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Fiendish pharmaceutical animal testing does not help humanity
PF Louis
Over 100,000 people die from correctly prescribed and used pharmaceutical drugs each year. Torturing helpless animals, ostensibly to ensure drugs are safe for humans, is not justifiable at all. So why does it go on?
Since animals don't have attorneys or cannot speak, whatever happens to them avoids scrutiny. Nor can the animals testify against the accuracy of the research. Lab animals don't become whistle blowers.
Favorable results for pharmaceutical companies enable university research labs to continue receiving lucrative grants from Big Pharma. It's easy to omit a test with disastrous results and present another under different conditions with more favorable results.
When lawsuits are filed from humans who experience gruesome side effects, or from those whose loved ones have died from taking correctly prescribed drugs, Big Pharma can use the animal testing as a buffer to prove measures were taken to ensure the drug's safety. And the FDA requires animal testing as a prerequisite before moving into human testing.
Yet, Chinese medicine and Ayurveda have managed to successfully use herbal medicines for thousands of years without animal testing. Their herbal solutions were not toxic, except for a few used past their prescribed time limits.
The same is true for native herbal remedies, such as the ones handed down to Harry Hoxsey and Rene Caisse (Essiac Tea) for cancer. These remedies offer real relief leading to actual curing, whereas pharmaceuticals lead to other ailments for more pharmaceutical prescriptions.
So the question becomes why do we need drugs created for healing that are toxic? Greed supports a medical model that tortures animals as part of their research.
Torture disguised as scientific research
The most well known test for safety is the LD-50 test. This involves ramping up the dosage of a force fed chemical until 50% of those animals die. That dosage is considered the lethal threshold for the drug tested. Until they die, animals suffer intensely while being scientifically (sadistically) observed.
Often those animals, ranging from mice to rabbits to dogs and primates, are shackled or restrained during testing. Sometimes they break their necks or backs attempting to escape their agony during the days or weeks of observation.
Well over half of the millions of animals tested annually either die during testing or are killed after tests are completed, either to examine internal organs or simply because they are so crippled or sick from the lab tests.
None of the tests replicate the predisposition of any human disease or ailment that the tested drug is purported to relieve. Cancers are injected into healthy animals, and injuries are intentionally afflicted externally to resemble joint problems.
The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) only protects lab animals before and after testing. They are not protected during those fiendishly gruesome experiments. It's amazing what people will do to keep their careers as medical researchers.
Growing opposition to animal testing
In addition to animal rights groups, which are marginalized by the mainstream media and Big Pharma, there are medical professionals who are realizing that animal testing and vivisection do not prove efficacy or safety.
They cite the differences in toxicity from one species to another and variances according to different external conditions. Again, over 100,000 Americans die annually from correctly prescribed drugs.
Mahatma Ghandi said "The greatness of a society and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals."
Sources for this article include:
http://www.vivisectioninfo.org/faq.html
http://preventdisease.com/news/09/1...
http://www.naturalnews.com/z034311_animal_testing_pharmaceuticals_inhumane.html