In 2004, the British Medical Journal published an article titled Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans? It states: "The public often consider it [self-evident] that animal research has contributed to the treatment of human disease, yet little evidence is available to support this view... Despite the lack of systematic evidence for its effectiveness, basic animal research in the United Kingdom receives much more funding than clinical research." [1]
Why Does Animal Experimentation Continue?
by Dr Vernon Coleman, MD
"With all the evidence available today to demonstrate their uselessness, it is difficult to avoid the sad but inevitable conclusion that animal experiments are used because they are financially expedient. Animals are not just relatively cheap to use but their exploitation has also clear commercial advantages for the world’s most successful and ruthless industry, the drug industry.
The bizarre but unavoidable conclusion is that drug companies depend on the fact that animal experiments are unreliable in order to get their new products onto the market without testing them properly. The very unreliability and unpredictability of animal experiments makes them valuable . . . strange to say!
Drug companies test on animals so that they can say that they have tested their drugs before marketing them. If the tests show that the drugs do not cause serious disorders when administered to animals, the manufacturers say: 'There you are! We have tested our drug - and have proved it to be safe.'
If, on the other hand, tests show that a drug does cause serious problems when administered to animals, the manufacturers say: 'The animal experiments are, of course, inconclusive and cannot be used to predict what will happen when the drug is given to humans. We have, however, tested our drug.'
To disguise the real (commercial) reasons for performing animal experiments, drug companies will sometimes claim that they are required to do so by law. But this is not true.
Animal experiments have been used for so long and by so many scientists that thousands of reputations would be irrevocably shattered if it were accepted by the research industry that the work it has been at for so many years was fatally flawed.
It is remarkably quick and simple to plan, research, write and publish scientific papers if you are using animals. Decent and useful research, involving human patients, is much harder to organise - and since most of the biomedical scientists using animals are not medically qualified, most of them would not, in any case, be allowed to perform any sort of clinical research.
Prolific publishing is the best way to ensure a steady income from grants. It is the quantity, not the quality, of research which governs the financial results. The charities, which pay for much of the animal research, want to fill their annual reports with impressive and optimistic accounts of research-in-progress.
The myth that animal experiments are of value to doctors and patients is sustained because the vast majority of doctors - the only people who could expose the absurd rigmarole for the sham that it is - are either uninterested in how drugs are tested (and apathetic to the dishonesty involved) or are so beholden to the industry that they are unwilling or unable to criticise it." [2]
Similar Articles:
- Why Do Pharmaceutical Drugs Injure & Kill Millions of Humans? Are We the Real "Guinea-pigs"? . . . Medical journals report that pharmaceutical drugs injure millions and kill hundreds of thousands of people each year. This article explains how drug companies: i) use flexible unscientific tests to make their products look "safe"; ii) can then use those flexible tests as a legal defence to avoid punishment.
- Doctors Against Vivisection on Scientific & Medical Grounds (vivisection = animal research, animal experiments, animals testing on live animals or humans). These doctors explain that vivisection is misleading and very damaging to human medicine. Furthermore, that it is not done for science but for commercial reasons to help insure companies against law suits from humans who are damaged by medical treatment.
- A History of Western Medicine: From ancient Greece to modern times ... a summary of how human medicine:
i) advanced due to scientific clinical observations of humans; and
ii) was regularly stalled and led astray for millenia due to misleading results from vivisection ... excerpts from a book by the medical historian Hans Ruesch.
References:
[1] - Pandora Pound, Shah Ebrahim, Peter Sandercock, Michael B Bracken, Ian Roberts; "Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans?" British Medical Journal, 2004; 328:514-517, http://www.bmj.com/content/328/7438/514
[2] - http://www.vernoncoleman.com/ - Sunday Times ... Bestselling author Vernon Coleman has written over 100 books which have sold over two million copies in the UK alone. His books have been translated into 25 languages and sell in over 50 countries. His novels include Food for Thought, How To Stop Your Doctor Killing You, Superbody and Coleman's Laws. The global bestseller Bodypower was voted one of the top 100 books by British readers.
Vernon Coleman's books have been serialised in newspapers and magazines all over the world and many have been turned into television and radio series. He was the Television Doctor on British television and the first agony uncle on the BBC.
Dr Coleman is a registered and licensed general practitioner principal and a former Professor of Holistic Medical Sciences at the International Open University in Sri Lanka. He has an honorary DSc. He has given evidence to the House of Commons and the House of Lords in London. He has co-authored four books with his wife, Donna Antoinette Coleman. (Health Secrets Doctors Share With Their Families, How To Conquer Health Problems Between Ages 50 and 120, Animal Miscellany and England's Glory).
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