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"Knowledge deriving from animal experimentation is never entirely applicable to the human species." Professor Rene Dubos, Pulitzer prize-winner and professor of microbiology
"The idea that vivisection helps humanity is pure myth and totally unscientific." Dr Gwen Miller, retired from London Hospital
"The best guess for the correlation of adverse reactions in man and animal toxicity data is somewhere between 5% and 25%.
Dr Ralph Heywood, former scientific director of HLS
"With the average drug, only 30% derive a benefit while as many as 10% will experience adverse reactions. In America, approximately 100,000 patients die annually as a result of unpredictable effects of drug therapy."
Peter Goodfellow of SmithKline Beecham at Novartis drug symposium 1999
"Veterinarians do not tell mothers how to treat their children and human physicians should not tell owners how to treat their pets. Human and animal
metabolisms vary widely." Dorothy Murray, DVM
"Using human cells for testing the effects of a drug will be more scientifically valid than using other species." Dr Paul Skett
"The benefits of new drugs are always over-estimated Dr Jeremy Booth
"Laboratory-produced cancers have nothing to do with those occurring
naturally in man." Prof. Sabin in Naples 1978 and in Espresso magazine,
6 October 1985: "A theoretically possible vaccine against AIDS could neve be based on animal models."
""Tumors in mice, rats, chickens and guinea pigs are substantially different from human tumors; they form differently; they grow differently; they
metastasize differently . . ." Prof. Veronesi in his book A Curable Disease
"The risks of tumors determined by toxic substances are studied are studied by experiments on mice and rats, and 42% of the substances analyzed up to now tested positive in mice and negative in rats. So if two such closely-related and short-lived animals like mice and rats give completely different results, it should be thereby inferred that the transposition of results on human beings is even more questionable." Prof. Bruce Ames, University of California
"In pure fact, there is not a single benefit obtained (from animal experimentation) that could not have been obtained by alternative methods."
J. B. Bradshaw, MD
"The first sentence of your editorial, "Medical research would be impossible without experiments on animals," is untrue." Richmond C. Hubbard, MD
Why is it: That scientists continue to use rats as experimental models in food and digestion studies, despite the fact that rats have different enzymes than humans, and lack gall bladders? Robert Cohen, the Notmilkman
The use of chimpanzees or any other animal to investigate drugs for human use is an unscientific ritual. From thalidomide to immunosuppressive agents, the medical literature is replete with examples of the lack of correlation between the reactions of human and non-human animals to the effects of drugs.
Betsy Todd, RN, MPH
As a method of research, it (vivisection) has constantly led those who have employed it into altogether erroneous conclusions, and the records teem with instances in which not only have animals been fruitlessly sacrificed, but human lives have been added to its victims by reason of its false light.
Renowned British surgeon Lawson Tait
The following five statements were made in reference to the proposed primate research facility at Cambridge University, England:
1) The track record of primate research is abysmal. The abandonment of animal models is absolutely vital for medicine to advance. Ray Greek, MD, Medical Director of Europeans For Medical Advancement - representing Animal Aid, the National Anti-Vivisection Society, Naturewatch, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Uncaged and X-CAPE (Cambridge Against Primate Experiments).
2) Continuation of this [primate] research may well retard understanding of, and the finding of cures for, debilitating illnesses such as strokes and Parkinson's disease. Gill Langley, PhD,representing the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection.
3) No species can function as a reliable biological model for another species.
Even the chimpanzee, our closest relative in evolutionary terms, is no model for research on the human brain. Professor Claude Reiss, Director of Alzheim' R&D - representing Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible Medicine.
4) The new laboratory would merely generate volumes of useless data at vast
expense to the taxpayer and of no value to patients. Jerry Vlasak, MD,
representing the Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine
5) It is ethically problematic, to say the least, to willingly waste money on
primate experimentation such that more clinically relevant human research must go underfunded. Lawrence Hansen, MD, Professor of Pathology and the
Neurosciences, University of California San Diego School of Medicine.
Who knows how many valuable therapies have been lost forever because of misleading animal data? Stephen Kaufman, MD, Chair Medical Research Modernization Committee
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