Originally Published: Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Written by: Luciano Bonfico
How often have you listened to all along your life the brainy opinion that to cure human beings it is indispensable first to torture and mutilate animals under the pretext that the person who does so is “making research”? Whenever you have listened to that, you have been told a lie. If companies and labs responsible for those practises were sincere, they would confess that their main aim is not the progress, neither the science, nor the worries for your neighbour´s health, but merely their profit motive raised to a category of fetishism. Worship to money, no more, no less.Now, this is precisely the only pretext never used, since, instead of invoking the spectacular profits they annually collect, they talk about service to mankind, antibiotics, public health and welfare in torrents.It is true that to cure human beings it is not indispensable neither t destroy nor to torture animals. It has been proved once and again that a medicine tested in animals -whose organisms are absolutely different form ours- may produce unexpected and even pernicious side effects.Therefore, apart from cruel, it is a little reliable practice, subdued to highly unpleasant unexpected events (which, of course, are hardly spread) Can someone be so dupe to think that whatever serves as a conclusion of a physiological response in a mouse may also serve as a physiological response in human beings? Should we accept that our friends from the animal kingdom keep on being tortured for some megalabs and multinational cosmetics industries go on bribing the physicians´ unawareness or complete ignorance? How long should we tolerate the immodest balance of trade which benefits to hundreds of anonymous consortiums with the excuse of lengthening the mature age women´s youth and reducing the unattractive women´s ugliness? As I have said before, there are outnumbered cases which show that the technique used in each experiment is far from being reliable. In fact, THE RESULTS WITH ANIMALS CANNOT BE EXTRAPOLATED TO HUMAN BEINGS, since our physiologies are so different that it is extremely dangerous though not irrelevant to take for granted the parity value of a chemical reaction in one case and another. All of us, animals and human beings ARE SENSITIVE TO SUFFERING alike. Who would accept to call this science whether huge profits are between? It is something so artificial and supervised in an environment alien to natur in its pure state that the conclusions excerpted generally lack of any scientific value. Each species has a different response, which results hazardous and even of a ridiculous optimism to rely in such “authorized” practices. To be honest, the educative programmes in use are so full of unnecesary contents that the disgusting fact that small children are not informed anything about other living beings´ suffering still catches our attention. A logarithm table, a geometric theorem or the anatomic description of an arthropod can well be learnt at any age. But in matters of ethical experiences and behauviour principles, a late start is a bad start in this life. I do not know anyone who being rude, cruel or neglectful in his/her twenties has no longer been such in his/her thirties. Therefore it is necessary to inculcate respect for animals and the environment in small children. Besides, What can we find in schoolrooms every day? Often, useless debates about various topics, except those directly related to the quality of life in our society. For example: Students have to study physiology, but they are never suggested to apply that knowledge to their own body. Thus we find adults in their thirties who already fed badly during the school breaks in their childhood.Education in SENSITIVITY TO OTHER LIVING BEINGS´ SUFFERING AND RESPECT FOR LIFE should have priority at schools. To abolish the cruel practice of scourging animals under the pretext of granting scientific information should be the main aim to get in our ancient pedagogic system. Does it bring any benefit to a teenager to know in detail the digestive system of a jellyfish if in the break he has a sandwich of a dead meat, chemically conserved from an animal which was hormone-fed? (Whether the sandwich benefits the teenager, it is already a criminal act in itself to torture a living being).You may be absolutely sure that children will learn as much watching a sheet from a book as watching mechanically and uninterested how an insensitive teacher with scientific airs tortures a helpless living being. He would only have a right to do so if he could bear the same torment, not in his viscera but in a finger of his criminal vivisectionist hand. It is not surprising then, that