ANESTHESIA

Finding ways to reduce surgical pain began in the 1700s when it was discovered by English scientist Joseph Priestley that inhalation of nitrous oxide might relieve pain. Other gases like carbon dioxide produced similar effects. Also, cocaine injections were found to block pain.

Ether was first discovered by Valerius Cordus in 1540 when he mixed alcohol and sulphuric acid. At the time it was called “sweet oil of vitriol” and medical students used ether to get high in “ether frolics.” Dr. Crawford Williamson Long of Danielsville Georgia (1815-1878) was probably the first physician to perform surgery using diethyl ether. He had taken part in “ether frolic” parties where he noticed that people seemed to be impervious to pain while under the influence of ether. He went on to use ether while removing a tumor from a patient’s neck and amputating the toe of a boy. He failed to publish his discoveries until 1846 by which time William Morton, a dentist, had already taken credit for the discovery. Long presented his findings to the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta in 1849 and is regarded as the father of modern anesthesiology.

The development of anesthetics was severely retarded because the German pharmacist Friedrich Serturner, finding that morphine caused maniacal excitement in the dogs he tried it on, discontinued his work on anesthetics which was taken up decades later by an American dentist who used nitrous oxide when extracting the tooth of a colleague. Showing once again the barrier to medical progress brought about by animal trials.” – Hans Ruesch – Slaughter of the Innocent

ANTICOAGULANTS

Hirudin is an anticoagulant secreted by leeches that allows them to suck the blood out of mammals. Doctors observed while using leeches on human patients that the leeches must have deposited the anticoagulant before sucking out the blood. The use of citrates came about during the 1700s when doctors observed that sailors who were treated for scurvy sometimes had spontaneous hemorrhages from too much citrus juices. Heparin was discovered when tested along with other chemicals with blood in test tubes. Dicumarol (in sweet clover) was discovered to have the same affect on patients as citrates and, by coincidence, on cows who ate sweet clover. The effects of all four anticoagulants were observed to work in humans by doctors and was not the result of animal experimentation. Any similar effect of a chemical on humans and animals is a coincidence and is not science. There is no way to predict what the result will be in humans until that substance is given to humans or tested in test tubes, in petri dishes or by other scientific methods.

BLOOD CIRCULATION

EBERS PAPYRUS

The Ebers Papyrus was written in 1550 B.C. and includes an accurate description of the circulatory system depicting the existence of blood vessels throughout the entire body and the heart, with the heart functioning as the center of the blood supply.

GALEN

Claudius Galenus (Galen) physician/scientist (129AD-200AD) deduced through his animal experiments that blood ebbs and flows like the tide. His erroneous conclusion from his animal experiments misled anatomists and physiologists for eleven centuries.

IBN AL NAFIS

In 1240 Ibn Al Nafis discovered pulmonary circulation (the circulation between the heart and lungs). He had performed dissections on cadavers from cemeteries. He proved that blood circulates from the right side of the heart to the lungs where it is aerated (filled with air) before reaching the left side of the heart.

WILLIAM HARVEY

William Harvey (1570-1657) continued the work begun by Ibn Al Nafis. He experimented on his own arm by tying it off and noticing on which side the blood accumulated. He also poured water into a corpse’s heart to determine where it would flow. He discovered, as Ibn Al Nafis had, how the blood circulates, without doing animal experiments.

BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS

In 1900 Karl Landsteiner found out that the blood of two people under contact agglutinates. In 1901 he discovered that this effect was due to contact of blood with blood serum. As a result, he succeeded in identifying the three blood groups A, B and O (which he labelled C) of human blood. Landsteiner also found out that blood transfusions between persons with the same blood group did not lead to the destruction of blood cells, whereas this did occur between persons of different blood groups. In 1909 he classified the blood of human beings into the now well-known A,B,AB, and O groups.

