SPECIAL TO BRITISH READERS:If you write to your politician, Tony Blair or Hilary Benn (Home Office minister responsible for signing government licences permitting vivisection) about vivisection - the reply you will receive will be about the 3 Rs policy of the 1986 Animals in Scientific Procedures Act - when this happens respond with the following below OR send them this information NOW !!! The information contained here is relevant and can be used globally.....feel free to circulate.

The 3 Rs are anti-human, anti-science, anti-species. Pro-animal experimenters all support the 3 Rs.
Organisations calling for alternatives support the 3 Rs. Vivisection is perpetuated and protected by the 3 Rs. The Animals in Scientific Procedures Act (ASP) 1986 is purely 3 Rs legislation.
TRUE ANTI-VIVISECTION ABOLITIONISTS SUPPORT THE 1 R = REMOVE
The 3 Rs were "devised by the British chemical interests and palmed off to the Parliamentarians of the Common Market in Strasbourg and Brussels as a progressive step in animal welfare, instead of a step backward. Its purpose is anaesthetic - designed to fool the Parliamentarians and provide them with an alibi, and to allude the antivivisectionists that 'something is being done'. Its unavowed purpose is of course to perpetuate vivisection, meanwhile extorting more money from the antivivisectionists; money that is then regularly funneled into the vivisectors' kitties, through the various 'funds for alternative research'". (1)
Vivisection and the Law
The British law says all "alternatives to animals used in vivisection laboratories must be tested on animals before they can be called alternatives". This clearly means all 'alternatives' are flawed since they are animal-based (human-based scientific research methods are listed at the end of the article).
There is NO law requiring drugs, cosmetics or products to be tested on animals in this country. It is amazing this fact did not appear in the ASP House of Lords committee evidence recently reported. Why on earth is it insisted that non-science (pronounced 'nonsense') of animal testing must continue?(2)

The statement that it is UK law for products to be tested on animals is often made in the British media and by the vivisection industry, but they refuse to answer when asked to produce evidence that any such law exists. When cornered, MP's quote certain EU directives containing 'regulations' (something to do with plants). However, a regulation is not a law, and regulations can differ depending on what methods of testing are chosen: for example, our information is, that if a country chooses to use animals, then the regulation concerning procedures for these would need to be followed. But if a country chose to test using methods that did not involve animals, then they would have to adhere to that part of the directive outlining regulations pertaining to these other methods.

The reason our MPs are so secretive concerning this matter, is because they want British firms to be able to sell certain products in the US. The US will not allow such products to be sold within its borders unless their ingredients have been tested on animals (which is US law).(3)

Validation: animal research has NEVER been validated. Human-based research HAS been validated. Would you prefer the non-validated fraudulent science? This is governmental choice (via the Home Office) as applied to the 1986 Animals in Scientific Procedures Act - which would you call 'scientific'?
Human-based research results in 96% safety for humans. Whereas animal research results in an average safety percentage of 12% for humans. What kind of logic is this? Is this scientific? Would you allow to be sold, and would you buy, electrical equipment which had been tested and found to be only 12% safe? Would you support a car manufacturer, buy, promote and use their cars, knowing that their manufacturing output of safe vehicles was only 12%? If not, why not?(4)

".....I have even heard anti vivisectionists arguing that we have to talk with politicians in order to change the laws which force drug companies to perform animal experiments. As I have shown, there are no laws to change! There are no laws requiring drug or cosmetic companies to perform animal experiments."(5)

Vivisector Colin Blakemore admitted this a year ago on a Radio 4 interview. Stating there is NO law requiring animals be used by vivisectors for product testing.

Media articles are now stating that the oh-so-caring 3 Rs welfare ethics according to the Lords want all products to be tested on 2 different species of mammals. The same articles which polish the Lords and government to care about numbers used and 'alternatives'

How IS it that NONE of this was stated in evidence to the HoL Animals in Scientific Procedures committee, or have we all missed it?

The 3 Rs and Alternatives
The mythology of how vivisection operates is demonstrated by an editorial in the Lancet. In this the writer complains that 'less prominence' has been given to 'the efforts of organisations that work steadily to educate people about the need for animal research and to promote a 3Rs approach to the problem'.

The 3 Rs represent:
(1) Reduce the number of animals used;
(2) Refine existing tests to minimize animal distress and the number of animals used;
(3) Replace whole animal tests with alternative methods.(6)

The duplication of products to be tested on animals is overwhelming. There is no reduction in numbers of procedures only growth; replacement is as flawed as the animal-based methodology which it is claimed to 'alternatively' replace and the refinement is another name to grade an experiment less painful but just as lethal. The pharmaceutical industry spin their own products, use 'named' ghost-writers and are overwhelmingly biased about the efficacy and accuracy of data and products.