since the teacher or physician attended classes either at school or at college where similar procedures were carried out with the excuse of being scientifically educated. As it is well established in many papers published in Internet by colleagues who back up animal rights (many concepts below are based in them), arrogance, dilettantism and unawareness are up to date.To undergo animals to unnecessary operations, or to have them live in captivity to inoculate illnesses à la carte thus to be able to use them as “research models” of our own illnesses constitutes -apart from a moral atrocity- both a medical and scientific aberration. This is due to the fact that reactions to drugs and illnesses or traumas artificially and violently induced to animals of other species are different and do not have any relationship with the diseases spontaneausly developed in human beings. The vivisection practice makes it possible the proliferation of medicines and other products, since they are legal alibies which allow to give a false feeling of security to the user. He/She almost always ignores that the “new” drugs, as well as cosmetic and general consumption products – obtained to replace those removed when the damages or “side effects” produced are evident- sometimes are traded although they produce cancer and other types of tumors in animals, due to the absolute lack of validity of those experiments. “It is tied to a table, its head put into a helmet with cement where a pipe is left for it to breathe… The helmet is hitched to a piston which, with an unbereable and fussy periodicity goes off, producing a sharp shock of the monkey´s brain, which is completely awake, against the cranium walls. After countless tests (that may lasts for days, weeks, months and even years), the cement is removed with a hammer, among the leg-pull of those present there. While the animal is dying, rock music is played loudly in the cassette-player, a “physician”, smoking, enters the “sterilized” room, while a second doctor, smoking a pipe, analyses the animal´s wounds. Athird doctor comments among laughter: “Let´s hope this tape does not reach the animal supporters´ hands”. Another monkey, with a scar along its head, suffers from repetitive spasms, while the researcher, with happiness in her face, holds it tight, making him looking at the camera…” It is true that many physicians have rebelled against this horrible, quasi- unsurmountable “dogma” of the medicine, and that nowadays they consider that animal testing, with the exception of very concrete cases, is not necessary, being its use as a base to obtain medicines even dangerous.The degree of depth with which the preaching and money of these multinational companies have corrupted and still corrupt the spirit of individuals supposedly trained to philosophical speculation will be evident with a couple of examples. The source where they are quoted from belongs to a very valuable compilation carried out by Adela Pisarevsky, indisputable leader of the activism in favor of animal liberation. A very well known professor of EHU-UPV assures that <> on the basis that <> EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE, IT LACKS OF ETHICS! WHAT RIGHT DOES ANYONE HAVE TO INVADE THE TERRITORY OF ANY SPECIES, TO CAPTURE AND TREAT THEM AS RUBBISH, TO PUT THEM INTO SMALL CAGES WHERE THEY CANNOT EVEN MOVE, AND TO TAKE THEM OUT WHENEVER THEY WANT (WHILE THEY ARE ALIVE), TO CUT THEM, BURN THEM, BOIL THEM, IRRADIATE THEM, AND AN ENDLESS NUMBER OF OUTRAGES? THIS HAS ALREADY BEEN MADE BY HUMAN BEINGS AGAINST OTHER MEMBERS OF THEIR OWN SPECIES, WHAT DOES NOT MEAN IT HAS TO BE MADE AND TAUGHT AGAINST OTHER ANIMALS AND HUMAN BEINGS DEPENDING ON HISTORY!Pelayo: << Juridically, the difference is that human beings is covered with dignity>> Dear Pelayo: Could you please explain what is that hypothetical human dignity you are referring to? I beg you not to tell the old tale “the sons of a good and heavenly father who lives in the Heights”. Accept please my request and I will renounce to persuade you, just as I would renounce to persuade a football fan to change his team. If, instead, you adduce some kind of “dignity” based on the intellectual human superiority, let´s please explain the degree of rights someone acquires over someone else due to his/her intellectual superiority. For example, does such superiority have the right to oppress him/her, to torture him/her and to tear him/her to pieces? Think about your answer very carefully, because someone might refer to several people cleverer than you, who may also invoke the same juridical lawfulness you feel yourself the champion, to enslave you, to torture you and to tear you to pieces. Luciano Bonfico, December 2001 http://www.tulibertadzine.com.ar/presentacion.html
