BULLETIN N°46 - June 2005
Relais des associations
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So that here and now cruelty to animals
is no longer tolerated
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Sur Internet.
www.stop-abus-animal.com
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Message from the British Anti-Vivisection Association
 
Received : 15 April 2005
  http://www.bava.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
   
   
  The following article is a shortened version of one which appeared in a 1988 issue of the newsletter of the US anti-vivisection organisation SUPRESS (Students United Protesting Research on Sentient Subjects). It should be a vital piece of reading for ALL genuine anti-vivisectionists who profess to wanting the end of animal experimentation. Although it will make uncomfortable reading for some, the BAVA believes that it is high time this matter was raised once more within the animal rights movement, and acted upon, if we truly want to see the end of vivisection. We only ask that everyone reads it through, carefully, contemplating the ideas as presented.
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At the time the article caused some controversy and heated debate in the UK where the article circulated amongst animal rights people, resulting in something of a division being created between those who believed that the only way to achieve abolition of vivisection was by stressing, above all else, the counter-productiveness of animal experiments in regards to human health (people sometimes referred to as "scientific anti-vivisectionists"), and those who believed that the moral arguments alone, or virtually alone, would end it ("animal rightists").
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The scientific AVs closely aligned with the writings of Hans Ruesch, and is naturally the camp in which the BAVA has its foundation. This split, it could be argued, has never been totally healed. However, anyone attending an anti-vivisection demo today, or looking at an AV website, book or leaflet, will see clearly that those "scientific" AV campaigners who so forcibly spoke out some twenty years ago (and more!) have clearly been vindicated.
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Most AVs today will, hopefully, realise the importance of using that vast arsenal at our disposal - the scientific and medical arguments against vivisection - and which will one day, in conjunction with the moral arguments, see vivisection consigned to the history books.
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However, it is the belief of the BAVA that these arguments are still not being forcibly brought home to the public to the degree in which they should. AVs, of any persuasion, are still largely labeled "animal rightists" , in no small part due to the media for whom this term, used in a derogatory way, suits the purposes of their agenda, which is to form in the mind of the public the idea that AVs/animal rightists, are animal-obsessed, violent extremists who are happy to put the lives of animals before people. By still largely ignoring the human interest angle, we continue to allow this idea to take hold in the mind of the public, whom it must be said should, if they have any concern at all for their own self-interest - even if only financial - be marching shoulder to shoulder with us in our demand for an end to vivisection. That they aren't is for a matter of each of us to ponder on.
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Because of this current climate, which despite the slow progress is looking much better than nearly twenty years ago when Burgos wrote this article, and far-sighted AVs were desperately trying to get people to take notice of Ruesch's books, the BAVA believes that the time is right for the resurfacing and distribution of this article. It will no doubt once again upset some, but which will hopefully add to the progress so far made in the advancement of the scientific anti-vivisectionism which will one day end the atrocity of vivisection.
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We ask that all concerned people make copies of this article, and to circulate amongst friends, family and fellow campaigners.
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ANIMAL RIGHTS: THE SUICIDE OF A MOVEMENT
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  There are good and bad news to report from the anti-vivisectionist front. Let me begin with the bad news: the movement that has allegedly been fighting vivisection is dead. It is dead because it has committed collective suicide. The pulling of the trigger began when the "leaders" of the movement decided to tackle the biomedical empire and its powerful allies with the idiotic slogan of "animal rights". The destruction of the movement continued when the "animal rights" movement stubbornly refused to confront the animal researchers with medical and scientific facts, the only weapons which can destroy once and for all the medical and scientific facts the vivisectors have been perpetuating for decades without any meaningful opposition.
   
  It should be pointed out, of course, that by adopting the name of "animal rights" and by placing the issue of vivisection under its all-encompassing umbrella, the movement prevented itself from ever being able to use medical and scientific arguments with any degree of credibility.
   
  But the "animal rights" people do much worse than refusing to use the medical and scientific facts. They actually agree with the vivisectors that at least some animal research has been beneficial to humankind. Their opposition is just on moral and philosophical grounds which, of course, have nothing to do with the issue of vivisection. This was made abundantly clear one more time in Dr Robert White's devastating article which appeared in Reader's Digest in March 1988.
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The "animal rights" people spend most of their conveying two messages not only to their members and supporters, but also to the general public. The direct message is that animal research and testing work - at least to some extent - a position rabidly defended by the overwhelming majority of the "animal rights" organizations. (Even Kim Bartlett, Editor of The Animals' Agenda, stated in a letter dated September 23, 1988: "Certainly, animal experimentation is bad science, and it has undoubtedly retarded biomedical progress. But that is not the same as saying that nothing was ever learned from it. The ANIMALS' AGENDA has not taken an official position on the 'scientific fraud' argument; our position is ethical.")
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The indirect message is even more suicidal: "animal rights" people will risk the health of human beings in order to "liberate" animals. By failing to destroy the medical and scientific myths which make the existence of vivisection possible, and by insisting further on the "liberation" of the very animals who are perceived by the public as the only hope to finding cures, "animal rights activists" become automatically anti-human since they are perceived as wanting to liberate animals at the expense of human health.
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It should be painfully evident to anyone that the suicidal slogan of "animal rights" has been a godsend for the vivisectors and the beholden media whose only job consists of pitting tiny sick babies against dirty rats and an occasional dog or cat: The constant bombardment of the public with the notions of medical "advances" and "breakthroughs" due to animal experimentation has accomplished two very important goals: besides making the "animal rights" people look like a bunch of anti-human fools, it has also managed to strengthen the vivisectors' main cliches by repeating all the medical and scientific lies that nobody in the "animal rights" movement is able or willing to destroy. The "animal rights" people seem to suffer from an incurable case of masochism. Despite having been soundly defeated countless times by allowing the researchers to play the oldest and most puerile tricks in the book over and over again, the "animal rights" leaders go back for more and more as if they wanted to make sure that the possibilities of abolishing vivisection are completely and permanently destroyed.
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The attitude on the part of the largest and wealthiest organizations to stick to morality, ethics, and philosophy, and to denounce those who seek to expose the mind-boggling scientific fraud that is part and parcel of all experimental research with life, can only be attributed to the incredible degree of infiltration to which most of the "animal rights" and self-proclaimed anti-vivisection organizations have been subjected.
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  While millions of dollars sit idle in the coffers of these organizations, their philosophers and "ex-vivisectors" criss-cross the country urging people not to ever use the medical and scientific arguments which, as a famous "ex-vivisector" put it, "you cannot win".
   
  The good news is that you do not have to commit suicide. You can choose to join the real anti-vivisectionist movement and expose the corrupt ways of those who seek to keep the efforts of millions of well-meaning people paralyzed. We must get rid of the slogan "animal rights", force the infiltrators out from their positions of leadership and use the millions of dollars to expose the massive damage to human health as a result of vivisection. We must also be willing to inform ourselves so we can understand and accept the most basic medical and scientific realities, which prove that all experimental research using life is a medical and scientific fraud.
   
If people in the movement decide not to make waves and go along with the present party line, we will all be forced to look at the putrid face of vivisection until the end of time.
   
   
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Ladies! Gentlemen!
Let Us Wake Up ! We Have Been Sleeping Too Long !
"Never believe that a few caring people can't change
the world.
For indeed, that's all who ever have."
Margaret Mead
 
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