In 1937, when a woman nearly bled to death after receiving a transfusion of blood from her husband whose blood type matched her own, Karl Landsteiner surmised that there must be a yet-undefined major blood antigen. They decided to name this antigen RH because it was similar to one found in rhesus monkeys. Later they discovered that human and animal anti-RH antibodies are genetically different but the RH label remains, leading to assume a linkage between human and animal blood that does not exist. All of Landsteiner’s discoveries came about through human studies and could not possibly have been accomplished using animals.

BABY FAE

The transfer of a baboon heart into Stephanie Fae Beauclair, known as Baby Fae, stands as one of the most egregious examples of “animal experimentation leading to human experimentation” in modern times. Dr. Leonard L. Bailey spent seven years at one of the more horrifying animal hellholes in the country, Loma Linda University Medical Center, performing cross-species transplants, mostly on sheep and goats, all of whom died within months. Of 150 transplants, all of the recipients and, of course, the donors died. He was unable to convince anyone to give him research grants for his grisly experiments and had to fund them himself. Baby Fae was a month-old baby who was born with a severe heart defect known as left hypoplastic heart. Even though three other humans had received animal transplants and had all died, Bailey managed to convince Baby Fae’s mother to allow him to perform the transplant. After the surgery, Baby Fae’s immune system immediately fought to expel the alien heart and increased doses of immune-suppressive drugs were constantly injected into the baby. After 20 days of what must have been excruciating torture, Baby Fae mercifully died of heart failure.

Bailey continued to practice surgery at Loma Linda and was unapologetic for what he had done to Baby Fae, let alone to the hundreds of animals he had brutalized for decades. After Baby Fae died, Bailey performed many human to human heart transplants on children and we have found no statistics on how many survived although the stories of some survivors were heavily publicized. His cross-species heart transplant on Baby Fae received such an outpouring of outrage and disgust from both the medical community and the general public, no one, as far as we know, has ever attempted it again.

CANCER

The treatment of cancer by allopathic doctors continues to be surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, none of which cure cancer. In spite of over one billion dollars and one hundred years spent on cancer research (most of that fraudulent animal experimentation) the cancer industry insists that there are no cures and they need more grants and donations to keep looking for those elusive cures. There are many natural cures to cancer attested to by former cancer patients, doctors and other health professionals. Detoxing the body and strengthening the immune system is the only way the human body can heal itself. The countless number of cancer drugs regularly introduced on the market cannot heal cancer and are instead meant to “treat” the disease while causing harmful side effects. Thousands of respected physicians and researchers have condemned vivisection on animals perpetrated by the Cancer Society and other cancer “researchers.” Below are a few quotes from doctors and researchers.

It is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion in regard to cancer in man by experimenting on animals. - Robert Bell, M.D., M.B., F.R.C.S., Vice President International Cancer Research Society

Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organizations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them.” – Linus Pauling – Two-time Nobel Prize Winner

During the past 50 years scientists experimenting with thousands of animals have found 700 ways of causing cancer. But they have not discovered one way of curing the disease. - Brailsford, M.D., Ph.D, F.R.C.P.,Dr. J.F.

The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn’t work in humans. – Dr. Richard Klausner, Director, National Cancer Institute

The use of animals in cancer research has been attacked as unnecessary cruelty to animals and defended as absolutely essential for research progress that will prevent or cure human cancer. From a scientific standpoint, what is pertinent is that what are called animal model systems in cancer research have been a total failure…The moral is that animal model systems not only kill animals, they also kill humans. There is no good factual evidence to show that the use of animals in cancer research has led to the prevention or cure of a single human cancer. – Dr. Irwin D. Bross, former director of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Institute

CARDIOVASCULAR SURGERY

In Canada and the U.S., vivisectors practiced surgery regarding coronary artery disease on animals. What they learned was used on thousands of patients. What were the results? To say the least, unworthy. To put it bluntly; a fiasco, a total failure. I am witness to this event and the least I can do is speak out. Animal experimentation inevitably leads to human experimentation. That is the final verdict, sad as it is. And the toll mounts on both sides. – Dr. Moneim A Fadali, for 25 years one of America’s leading cardiovascular surgeons and for 25 years on the clinical staff of the University of California