Vivisection.The other face of science: the sinister face. How often have you listened to all along your life the brainy opinion that to cure human beings it is indispensable first to torture and mutilate animals under the pretext that the person who does so is “making research”? Whenever you have listened to that, you have been told a lie. If companies and labs responsible for those practises were sincere, they would confess that their main aim is not the progress, neither the science, nor the worries for your neighbour´s health, but merely their profit motive raised to a category of fetishism. Worship to money, no more, no less.Now, this is precisely the only pretext never used, since, instead of invoking the spectacular profits they annually collect, they talk about service to mankind, antibiotics, public health and welfare in torrents.It is true that to cure human beings it is not indispensable neither t destroy nor to torture animals. It has been proved once and again that a medicine tested in animals -whose organisms are absolutely different form ours- may produce unexpected and even pernicious side effects.Therefore, apart from cruel, it is a little reliable practice, subdued to highly unpleasant unexpected events (which, of course, are hardly spread) Can someone be so dupe to think that whatever serves as a conclusion of a physiological response in a mouse may also serve as a physiological response in human beings? Should we accept that our friends from the animal kingdom keep on being tortured for some megalabs and multinational cosmetics industries go on bribing the physicians´ unawareness or complete ignorance? How long should we tolerate the immodest balance of trade which benefits to hundreds of anonymous consortiums with the excuse of lengthening the mature age women´s youth and reducing the unattractive women´s ugliness? As I have said before, there are outnumbered cases which show that the technique used in each experiment is far from being reliable. In fact, THE RESULTS WITH ANIMALS CANNOT BE EXTRAPOLATED TO HUMAN BEINGS, since our physiologies are so different that it is extremely dangerous though not irrelevant to take for granted the parity value of a chemical reaction in one case and another. All of us, animals and human beings ARE SENSITIVE TO SUFFERING alike. Who would accept to call this science whether huge profits are between? It is something so artificial and supervised in an environment alien to natur in its pure state that the conclusions excerpted generally lack of any scientific value. Each species has a different response, which results hazardous and even of a ridiculous optimism to rely in such “authorized” practices. To be honest, the educative programmes in use are so full of unnecesary contents that the disgusting fact that small children are not informed anything about other living beings´ suffering still catches our attention. A logarithm table, a geometric theorem or the anatomic description of an arthropod can well be learnt at any age. But in matters of ethical experiences and behauviour principles, a late start is a bad start in this life. I do not know anyone who being rude, cruel or neglectful in his/her twenties has no longer been such in his/her thirties. Therefore it is necessary to inculcate respect for animals and the environment in small children. Besides, What can we find in schoolrooms every day? Often, useless debates about various topics, except those directly related to quality of life in our society. For example: Students have to study physiology, but they are never suggested to apply that knowlegde to their own body. Thus we find adults in their thirties who already fed badly during the schoolbreaks in their childhood.Education in SENSITIVITY TO OTHER LIVING BEINGS´ SUFFERING AND RESPECT FOR LIFE should have priority at schools. To abolish the cruel practice of scourging animals under the pretext of granting scientific information should be the main aim to get in our ancient pedagogic system. Does it bring any benefit to a teenager to know in detail the digestive system of a jellyfish if in the break he has a sandwich of a dead meat, chemically conserved from an animal which was hormone-fed? (Whether the sandwich benefits the teenager, it is already a criminal act in itself to torture a living being).You may be absolutely sure that children will learn as much watching a sheet from a book as watching mechanically and uninterested how an insensitive teacher with scientific airs tortures a helpless living being. He would only have a right to do so if he could bear the same torment, not in his viscera but in a finger of his criminal vivisectionist hand. It is not surprising then, that since the teacher or