Results from animal experiments were 'proof' that smoking is harmless.
Animals are differnt to humans and experimental result on animals frequently mislead medicine.
While the detrimental effects of tobacco were noticed in humans 400 years ago (Philaretes, 1602), in the 1990s tobacco companies successfully defended a charge that they had deliberately misled consumers. They based their position on the results obtained from animal experiments.
Forced-inhalation experiments on animals rarely cause cancers because animals have a different physiology from humans. Conveniently these same companies talked down results from their own researchers dating from the 1950's onwards, which found tobacco tar induced skin tumours when painted on the backs of lab mice - by stating that results obtained on animals are not necessarily applicable to humans.
Animal results do not predict the reaction in humans.
The story of tobacco is the story of vivisection in miniature: the results obtained from lab
animals give no prediction as to how the same drug or chemical will affect humans, often leading to dangerous substances being used without due caution on humans, and distracting researchers from more relevent results observed through other means. Companies will point to the results when it supports their case, and disregard them as irrelevant when they don't. In 2004 thousands of animals are still subjected to ongoing forced-inhalation experiments even though it has been repeatedly shown that the results cannot be applied to humans, and even though the dangers of smoking are well known.
Tobacco is not an isolated example - more than half of the prescription drugs approved by the U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) between 1976 and 1985 caused side effects that were serious enough for the drugs to be withdrawn from the market or re-labelled. All had been tested on animals prior to their initial release.
An obsolete and unscientific approach.
Vivisection originated
in pre-victorian times when surgeons would practice on animals because human corpses were unavailable. In terms of surgical skills, and general gross anatomy such as identifying tissues and organs, animals were an adequate model to approximate humans. But it is the minor differences which make one species different from the next. Although we share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees, its the 2% difference which makes us so very obviously different not just physically, but phsiologically - in the way our body chemistry reacts to drugs and medicines - and in the types of illnesses we get.
Species respond differently to drugs.
The point that animals have different physiology from humans should be apparent even just from considering that different species generally succumb to different diseases - out of all illnesses known to humanity, less than 2% of them are ever seen in any non-human animal. You will not catch parvo virus from your dog, nor pass the mumps on to your cat. Human cancers are carcinomas, rat cancers are sarcomas.
Any veterinarian can tell you that different species do not all respond the same way to a particular drug, yet companies or individuals with vested interests still try to maintain the lie that animal experiments are relevant to humans. Agreeable results from animal experimentation smooth the registration of new drugs - and provide a safety net against litigation in the event that said drug causes harm.
Deliberate mis-information from those with vested interests.
The reactions differ so much from species to species that deadly poisons like botulin, strychnine, arsenic, the deathcap toadstool, hemlock and antimony are all 'provable' as safe using animals. While these may sound like extreme examples, other less obviously dangerous products and drugs have passed animal tests and gone into use, with human carnage the result. Products like asbestos, glass fibres, industrial arsenic, benzene and even tobacco smoke were believed harmless despite human evidence, because they all were safe in animals.
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For many years the tobacco companies claimed that there was 'no proof' that smoking was harmful because experiments on animals didn't cause lung cancer. Likewise asbestos. Thalidomide too stayed on the market as a sedative for pregnant women despite horrific birth defects because it seldom causes birth defects in lab animals. Ironically thalidomide is now showing promise as an anti-cancer drug... due to observations of its effects in humans, NOT from animal results.
Much 'research' is transparently irrelevant beyond the whims of curiousity (and the desire to
obtain grant money), or worse, mere repitition of experiments already done on previous species, 'confirming' things that were already known without wasting more money and inflicting more suffering. I am aware of an experiment this year (2004) that purports to gain insight into drunken human behaviour by feeding ethanol to restrained honeybees! Just as companies continue to use vivisection despite its inherent unreliability, individual vivisectors too will continue to claim the validity of what they do.
A multi-million industry that lobbies to protect its own continuation.
Some argue that those who haven't undergone specialised training oughtn't criticise as we don't properly understand the nature of the field, and that nobody would do these things
if there was any other way, yet have you ever had a mechanic try to talk you into replacing parts that didn't need to be? Have you ever had a dentist try to talk you into dental work that wasn't essential? Both of the individuals in these (and many more) examples know far more about their field than you do -
yet some still encourage unnecessary procedures. The common answer is money.
Millions of dollars in NZ alone goes into animal research - those whose mortgage payments depend on their continued 'research' grants seldom stand up and admit that there is little chance their work will ever lead to any useful human treatments (although ironically from time to time, some of them do break ranks and make that exact confession).
Sadly the medical profession is a deeply entrenched old-boys network.
Those trained by vivisectors go on to indoctrinate and desensitize their own students into dissection and animal experimentation. With so much medical 'research' historically and currently carried out on animals many doctors consume the propaganda from the pharmaceutical companies unquestioningly (readers with longer memories may recall doctors advertising cigarettes), with medical advisors to government and mainstream media doing likewise.
Resources diverted from more effective research techniques.
We have all known people who died of cancer - despite all the useless torture performed upon the
innocents. Or maybe because of it. Vivisection doesn't work - animals are different from humans. By wasting resources on fruitless irrelevant animal research we divert vital resources from relevant research on human tissues and cancers. Alternative research methods do exist, and have been proven more accurate, less expensive and less time-consuming than unethical animal experimentation. In this day and age with the ability to grow human cancer cells in dishes in labs it is the vivisectionists that are slowing down progress, clinging to a flawed pre-victorian idea.
Even those few apparent successes which pro-vivisectionists will tout as validation of the need to vivisect to advance medicine unravel upon closer examination. Although the first polio vaccines were cultured from monkey tissue, research into polio had been sidetracked down a 30 year dead-end by following animal research which contradicted human findings.
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Having realised that vivisection is an outdated unethical sham which is often harmful to humans, a mere industry lie motivated by continued profits and reduced corporate liability
it then becomes incumbent upon us to do something to stop it. For while vivisection is
frequently harmful to humans, it is
always harmful to the animals experimented upon. Allowing these atrocities to continue is one of humanities greatest shames, an ugly stain on our collective conscience that will only fade when these inhumane practices recede into history.
Educate your friends and family, don't give to Charities that fund animal experimentation, and perhaps even consider sparing some time, effort and or/money to help groups that are actively working to achieve legislative changes.
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