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Medical historian Hans Ruesch has written a book consisting primarily of statements challenging the validity of animal experimentation by doctors around the world and throughout history.  The title is "1000 Doctors against Vivisection".  It has over 280 pages and is available from Civitas for $16 .  Click here for book list.

Dr. Richard Klausner, the director of the National Cancer Institute in the United States: The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse.....We have cured mice of cancer for decades--and it simply didn't work in humans."

Stephen R. Kaufman, MD: "Because animal experimentation professedly aimed at illuminating human physiology or pathology is based on analogy rather than direct observation of humans, it is, in the strictest sense, not science at all."  NEJM 1991 v. 325, pp. 1580-1581

Sir Charles Bell  (1774-1842) Scottish physician, surgeon, et al:  "...a survey of what has been attempted of late years in physiology will prove that the opening of living animals has done more to perpetuate error than to confirm the just views taken from the study of anatomy and natural motions."

Kenneth P. Stoller, MD:  "Vested interests, not sound scientific principle, have helped perpetuate the myth that animal research has been indispensable to medical advances.    The biomedical community's strident effort to discredit the million so Americans involved in the animal protection movement is a propaganda campaign worth of the McCarthy era."

Moneim A Fadali, MD, RACS, Diplomate ABS & ABTS: "Conclusions drawn from animal research, when applied to human beings, are likely to delay progress, mislead and do harm to the patient.  Vivisection, or animal experimentation should be abolished.

Charles Mayo, MD  Mayo Clinic cofounder:  "I know of no achievement, through vivisection, no scientific discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism."

Werner Hartinger, MD, surgeon:  "There are...only two categories of doctors and scientists who are not opposed to vivisection: those who don't know enough about it, and those who make money from it."

Murry Cohen, MD: "...it is time to stop wasting money and animal lives on the pretense that manipulating several variables in rats, dogs, cats or monkeys has anything to do with human physiology."

Walter Nowak, MD:  "I have never used the results of these (animal) tests to diagnose or treat patients.  I find no justification for the continued use of these cruel tests.

George Pickering, Prof. of Medicine at Oxford: "The idea, as I understand it, is that fundamental truths are revealed in laboratory experimentation on lower animals and are then applied to the problems of the sick patient.  Having been myself trained as a physiologist, I feel in a way competent to assess such a claim.  It is plain nonsense."  (BMJ, 26 Dec 1964)

Ronald T. Grant, Guy's Hospital Medical School:  "The proper study of mankind is man. I think we are gradually coming to recognize more clearly ...the gross differences not only of anatomy but also of physiology, both physical and mental, of animals from each other and from man."

Prof. Pietro Croce, MD: "But what about the positive contribution of animal experimentation?  Not only is it nothing at all--no benefit whatsoever for mankind--but even less than negative, having led researchers astray from their proper scientific path, and, moreover, very close to losing forever boons such as penicillin.  And who knows how many other conquests, beneficial to man and animal we have lost?"

Ray Greek, MD: "Smoking cigarettes is responsible for more deaths each year than any other single factor. Animal models predicted smoking was not only safe but actually beneficial,  "Today animal models are equally misleading."

H. Fergie Woods, MD:  Recent (1950) synthetic drugs often achieve rapid and spectacular effects in abolishing the symptoms of disease, but the patient is likely to be left with a protracted convalescence, needing tonics to help him over the effects of the drugs.  Such treatment is neither scientific nor a credit   to medical science and the healing art.

"What are the errors behind this line of treatment?  First, there is the fundament fact that animals differ widely from man in habits and reactions, so that treatment based on animal response is bound to be misleading, if not harmful."

Werner Hartinger, MD, German surgeon:  "There is no sound basis for animal testing. It has no scientific basis because the results of vivisection have no value whatsoever until they are reproduced in man.  The metabolic breakdown is completely different between man and other species.  Man is theonly effective yardstick.'

Bruno Fedi, MD, Professor of Pathological Anatomy and Urology at the University of Rome:  "No animal can mimic man because of fundamental differences in metabolism and enzymes as well as in the cardiovascular, respiratory and nervous system...Vivisection has no protective value for man...All surgical operations have been developed and perfected on man.  All we know has been learned on man."

Stephen R. Kaufman, MD, opthalmologist: "...animal studies can neither prove nor disprove any theory about animals.  At best, these studies can suggest theories about human diseases.  However, differences in anatomy, physiology,and disease pathology make most "discoveries" in animals nonapplicable to humans.  In science, there are many ways to address a given question.  Accordingly, I favor human clinical investigation, which is a more fruitful means of deriving theories relevant to human medicine."

Professor Pietro Croce, MD , pathologist, recipient of numerous international medical honors:  "The attitude of the vivisector towards animals is clearly contradictory.  The vivisector claims (1) animals are fundamentally similar to man. (2) animals are fundamentally different from man.  According to what he finds convenient for his thesis: (1) animals are similar to man when it is convenient to claim that from animals one can obtain knowledge for man.  (2) animals are different from man when it is convenient to believe that animals do not suffer, are unaware, do not think, and therefore one can do anything with them.  Morality simply does not come into the matter.

George Haritakis, MD, Greek physician: "More and more doctors are coming to realise that research on animals is useless, repetitive and enormously wasteful of money. . .Vivisection is not just about torturing animals; it is not simply a useless practice; it is also an extremely dangerous one, because it supports an entirely wrong way of thinking and a system based on financial interests."

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