Besides saying that the programmes were biased etc, you give no examples at all of what you are talking about.

The list below is taken from the previously posted link  http://www.liberation-now.org/BBC/OUR%20LIVES%20-%20THEIR%20LIES.pdf

What the BBC deliberately and continuously failed to reveal during
these programs:
• Any objective FACT into the peaceful protesters’ viewpoint, moral
purpose or context – essential principles if any analysis is to be impartial.
• Any reference to the FACT the vast majority of campaigners have
distanced themselves from the alleged grave desecration.
• Any reference to the FACT many protesters refuse to accept that it
ever took place, due to a catalogue of inconsistencies reported in the
‘crime’ itself.
• Any reference to the FACT that it has never been proven it had
anything to do with animal rights protesters in the first place.
• Any reference to the FACT that all those arrested for the supposed
desecration have now been released without charge and are pursuing
legitimate compensation claims.
• Any details about the FACT countless guinea pigs are destroyed by the
Newchurch family with their bare hands because they are deemed an
‘unprofitable product’.
• Any details about the FACT that thousands more guinea pigs have died
through their enforced confinement, malnutrition and neurosis in the
Newchurch families’ sheds.
• Any reference to the FACT that not a single Newchurch worker or
family member has been hurt by anyone in over 6 years of protests.
• Any details about the FACT peaceful protesters have been repeatedly
attacked and needed hospital treatment for broken bones, facial
injuries and serious head wounds.
• Any details about the FACT members of the Newchurch families’ own
security firm were charged with violent offences for attacking and
hospitalising protesters.
• Any details to the FACT those who work for the family have been
abusive and threatening to protestors, many of whom are pensioners.
• Any details about the FACT protesters have received threatening phone
calls, abusive letters and had a car and front door paint stripped.
• Any details about the FACT the vast majority of these guinea pigs are
killed to test commercial products, to test military weapons and
exported abroad to be killed in cosmetic tests for ‘make up’ – a practice
already operating under the auspices of an involuntary ban in the UK because of
its overtly unethical nature.
• Any details about the FACT that numerous academics, doctors and
scientists now oppose animal experiments on medical and moral grounds.
• Any details about the FACT that an ever-growing number of hospital
patients are dying and have died because of taking animal tested drugs.

Here we go, more whining by the animal rights terrorists about how how hard done by they are. What's the matter guys, are you bored because you have no graves to dig up today?

Humpty always puts his one brain cell in gear when AR posts appear on IMC.
How long did that post take you to compose Humpty? 2 hrs? 3hrs? 4hrs?

"• Any details about the FACT that an ever-growing number of hospital
patients are dying and have died because of taking animal tested drugs. "

err ... which drugs are these?

The BBC don't give a flying f*ck for you and your protest. As long as you are forced to pay for them via the poll tax style licence fee they don't need to listen to anyone. A guaranteed income backed up with criminal penalties for non-payers means they can say and do what they like. The BBC staff will look down at your protests in London and Manchester and laugh, knowing that you are wasting your time. They'll get their paypackets as usual, and some of that money will be out of the protesters pockets.

The Ecologist May 10th 2005 Source:
 http://www.theecologist.org/current_issue/animal_testing.htm

MPs, medical professionals and scientists unite in demanding a thorough
evaluation of the utility of vivisection

by Kathy Archibald


Most of us know that cancer, heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death in the West. But many people would be surprised by the next biggest killer: side effects of prescription medicines. Adverse drug reactions kill more than 10,000 people a year in the UK (and more than 100,000 in the US), costing the NHS alone £466m per year.

The pharmaceutical establishment constantly reassures us that all drugs are tested for safety and efficacy on animals before they can be administered to humans. When challenged about the ethics of vivisection, their defence typically goes like this: ‘Which do you think is more important: your child’s life or a rat’s?’ Given this choice most people would thankfully sacrifice the rat.

But what if you were told that the current animal testing procedures are seriously flawed? Consider the following evidence: Arthritis drug Vioxx, withdrawn from the global market in September 2004, appeared to be safe and even beneficial to the heart in animals, but caused as many as 140,000 heart attacks and strokes in the US alone. The associate safety director of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) described it as the ‘single greatest drug-safety catastrophe in the history of the world’.

Many studies published in the scientific literature comparing drug side effects in humans and animals have found animal tests to be less predictive than tossing a coin. One review of human-animal correlation in drugs that had been withdrawn because of adverse reactions found that animal tests predicted the human side effects only six out of 114 times.

Hundreds of drugs to treat strokes (eg, Cerestat, MaxiPost, Zendra, Lotrafiban, gavestinel, nimodipine, clomethiazole) have been found safe and effective in animal studies and then injured or killed patients in clinical trials.

Hormone-replacement therapy (HRT), prescribed to many millions of women because it lowered monkeys’ risk of heart disease and stroke, increases women’s risks of these conditions significantly. The chairman of the German Commission on the Safety of Medicines described HRT as ‘the new thalidomide’. In August 2003 The Lancet estimated that HRT had caused 20,000 cases of breast cancer over the past decade in Britain, in addition to many thousands of heart attacks and strokes. Dr Richard Klausner, former director of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI), lamented: ‘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.’ The NCI also believes we have lost cures for cancer because they were ineffective in mice.