HEART SURGERY

ARTIFICIAL HEART

The animal experimentation involved in the search for artificial hearts that actually work is another example of how vivisection in animals leads to vivisection in humans. Countless, dogs, cows, sheep and an unknown number of other animals have suffered and died since Vladimir Demikhov of the Soviet Union in 1937 first transplanted an artificial heart into a dog who died shortly thereafter. It is unknown how many animals he tortured and killed in his fruitless attempts at trying to make his artificial heart work.

In 1957, Willem Johan Kolff, the world’s most prolific inventor of artificial organs implanted an artificial heart into a dog at Cleveland Clinic. The dog lived for 90 minutes.

In 1964 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) started the Artificial Heart Program with the goal of putting a man-made heart into a human by the end of the decade. They failed. But because of this action by the NIH, thousands of researchers have obtained grants to vivisect on animals purporting to be looking for an artificial heart that actually works.

It is impossible to know just how many animals have suffered and died in the endless search for an artificial heart but we do know they all did die and that the experiments were failures. The longest an animal has lived after an artificial heart transplant is a calf who lived 268 days in 1981 on the Jarvik 5. Vivisectors are well aware of the fact that experiments on animals cannot be extrapolated to humans because of differences in metabolism, physiology, genetics and biochemistry. In the case of dogs, (the vivisectors’ favorite target for artificial heart experiments) dogs’ coronary arteries are different from humans. They have smaller connections with one another and the left coronary artery dominates while in humans the right artery dominates. In addition, the conduction system has a different pattern of blood supply - humans walk upright and dogs are quadrupeds. Calves, cows, bulls and sheep (the other favorite animals for artificial heart experiments) are all quadrupeds as well. Every single experiment on these animals is worthless – making humans the ultimate “guinea pigs.”

Because the human heart is inextricably connected to our emotions and physiology – it slows when we rest, beats faster when we run or when we are frightened -- a mechanical heart that beats a steady rhythm that does not respond to our body’s innate actions and reactions is doomed to failure. In the year 2019, a biomedical firm, Carmat, was still trying to figure out how to manufacture a heart that adapts blood flow to correspond with a patient’s physical activity.

Another drawback with artificial hearts is that the anti-rejection drugs that the patients are given routinely cause renal failure. And the pain suffered by the patients who have the artificial hearts implanted into them is unimaginable. When William DeVries, in 1981, implanted the Jarvik 7 artificial heart into Barney Clark, Barney lived for 112 days tethered to an external pneumatic compressor. Barney repeatedly asked during that time to be allowed to die before they finally had mercy on him and ended his suffering.

ARTIFICIAL HEART TRANSPLANTS AND VENTRICULAR ASSIST DEVICES FOR TEMPORARY USE UNTIL A HEART TRANSPLANT CAN BE PERFORMED

Artificial hearts and VADs have been used with varying degrees of success as a bridge from heart failure to heart transplant.

In April,1966, Michael DeBakey and Domingo Liotta (both enthusiastic vivisectors) implanted the first clinical LVAD in a patient experiencing cardiogenic shock after heart surgery. The patient developed neurological and pulmonary complications and died after a few days of VAD mechanical support.

In 1969, Domingo Liotta and Denton A. Cooley replaced a dying man’s heart with a mechanical heart at The Texas Heart Institute in Houston as a bridge for a transplant. The man woke up and began to recover. After 64 hours, the pneumatic-powered artificial heart was removed and replaced by a donor heart. Thirty-two hours after transplantation, the man died of acute pulmonary infection, extended to both lungs, caused by fungi, most likely caused by an immunosuppressive drug complication.

