Some Animal Testing facts

Vegan Talk
1

OK, I knew animal testing didn’t always give reliable results, but I found an advert for Europeans for Medical Progress (leafing through an old Vegan Guide to Bristol I found…) and was pretty shocked :astonished:

They have a site at curedisease.net

Here’s some of the facts in the advert:

  • AIDS, Malaria and Hepatitus kill humans. Chimpanzees are unaffected.

  • An AIDS vaccine developed in chimpanzees failed to protect 8000 volunteers in trials.

  • Millions of women on HRT are at increased risk of heart disease, breast cancer and stroke. Monkeys predicted the opposite.

  • Smoking and high cholestorol were thought safe for decades based on animal studies.

  • Dozens of drugs to treat stroke were tested in animals and found to be safe and effective. People were injured or killed by all of them.

  • Arthritus drug Vioxx, withdrawn in 2004, appeared safe in animals but killed thousands of people.

2

I would rather see vegans concentrated on animals killed for food rather than on animals for testing. There are orders more animals killed for food, and it’s worth our time saving them. While protesting against those little numbers of test animals make our image worse. They usually ask what you’ll choose that animals or your child live? I think that when our society will stop consuming animals for food it will automatically will have a better treatment to all other animals.

3

Ah, yes, I’d noticed :unamused: I’m usually keen to distinguish between vegans and animal rights activists.

I agree :slight_smile: I just found it shocking: my mother’s on HRT! :astonished: And, when I was at uni, many of the students took part in medical trials for money: we were told that the trials were fairly safe because animal testing was conducted first.

There was quite an active anti-animal testing movement for many years. Every time you went into a town or city, up until a couple of years ago, BAVA or similiar would be collecting signitures for a petition - they were usually quite respectable nice people, and seemed to have a lot of public support. And most people buy cosmetics that are not tested on animals (hence The Bodyshop’s popularity). Unfortunately, a few extremists got the whole movement a bad name :imp: Check this. Sometimes people will think that by being vegetarian or an environmentalist, that you are associated with some violent gang.

It’s a real shame: I knew at lot of non-vegans who were boycotting products tested on animals (and other activities) as teenagers, then became vegetarian in later life. I think it can be an easier first step, maybe? It gets people thinking?