Critics contend the public has been misled by the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries, as well as the industry-beholden media conglomerates that will not allow anti-animal research ads, and in turn portray people opposed to animal experimentation research as anti-human, anti-progress, anti-science, animal zealots who prefer animals over people which is generally NOT the case.
The anti-animal research movement is pro-human and may even be more rational than many animal researchers themselves. More times than not animal research CANNOT work. Human medicine too often cannot be based on veterinary medicine. Animals are too different from humans anatomically, physiologically, immunologically, genetically and histologically even down to basic cell structure too.
Consequently, the government is forced to ban many drugs, once found safe for humans, based on animal testing because they may cause potentially serious health problems in humans. Human diseases cannot be recreated in humans OR animals because once RECREATED the diseases become artificial and no longer the original, natural disease the human body produced. The same goes for infectious diseases too. Researchers cannot infect non-human animals with human AIDS, for example, and non-human animals cannot typically contract a human disease because they are not human.
Ecologists complain that our air, land, water and food supplies are slowly but surely being destroyed by pesticides and toxicants that are found SAFE, and sold to the public based on possibly misleading and inherently invalid animal tests. Despite 100 years of massive animal testing and countless billions of tax dollars we are stil far from curing anything and, in fact, may be losing the war against all kinds of crippling and deadly diseases. Many doctors and scientists are waking up to the notion that the only REALISTIC cures may be in “prevention”.
The “miracle cures” and “medical breakthroughs” are dangled in front of us , and are always seemingly supposed to be just around the corner, but they rarely if ever materialize, while the biomedical corporations keep getting richer and more powerful. The idea that some people “just see a rat” while others “see a potential cure for cancer” is totally illogical if the ones who see a cure knew anything about the cell structure of
rats compared to humans.
The researchers know if the public becomes aware that the odds of finding a cure for most any disease are greater than ever hitting the lottery, contributors may quit contributing, researchers’ funds may decrease or maybe dry up and researchers would possibly be out of business. Yes, animal experimentation is BIG business. Grant-hungry scientists may make their living conducting virtually useless, invalid and unreliable animal experiments that go unquestioned but are held up as the potential saviors of all mankind, conceivably misleading the public into thinking a cure may be just a few more tax dollars or charitable donations away.
To others animal experimentation seems more futile, counter-productive and tends to operate on fallacies. Some consider it to be the greatest fraud in the field of science and medicine. Also, the TRUE environmentalist should consider animal testing as the biomedical establishment setting forth a false illusion of hope and safety, erroneous and contradictory by nature because it is used as the perfect excuse for the continued manufacture and release of millions of toxicants and pesticides into the environment.
Should animal testing be abolished as a means for assessing the safety of chemicals, as well as for establishing environmental laws and regulations used to set the standards for the control of air, water and land pollution? You decide. Do not rely on those with vested, profiteering interests to decide for you.
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: TV DOCUMENTARY “HIDDEN CRIMES” 1996