In 1990, Brian Williams had a VAD successfully implanted at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and was released from the hospital.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney had a VAD implant in 2010 while waiting for a heart transplant, which he received in 2012.

In spite of the fact that every experiment on animals regarding artificial hearts and VADs having been failures, doctors still went ahead and inserted these machines into the bodies of humans. None of them were the least bit concerned that the animal models failed. They were eager to try their various apparatuses on humans knowing that they had no way of predicting whether the patients would survive or not. Humans became the real “guinea pigs” and surgeons learned about VADs from trial and error on patients.

In July, 2016, the Arizona Daily Star reported that U.S. based SynCardia, the only approved artificial heart maker in the U.S., Canada and Europe filed for bankruptcy in 2016 leaving behind millions of dollars in debt.

Nicholas Cohrs of the Functionals Materials Laboratory at ETH Zurich said in 1917 “We cannot really predict when we could have a final working heart which fulfills all requirements and is ready for implantation. This usually takes years.” Considering the fact that the first artificial heart was transplanted into a dog in 1937 and was a complete failure, it seems Cohrs is a part of that huge conglomeration of vivisectors who believe that receiving grants for torturing animals is a worthy goal in itself.

BUBBLE OXYGENATOR

Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, (1891-1973) foremost cardiac surgeon and “father of open-heart surgery”, developed the bubble oxygenator through learning what happened to patients during surgery when the heart lung machine was used and complications arose. He decided to use the disposable sheet oxygenator so that blood would not become contaminated.

BYPASS SURGERY

Dr. Jean Kunlin, in 1948 in Strasbourg, Germany, performed the first femoral popliteal bypass using saphenous veins in a 54-year-old man. This gave birth to bypass surgery for different parts of the body.

CARDIOPUMONARY RESUSCITATION

Dr. William Kouwenhoven, doctor and vivisector, of Germany, (1886-1975) is known as the “father of CPR.” He was interested in using electricity to resuscitate patients and experimented on dogs and rats. In 1925 Johns Hopkins was offered a grant from Consolidated Edison to develop the effect of electricity on humans. Kouwenhoven was brought in to work with the other researchers but continued to vivisect on animals as well. Since his brutal experiments on animals failed, he was forced to make adjustments in his methods. In spite of the high risk to humans because the animal experiments could not predict what would happen to people, the clinical work continued. In 1957, at Johns Hopkins, CPR was used for the first time in an emergency situation in order to save the life of a patient. Gains could have been brought about much sooner if Kouwenhoven had left vivisection out of the equation.

CROSS-CLAMPING OF AORTA

In 1944, Dr. Clarence Crafoord of Sweden was forced to cross-clamp the aorta of a child when, during surgery, an accidental cut was hemorrhaging. The aorta was cross-clamped above and below the ductus base in order to suture the hole. Even though it was clamped for 27 minutes, the child came through the surgery unscathed. Later that year, Dr. Crafoord did surgery on an 11-year-old-boy and cross-clamped his aorta for two hours. None of his fellow surgeons had dared to cross-clamp an aorta because experiments on dogs had resulted in damage to their hind legs.

ELECTROCARDIOGRAM

The studies that led to the invention of the electrocardiogram took decades, and the contributions of many doctors, too numerous to mention here, had a part in its discovery. Because human heart beats are exclusive to humans, animal experiments would have been completely worthless.

