ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION - VIVISECTION

Don't be worried if you are not medically qualified. You do not need to be a doctor to know right from wrong, sense from nonsense. If a doctor tries to bamboozle you with long words, ask him to simplify his language - the long words are never necessary in these arguments. Animal experiments are both scientifically and morally indefensible. Gross unjustifiable cruelty is regularly involved. Much research money is going into animal experimentation which is now known to be scientifically unsound and in many cases completely misleading. The scientific fraud involved has been exposed in many countries and generous donors have been rightly subjected to ridicule for misuse of their money. For the theory against Vivisection, read Professor Raymond Wacks' excellent review, (click here to read it).

It cannot be said that no good has ever come from vivisection - what can be said with certainty is that if the same amount of money and brainpower had been used in other ways, much more benefit would have accrued.
It is time to stop this abomination.

See Animal Experiment Facts

See British Medical Journal February 2004

The Hong Kong University has an ethical committee (CULATR) overseeing the use of live animals in research. An SPCA vet has membership of this committee and it appears that research at HKU is reasonably well regulated - if you accept that vivisection is necessary and you believe that all research projects are passed through the committee. The same cannot be said of the other research institutions. Information is hard to come by but we do know that several hundred vivisection based research papers are published by Hong Kong scientists each year. The Government provides a large annual grant for vivisection out of taxpayers' money but refuses to say how it is spent. Animals collected as strays by the Government are handed over to researchers. We need to collect more information somehow.

The atrocities are able to continue because they are conducted in secrecy. At the moment the public believes that vivisection is an unpleasant necessity, the ends justifying the means. There is therefore no possibility of early abolition. What we must work for as a first step is transparency in the approval procedures. We believe that when the public knows what really goes on - how terrible the means are and how paltry the fruits - the demand for abolition will be unstoppable.

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Editorial in the British Medical Journal
11 December 1999 (BMJ 1999;319) :

"Openness is surely going to be even more important in the new millennium than the old. Openness about the limitations, difficulties, and failings of medicine and healthcare systems; openness about how decisions are made for populations and individuals; openness about rationing; openness of complaints procedures; and openness of the evidence on benefits, costs, and risks and treatments. Politicians prefer closed decision making and obfuscation to transparency and accountability, particularly when money and death are involved, but they must change."

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100,000 animals a year are used in Hong Kong in "scientific experiments". There are currently 900 ongoing projects.
We have been giving our support to the changes in legislation proposed by Dr Tony James of the Chinese University - click here to read the proposed changes.
A Working Group of the Animal Welfare Advisory Group of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department of the Hong Kong Government has been deliberating these changes for two years and has now given up pushing for legislative change and instead has opted for publishing a Code of Practice.  Unfortunately it is a very watered down version of the Australian Code of Practice on which it was based. See:  Code of Practice
It is now up to LAD to garner public support for legislative change. The two Government departments involved - Health Department and AFCD - are refusing to support new legislation on the grounds that it will take many years to get it passed.  We say, the longer it is going to take, the sooner we should get started!
LAD must embark on a campaign to educate the public and the Government about the need for new legislation.
 

References:
http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/PrefsProcess.asp
ASK US WHY
ICLAS Home
Merungora - rabbit breeders
The Australian Gene Targeting Centre
Animal Resources Centre, Western Australia
Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care
ANZCCART Australian and New Zealand Council for the Care of Animals in Research and Teaching

Random Notes:
Research, Testing and Teaching.
5 Freedoms:

• from hunger and thirst
• from adverse weather (adequate shelter)
• from confinement which does not give opportunity to display normal patterns of behaviour
• from fear and distress (appropriate physical handling)
• from pain, disease and injury (protection from, and rapid diagnosis of, injury and disease).

3Rs:

• replacement
• reduction
• refinement

Korean Prayer for Precious Souls:
"To thankful souls which devoted their precious life for human health.  We will do our best to make your devotion more useful and to reduce your sacrifice. 3R: Replacement, Reduction, Refinement.  June 17 1997." 
What a sick prayer!!!!!!