by these lobby groups to lull public conscience into a belief that all experimentation is carried out “humanely” and that it is severely regulated. But no laws anywhere in the world give worthwhile protection to laboratory animals.

The Canadian Council on Animal Care is made up of government and quasi-government agencies, the drug companies, research charities—and a sprinkling of lay people to make it look good. It purports to offer a national standard of ethics for the usage of animals in laboratories.

Regarding the council, ethicist David Sztybel writes: “The ethics code itself claims that burning, freezing, fracturing, staging predator-prey encounters, electrical shocking, inducing of extremely high or low temperatures, and striking or beating unanaesthetized animals--among other things specified--is permissible, so long as an external review is obtained. However, that review will be carried out by other animal researchers or research interests, by-and-large, and it is arguable that such parties have a conflict of interest. Indeed, the scientists have been trained to regard the animals in a desensitized manner, as experimental models. Peers tend to support each others work, partly because whoever one judges may one day judge one’s own work. The allowable practices also indicate that no harsh treatment of animals is explicitly prohibited, so long as it is approved by animal researchers’ peers.”

There is no evidence whatsoever showing that an increase in the number of animal experiments brings a corresponding improvement in human health and the understanding of disease. Although experiments on animals have provided some knowledge of physiology, anatomy, and pharmacology, this knowledge is not applicable to humans and has not led to better health, as demonstrated by overfull hospitals and queues for doctors’ surgeries.

Prior to the current worldwide obsession with experimenting on animals, many very valuable and fundamental medical discoveries were made, including asepsis, sterile techniques, and the early anaesthetics (making surgery possible), as well as penicillin, digitalis, quinine, iodine, the measurement of blood pressure, treatment of cataracts, many important medical instruments, the causes and treatment of malaria, intractable pain, and pernicious anemia.

More recently, nothing that has been discovered through clinical research is accepted until it has also been tested on animals, which will probably react differently from humans in any case. This insistence on the use of animals has on many occasions obscured the real way in which the discovery was first made.

We know of no experiments, as such, which have led to a cure of a human disease. The sophisticated medical technologies and wide range of prescription drugs available in more affluent countries have not resulted in the good health which might logically be expected. In fact, the U.S., which “sacrifices” more animals in the name of science than any other country, ranks only 38th in overall life expectancy.

Until our adulterated, devitalized, chemical-laced junk-food diets and the escalation in the pollution of the planet are stopped, the “societal” or degenerative diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and arthritis, will continue to take their annual toll.

An estimated 20 animals a second are being “sacrificed” in laboratories worldwide. This astronomical number of animals dying in the name of science and humanity could only be supported by a multi-tiered “industry” composed not only of vivisectors themselves and the drug companies, but of animal dealers, many of which are multinationals; the makers of cages, feedstuffs, instruments, and other equipment; hospital and university infrastructure; government institutes, et cetera.

Total abolition rather than regulation of vivisection is what we campaign for, because it is not only possible but the only goal worth pursuing, both for the sake of the animals and for the health of our own species. Vivisection-based medicine is conspicuously failing to meet human health needs with its highly questionable medical techniques, its over-reliance on drug therapy and its enthusiasm for “gee whizz” surgery, which at best can only be available to a small percentage of the population.

More than ever, we see a turning away from allopathic medicine toward gentler and more natural forms of healing, aligned with a growing concern for the planet as a whole, and the realization of the interdependence of all forms of life.

John Pranger is the director of communications for the Animal Defense & Anti-Vivisection Society of British Columbia.