In 1992, R.J. Cohen and B. He describe a new noninvasive approach to accurately map cardiac electrical activity by using the surface Laplacian map of the body surface electrical potentials. He B, Cohen RJ. Body surface Laplacian ECG mapping. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 1992;39(11):1179-91

In 1999, researchers from Texas show that 12-lead ECGs transmitted via wireless technology to hand-held computers is feasible and can be interpreted reliably by cardiologists. Pettis KS, Savona MR, Leibrandt PN et al. Evaluation of the efficacy of hand-held computer screens for cardiologists' interpretations of 12-lead electrocardiograms. Am Heart J. 1999 Oct;138(4 Pt 1):765-70

In 2005 Danish cardiologists reported the successful reduction in the time between onset of chest pain and primary angioplasty when the ECG of patients is transmitted wirelessly from ambulance to the cardiologist's hand-held PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). The clinician can make an immediate decision to redirect patients to the catheter lab saving time in transfers between hospital departments. Clemmensen P., Sejersten M., Sillesen M. et al. Diversion of ST- elevation myocardial infarction patients for primary angioplasty based on wireless prehospital 12-lead electrocardiographic transmission directly to the cardiologist's handheld computer: a progress report. J Electrocardiol. 2005 Oct;38(4 Suppl):194-8

FLOATING CARDIAC CATHETER

Dr. Werner Forssman, 1904-1979, German, and member of the Nazi Party, first experimented with cardiac catheterization by cutting his own forearm and inserting a urinary catheter into this antecubital vein and advanced it into his right ventricular cavity. His “unprofessional” methods shocked the medical community and he was forced to switch from cardiology to urology. His technique was completed by other doctors through clinical trials with human patients. He was imprisoned as a POW in WWII and continued his work after his release and won the Nobel Prize for his work.

HEART TRANSPLANTS

Heart transplants are considered when all other treatments have failed. Since after the transplant the immune system will immediately attack the new heart, patients must be given anti-rejection drugs. These drugs can cause kidney failure, high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, weight gain and more, so various kinds of drugs must be tried until doctors find the most effective one for that particular patient.

All the practice surgery on animals could not possibly predict what the outcome of a heart transplant on a human being will be for all the reasons described in the above paragraph. Furthermore, each patient is different and requires different medication if he or she is to have a chance to survive. That has not stopped vivisectors from continuing to inflict heart surgery on dogs and other animals in order to obtain grants from taxpayers through the NIH.

Experiments on dogs to develop transplant techniques were disastrous. Hundreds of dogs were used and yet the first human patients died because of complications which arose when the technique was applied to the first human patients. – Dr. Albert Iben – Cardiac Surgeon – Stanford University

By 1980, 65% of patients survived more than a year as a result of increased skill gained through clinical experience. – Lancet, March 29, 1980

HYPOTHERMIA (cooling the body before surgery)

In 1757 direct observation of persons exposed to cold for long periods showed that they could survive and was written about by the Swedish Academy of Sciences. A drunken Swede was nearly buried alive but survived. In 1798, Dr. James Currie had human volunteers take prolonged baths in cold water. He discovered that their heartrate was reduced. This information is now used to reduce the heartrate in patients before surgery.

MITRAL STENOSIS (defective heart valve)

Dr. Henry S. Souttar, London Hospital, 1925, put his forefinger through the heart’s mitral valve and widened it. In 1949 Dr. Dwight E. Harking decided to use that same technique, which is called finger fracture angioplasty.

PACEMAKER

The pacemaker was invented by the Canadian John Hopps in 1950. He was an electrical engineer who was doing research on hypothermia. Unlike some other inventions, the development and history of the pacemaker is clearly understood. Hopps was an engineer at Manitoba University in 1941 when he went to the National Research Council. He was working with radio frequencies and how it can be used to bring up body temperature. It was then he learned that a heart that stops due to cooling can be restarted. The way to do it was with mechanical or electrical methods. This discovery helped him conceive of the pacemaker. His creation in 1950 though, could not be fitted in the body; it was the external type.

Even before Hopps’ invention, there were other researchers who had done some experiments. A study of the history of the pacemaker suggests J. A. McWilliams was the first. In 1889 he wrote a report in the British Medical Journal of his experiments. McWilliams said applying electrical impulses on the heart led to ventricular contraction. His experiment showed heart beats 70 per minute could be attained by these impulses.

