more doctors' comments specifically on the Draize and LD50 tests
The following letter suggested that it might be useful to start a page of letters and statements from doctors and other scientists opposing animal experimentation as a means of seeking answers to human health problems. More of the many in existence will be added as time becomes available.
(just started, additions to come)
Doctor's response to letter of May 20 extolling animal research and criticizing PETA in Buffalo News June 1, 2000
To promote animal research by using Linda McCartney's suffering and death reveals a compassionless letter writer who knows nothing about medical history. In light of severe and insurmountable shortcomings in animal research, the National Cancer Institute drug discovery program switched to in-vitro, non-animal testing.
Directly due to this, an explosion of new and successful chemotherapies have been rapidly brought to patients. Since these drugs were discovered and their activity defined without animals, McCartney could have a clear conscience using them.
The same cannot be said of animal research zealots who gloss over a specie's specific response to drugs and therapies. This is why dozens of drugs and devices found safe in animal tests kill humans, and why thalidomide was found safe in 50 species of pregnant animals including primates. Indeed the wonder drug, aspirin, is too toxic for human consumption based on animal research.
What are we to believe - videotaped evidence of widespread heinous lab animal abuse or unsubstantiated rhetoric that all is well from those with a vested interest in animal use? The answer is obvious.
The relevance of animal research to modern medicine can be summed up by examining AIDS. Diagnostic and therapeutic interventions have been developed and introduced to critically ill individuals with lifesaving results, all without years of animal research delays. Since our lives are placed on the line by animal research, we have every right to question its validity. We also have the right to expect factual responses, not hysterical propaganda.
RON ALLISON, M.D.
Amherst, NY
brief comments from more doctors
more doctors' comments specifically on the Draize and LD50 tests