physician attended classes either at school or at college where similar procedures were carried out with the excuse of being scientifically educated. As it is well established in many papers published in Internet by colleagues who back up animal rights (many concepts below are based in them), arrogance, dilettantism and unawareness are up to date.To undergo animals to unnecessary operations, or to have them live in captivity to inoculate illnesses à la carte thus to be able to use them as “research models” of our own illnesses constitutes -apart from a moral atrocity- both a medical and scientific aberration. This is due to the fact that reactions to drugs and illnesses or traumas artificially and violently induced to animals of other species are different and do not have any relationship with the diseases spontaneausly developed in human beings. The vivisection practice makes it possible the proliferation of medicines and other products, since they are legal alibies which allow to give a false feeling of security to the user. He/She almost always ignores that the “new” drugs, as well as cosmetic and general consumption products – obtained to replace those removed when the damages or “side effects” produced are evident- sometimes are traded although they produce cancer and other types of tumors in animals, due to the absolute lack of validity of those experiments. “It is tied to a table, its head put into a helmet with cement where a pipe is left for it to breathe… The helmet is hitched to a piston which, with an unbereable and fussy periodicity goes off, producing a sharp shock of the monkey´s brain, which is completely awake, against the cranium walls. After countless tests (that may lasts for days, weeks, months and even years), the cement is removed with a hammer, among the leg-pull of those present there. While the animal is dying, rock music is played loudly in the cassette-player, a “physician”, smoking, enters the “sterilized” room, while a second doctor, smoking a pipe, analyses the animal´s wounds. Athird doctor comments among laughter: “Let´s hope this tape does not reach the animal supporters´ hands”. Another monkey, with a scar along its head, suffers from repetitive spasms, while the researcher, with happiness in her face, holds it tight, making him looking at the camera…” It is true that many physicians have rebelled against this horrible, quasi- unsurmountable “dogma” of the medicine, and that nowadays they consider that animal testing, with the exception of very concrete cases, is not necessary, being its use as a base to obtain medicines even dangerous.The degree of depth with which the preaching and money of these multinational companies have corrupted and still corrupt the spirit of individuals supposedly trained to philosophical speculation will be evident with a couple of examples. The source where they are quoted from belongs to a very valuable compilation carried out by Adela Pisarevsky, indisputable leader of the activism in favor of animal liberation. A very well known professor of EHU-UPV assures that <> on the basis that <> EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE, IT LACKS OF ETHICS! WHAT RIGHT DOES ANYONE HAVE TO INVADE THE TERRITORY OF ANY SPECIES, TO CAPTURE AND TREAT THEM AS RUBBISH, TO PUT THEM INTO SMALL CAGES WHERE THEY CANNOT EVEN MOVE, AND TO TAKE THEM OUT WHENEVER THEY WANT (WHILE THEY ARE ALIVE), TO CUT THEM, BURN THEM, BOIL THEM, IRRADIATE THEM, AND AN ENDLESS NUMBER OF OUTRAGES? THIS HAS ALREADY BEEN MADE BY HUMAN BEINGS AGAINST OTHER MEMBERS OF THEIR OWN SPECIES, WHAT DOES NOT MEAN IT HAS TO BE MADE AND TAUGHT AGAINST OTHER ANIMALS AND HUMAN BEINGS DEPENDING ON HISTORY!Pelayo: << Juridically, the difference is that human beings is covered with dignity>> Dear Pelayo: Could you please explain what is that hypothetical human dignity you are referring to? I beg you not to tell the old tale “the sons of a good and heavenly father who lives in the Heights”. Accept please my request and I will renounce to persuade you, just as I would renounce to persuade a football fan to change his team. If, instead, you adduce some kind of “dignity” based on the intellectual human superiority, let´s please explain the degree of rights someone acquires over someone else due to his/her intellectual superiority. For example, does such superiority have the right to oppress him/her, to torture him/her and to tear him/her to pieces? Think about your answer very carefully, because someone might refer to several people cleverer than you, who may also invoke the same juridical lawfulness you feel yourself the champion, to enslave you, to torture you and to tear you to pieces. Luciano Bonfico, December 2001 http://www.tulibertadzine.com.ar/presentacion.html