This was followed in 1926 by the findings of Dr. Mark Lidwell of Sydney. He invented an apparatus that strongly resembled the pacemaker. In 1932 the American physiologist Albert Hyman devised an instrument which he called the artificial pacemaker. It was the first time the term had been used. However, he never continued with his experiments.

The history of the pacemaker witnessed more inventions and improvements in the 1960s and 1970s. Wilson Greatbatch improved on the Swedish pacemakers when he utilized a mercury battery. In 1962, transvenous pacing was used with the pacemaker for the first time. It took place in the U.S. and was also done in France and Sweden. The 1970s saw the emergence of lithium iodize cells. These replaced the mercury batteries and were longer lasting. The casing of the pacemaker also improved in the 1970s as titanium was used.

Today the device has become an invaluable tool for heart patients and doctors. Judging by the history of the pacemaker, one can expect more improvements and technological aids to be implemented. – From Who Invented It

POSITIVE PRESSURE VENTILATION (blowing air into the lungs during surgery)

Dr. Ferdinand Sauerbruch (1975-1951) a German surgeon who took part in research on prisoners in concentration camps during World War II, created positive pressure ventilation to keep the lungs from collapsing during surgery but withdrew the technique when it proved harmful to animals. In 1891, American surgeon George Fell decided to use it anyway and used it successfully on humans.

VASCULAR ANASTOMOSIS

In 1935, Dr. Claude S. Beck pioneered the surgical technique vascular anastomosis to increase the blood supply to the heart muscles when blood became blocked in the coronary arteries. Beck, whose success was based on clinical observations, said although he had conducted thousands of animal experiments they were useless, that his only useful knowledge came from clinical studies.

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE MEDICATIONS

DIGITALIS

William Withering of Great Britain (1741-1799) was a botanist, geologist, chemist and physician. He noticed a person with dropsy (swelling from congestive heart failure) improve remarkably after taking a traditional herbal remedy. Withering became famous for recognizing that the active ingredient in the mixture came from the foxglove plant (digitalis purpurea). Although how Withering first discovered this herbal remedy has become blurred by time, it is likely that he first learned of the use of digitalis in treating "dropsy" (edema) from reading the recipes of an old woman in Shropshire who used the plant as part of polyherbal formulation containing over 20 different ingredients to successfully treat this condition. Withering deduced that digitalis was the active ingredient in the formulation, and over the next nine years he carefully tried out different preparations of various parts of the plant (collected in different seasons) documenting 156 cases where he had employed digitalis, and describing the effects and the best - and safest - way of using it. One thing is certain, animals had no part in the discovery of digitalis.

In the old days we were taught, as the result purely of animal experiments, that digitalis raised the blood-pressure. We now know that this is utter nonsense. Indeed, it is a remedy of very great value in certain cases when the blood pressure if found to be abnormally high. – James Burnet, M.A., LLB, M.D., F.R.C.P.E.

Animal experimenters found, as a result of experimentation on animals that digitalis raised the blood-pressure, and, as a consequence, it was not used for some years on human beings. The fact that the blood-pressure is raised by digitalis was found clinically to be incorrect in the case of human beings, and it is now freely used in cases in which the laboratory experiments warned us that it would be dangerous. – Andrew S. McNeil, L.R.C.P.S.

INSULIN FOR DIABETES

Regarding vivisectors Frederick Banting and Charles Best who were credited with the discovery of insulin for diabetes by experimenting on dogs, doctors and scientists have made their opinions clear.

…a wrongly conceived, wrongly conducted, and wrongly interpreted series of experiments. – Dr. F. Roberts – British Medical Journal

The scientists Banting and Best were incorrectly credited with the discovery of insulin. – Dr. M. Barron

There is no laboratory method of inducing diabetes…which is exactly comparable to the clinical condition. At best we can get only crude approximation. The dangers of arguing from one species to another, or even from one strain to another of the same species are certainly not to be neglected. – Dr. F.G. Yung, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of London

Arguments based on the insulin requirements of the depancreatised dog and cat applied to human diabetes are quantitatively dangerous. – Dr. F.G. Young, D.Sc., PhD, F.R,S.