At present, the bulk of vivisection is not for pharmaceuticals but for household, lifestyle, industrial toxins, pesticides and agro-chemicals. These poisons are a major cause of cancer. The 4th biggest killer in the UK is cancer. We are then treated with pharmaceuticals. The 3rd biggest killer in the UK is adverse drug reactions by prescribed pharmaceuticals, all animal tested. The total number of ADRs is now considered to be only 5-10 % of the total reported.

A report just released states the leading cause of death in the US is now recognised to be ADRs. No longer heart attacks, cardio-vascular accidents nor cancer but animal-tested pharmaceutical products.(7)

The figures for 1999 reveal that the total number of 'scientific procedures' carried out on animals was 2,656,753, almost exactly the same as in 1998 (2.66 million). Furthermore, in 2000, there was a significant increase in procedures which brought the total to a figure of 2,714,726. The year 2000 also saw an increase in the numbers of animals used.(8)

Britain inflicts painful and lethal experiments on up to 3 million animals every year -- a disgraceful record the government should be ashamed of, a parliamentary committee said Wednesday. A report by a committee in the upper House of Lords slammed Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor government for caring more about "pandering to the whim of the vivisection industry".

Data published by the government this week show that animals -- mostly rats, mice and other rodents -- were used in more than 2.62 million scientific experiments last year.

But experiments using genetically modified animals, again mostly mice, rose by 49,000 to 631,000 in 2001.(9)

Home Office Statistics on Animal Experiments in 2001.(10)

Overall there was a meagre 2.8 per cent drop in the number of animals killed in British labs, which merely compensates for the 2 per cent rise in animal numbers the year before (2000). There are also some highly disturbing increases:
     17% increase in the number of dogs killed in experiments
     18% increase in the number of Old World monkeys
     8% increase in total number of monkeys
     8% increase in procedures using genetically modified animals (a 1207% increase since 1990)
     27% increase in acute lethal toxicity experiments (11)

Consequently, any belief that the 3 Rs can make any noticeable difference is clearly misplaced. This is further demonstrated when the writer goes on to say, 'the unraveling of the human genome could change trends drastically', and comments on how 'there will also be commercial pressures for more animal work' and 'another likely effect of genomic research is an increase in the number of higher animals used, since, unlike chemicals, biologically based compounds targeting human molecules may be testable only in such animals, and perhaps only in primates'.

The writer then asks: 'How then are scientists and scientific organisations to proceed?' and goes on to answer his own question saying: 'Certainly they should be adhering strictly to the 3 Rs of animal research'.(12)

As is so painfully obvious, there is no desire by vivisectors to implement the 3 Rs and the writer himself admits that the numbers of animals used is likely to increase: in sum, it is absurd for anyone to propose the 3 Rs will be the means by which the suffering and misery caused by vivisection will be resolved.

Since the publication of The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique (1959), the 3 Rs (Reduce, Refine, Replace) have been increasingly popular with animal experimentors. The concept had a renaissance in the 1980's, and now the label 'alternative' is very often used as soon as one of the 3 Rs in Reduce, Refine, Replace apply.
(Obviously, if you replace an animal experiment with a non-animal alternative, the Refine and Reduce become irrelevant). N.B. Non-animal can still mean animal-based methodology - it does not mean human-based clinical research and observational methods.
Alternatives to animal experiments are not necessarily experiments without animals, but means experiments on animals which are supposedly 'less' painful (refined) and supposedly involve 'fewer' animals (reduced).
The absurdity of the term is revealed when applying the same logic to driving: when it is used in the context of the 3 Rs, it is not being used in the sense of an actual alternative in that an alternative to driving a car would be walking, cycling or swimming, but it is used to refer to continuing to drive your car - just a little slower or in a slightly different manner. Thus when used with the 3 Rs, it is not meant to refer to alternative at all, but merely a modification.
Despite this, the word alternative is now frequently used by politicians and research institutions who maintain that they are developing alternatives, they already use alternatives, and they need more money for their alternative experiments; but this is while they continue to vivisect countless animals, the numbers of which steadily increase....(13)
The fact that no confidence should be placed in in the 3 Rs policy, or the pro-vivisectionist's assurance that the 3 Rs will ensure that animal suffering will be reduced is commented upon, by the Vivisection Information Network :-
The 3Rs or looking for 'Alternatives' (to animal experiments) are practices accepted by those involved in research using animals. The three R's stand for:

REDUCE. When animals are used in biomedical research the lowest possible number ought to be used.
REFINE. The methods used should be refined in order to minimise both the suffering and the number of animals used.
REPLACE. That animals should be replaced as soon as viable 'alternatives' are found.
Based on the assumption that experiments on animals are scientifically valid and lead to cures and treatments for human disease, it is claimed that 'Reducing, Refining and Replacing' animal experi

continued

back to previous page
ments with 'alternatives' in a continuing process is desirable. However, pursuing the 3Rs is not based