The causes of diabetes mellitus remain unknown in both man and animals. In spite of certain species similarities, there are a number of important differences – differences in clinical manifestation, in autological factors and in the liability to certain long-term complications of the disease. – Dr. Harry Keen, BSc, M.R.C.P.

The means of separating from the pancreas the active principle, which Professor Schafer, a renowned physiologist had already in 1915 designated insulin, was repeated by Banting who demonstrated it on a medical colleague who suffered from the disease. However, the numerous experiments made by Banting on thousands of dogs proved nothing of value to human medicine, since, as is scientifically recognized, the dogs were not suffering from diabetes…The discovery isolation and application of insulin was a clinical one. – M. Beddow Bayly, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.

Dr. Banting, Canada’s medical hero, who is popularly and erroneously credited with the discovery of insulin by extirpating the pancreases of thousands of dogs, did not cause diabetes, but stress. – J.A. Pratt – Journal of the History of Medicine – 1954

Side effects of insulin treatment include an unusually high incidence of heart attacks, stroke, kidney failure and gangrene. This, some medical men believe, is due to the foreign nature of animal insulin. – A.L. Notkins - Scientific American - 1979

PENICILLIN

Vivisection is often given credit for the discovery of penicillin. The facts are much more complicated.

In 1922, Scottish-born Dr. Alexander Fleming, in London, infected with a cold, left a petri dish containing his own mucus uncovered and went away for two weeks. When he came back, he discovered a substance in the mucus that inhibited bacterial growth and named it lysozyme. He discovered that lysozyme was only effective in killing a small number of harmful bacteria and lost interest in it. But it piqued his interest in molds and in 1928, Fleming left another uncovered petri dish near a window and again observed that bacteria near the mold were dying. He isolated the mold and identified it as a member of the Penicillium genus. He found it to be effective against Gram-positive pathogens which can cause scarlet fever, pneumonia, diphtheria and more. He published a paper on his discovery that was largely ignored.

He tested his serum on mice and rabbits and his rabbit experiments were a complete failure. Because of this, he assumed that the serum wouldn’t work in humans and put his discovery on a shelf except to use it occasionally on topical infections but never on people with systemic infections.

In 1940, three scientists, Dr. Howard Florey, Dr. Ernst Chain and Dr. Norman Heatley became interested in Fleming’s paper on penicillin and tested it on 50 mice. Half the mice died and the half who had been injected with penicillin lived. At this point, the three vivisectors decided they had enough information to give the drug to humans. In September,1940, an Oxford police constable who was near death from a scratch that had become infected with streptococci and staphylococci, which had spread throughout his body, became the first person that Florey and Chain injected with the drug. After five days of injections the policeman died but Florey and Chain blamed it on not having enough of the drug to inject into him. They proceeded to come up with ways to mass produce the drug, more testing on humans went forward to great success and penicillin went on to save many lives of soldiers in World War I.

All four of the men involved in developing penicillin were vivisectors and believed that animal tests must procede human testing. Fleming believed because the tests in rabbits failed that penicillin would not work in humans and over a decade passed before the drug was given to humans because Fleming refused to treat people with systemic infections with his drug. The other three men believed that because their test on mice was successful, they should try it in people. They ignored the rabbit tests and if they had tried the drug on other animals like hamsters and guinea pigs the animals would have died. Sadly, and ironically, Florey killed his own cat with penicillin. But like all vivisectors past and present, finding an animal that will not be killed by whatever drug they are hoping to eventually try on humans is their goal and so they pick and choose which animal tests they will believe.

If Fleming had continued to test in petri dishes to great success, bypassed fraudulent animal testing and proceeded to carefully administer the drug to humans whose lives were already severely threatened by massive infections, penicillin could have been in use in the late 20s or early 30s. Many lives would have been saved. But because of his belief in vivisection they died. Nevertheless, these four men were given high honors for creating a very useful drug, and all the animals they needlessly tortured are long forgotten.

PRACTICE SURGERY

I have never known a single good surgeon who has learned anything from vivisection. – Dr. Abel Desjardins, President of the Society of Surgeons of Paris and Professor of Surgery

Like every member of my profession, I was brought up in the belief that almost every important fact in physiology had been obtained by vivisection and that many of our most valued means of saving life and diminishing suffering had resulted from experiments on the lower animals. I now know that nothing of the sort is true concerning the art of surgery: and not only do I not believe that vivisection has helped the surgeon one bit, but I know that it has often led him astray. - Professor Lawson Tait, M.C. 1899, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, F.R.C.S., Edinburgh and England

I have seen surgeons who carried out experiments on some organs from dogs in the belief that these were identical with those of humans, and they did not know they were cutting into a quite different organ, even into a lymphatic gland instead of the thyroid gland. Nobody has become a surgeon because of having operated on animals. He has only learnt wrongly through animals. I have been able to see this over my many decades as a surgeon, also as a Director of Hospitals, I have carried out tens of thousands of operations on people without ever performing them first on an animal. – Professor Sr Salvatore Rocca Rossetti, Surgeon and Professor of Urology at the University of Turin, Italy

The gastro-intestinal tract in man is unfortunately very different from that of animals and the results of a new operation for gastric disease cannot be predicted from operations on dogs. – Lancet editorial May, 1951

Many years ago I carried out on the Continent sundry operations upon the intestines of dogs, but such are the differences between the human and the canine bowel, that when I came to operate on man I found I was much hampered by my new experience, that I had everything to unlearn and that my experiments had done little but leave me unfit to deal with the human intestine. – Sir Frederick Treves, Director of London Hospital, Surgeon to the Royal Family and world-renowned authority on abdominal surgery

The claim, frequently heard that animal experimentation is vital for the training of surgeons and that practice on living animals is necessary to gain manual and operating skills cannot be left unchallenged. A surgeon acquires his basic knowledge by observing and then assisting his teacher. In time, according to his experience, ability and manual dexterity he participates in supervised operating duties, until the surgeon responsible for his training decides as to when he can start operating on his own. Specialized knowledge of microsurgery is gained in the same way, just as working at the surgical microscope does not call for operating on animals… Vivisection is barbaric, useless, and a hindrance to scientific progress. I learned how to operate from other surgeons. It’s the only way, and every good surgeon know that – Dr. Werner Hartinger, M.D., Germany, surgeon with specialization in traumatic surgery

VENTILATION OF OPEN THORAX

Doctors Ivan Magill and E.S. Rowbotham, working with World War I casualties at Sir Harold Gillie’s plastic surgery hospital in Sidcup, Great Britain, developed the technique of delivering anesthetic gas through a single endotracheal tube under positive pressure controlled by the patient’s breathing. They performed no animal experiments.

QUOTES BY MONEIM A. FADALI, MD – UCLA

“The study of humans is the only sure way to unveil the mysteries of humankind to find cures for human ailments and to prevent suffering. Strict ethical standards, compassion and ‘reverence for life’ must guide every step on the road.”

“Animal models differ from their human counterparts. Conclusions drawn from animal research when applied to human disease are likely to delay progress and mislead and harm the patient.”

“Animal experimentation inevitably leads to human experimentation.”

The following have been helpful in preparing this list: PBS; All-Creatures.org; Dr. Ray Greek; Singapore Medical Journal; Wordpress.com; Wikipedia; Classics in Thoracic Surgery; L.A. Times; N.Y. Times; National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; Tuscon.com; The American Scientific Affiliation; Lillehei Heart Institute; Engineering and Technology Wiki; Slaughter of the Innocent; International Congress of Doctors Against Vivisection.