Cigarette smoke, asbestos, arsenic, benzene, alcohol and glass fibres are all safe to ingest, according to animal studies. Of 22 drugs shown to have been therapeutic in spinal cord injury in animals, not one is effective in humans.

Of 20 compounds known not to cause cancer in humans, 19 do cause cancer in rodents.

Dr Albert Sabin, the inventor of the polio vaccine, swore under oath that the vaccine ‘was long delayed by the erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading experimental models of [it] in monkeys’.

Penicillin, the world’s first antibiotic, was delayed for more than 10 years by misleading results from experiments in rabbits, and would have been shelved forever had it been tested on guinea pigs, which it kills. Sir Alexander Fleming himself said: ‘How fortunate we didn’t have these animal tests in the 1940s, for penicillin would probably never have been granted a licence, and possibly the whole field of antibiotics might never have been realised.’

Thalidomide, the infamous cause of birth defects in more than 10,000 children in the early 1960s, induces birth defects in very few species. Dr James Schardein, the doyen of birth defect studies, says: ‘In approximately 10 strains of rats, 15 strains of mice, 11 breeds of rabbits, two breeds of dogs, three strains of hamsters, eight species of primates, and in other such varied species as cats, armadillos, guinea pigs, swine and ferrets in which thalidomide has been tested, teratogenic effects have been induced only occasionally.’ Ironically, if thalidomide, the drug whose side effects made animal testing obligatory, were assessed exclusively on its results in such tests it would still be passed today.

Even the Handbook of Laboratory Animal Science admits that ‘uncritical reliance on the results of animal tests can be dangerously misleading and has cost the health and lives of tens of thousands of humans’. So why use animals to test new drugs?

Animal testing became legally enshrined in response to the thalidomide tragedy. The UK Medicines Act 1968 followed the US Kefauver-Harris Act, which was implemented in 1961 in the midst of the thalidomide furore to ensure that the FDA received proof of safety and efficacy for all new drugs. The intention was good but the reliance placed on animal tests to ensure safety was tragically ill-informed.

It has been known among scientists and the pharmaceutical industry for decades that animal testing is scientifically unreliable. As long ago as September 1962 The Lancet commented: ‘We must face the fact that the most careful tests of a new drug’s effects on animals may tell us little of its effect in humans.’ In 1964 Dr J Gallagher, the medical director of Lederle Laboratories, admitted: ‘Animal studies are done for legal reasons and not for scientific reasons.’

So, pharmaceutical companies conduct animal tests simply to satisfy government regulators. Crucially, animal data also provide liability protection when drugs kill or injure people. Industry can point to the rigorous animal tests they have performed and claim that they have done their best to ensure against tragedies occurring, thus minimising any damages awarded against them.

From the perspective of satisfying the regulators, pragmatic selection of species will demonstrate whatever is required of a drug, whether it is favourable safety or efficacy. And companies are not required to submit all their animal data, but only that from any two species (one rodent and one higher mammal). Dr Irwin Bross, former director of the world’s largest cancer research institute, the Sloan-Kettering, observed: ‘Whenever government agencies or polluting corporations want to cover up an environmental hazard, they can always find an animal study to “prove” their claim. They can even do a new animal study which will come out the way they want by choosing the “right” animal model system.’

Placing massive emphasis on animal-safety data has also allowed pharmaceutical companies to avoid the expense of conducting clinical trials as extensively as they should. Since the 1950s doctors have been saying that clinical trials should involve more people, last for a longer period of time and use representatives of a broader swathe of society than the young, white males of standard practice. Women are generally not utilised in case they might be pregnant: the manufacturer would be held liable for any unanticipated birth defects. Very often trials do not even include representatives of the patient population the drug is designed to treat. This absurd situation clearly needs to be addressed.

There is no getting away from the fact that people have to be the ultimate guinea pigs for testing new treatments. Clearly, the health and safety of research volunteers and patients should be paramount and the best safeguards should be in place to protect them. Testing drugs safely on people New drugs go through three basic testing phases: in vitro (test-tube) and in silico (computer) modelling; animal testing; and, finally, human trials.

Before a drug is tested in humans, there should be persuasive evidence that it is safe and effective. No method, neither animal, human nor test-tube, can predict the reactions of every patient with 100 per cent accuracy. Reactions differ between sexes, ages, ethnic groups, even between family members. We are all different, but not as different from each other as we are from animals, with which the differences are so great that they render extrapolation hazardous. Non-animal methods are not completely fail-safe, but do offer more security.

There are excellent in silico and in vitro testing methods available today. Many companies specialise in virtual screening of drugs for potentially toxic effects. A wide range of predictive software is available, including complete clinical trial simulations. Other companies focus on safety and efficacy assessments in human tissues. A 10-year international study proved that human cell culture tests are more accurate and yield more useful information about toxic mechanisms than traditional animal tests.

In place of animal-based pre-clinical studies, subsequent clinical trial patients and volunteers would be better protected by the adoption of preliminary microdosing studies (or ‘phase 0’ clinical trials). Microdose studies involve the administration of ultra-small (and safe) doses of the test drug to volunteers monitored by scanners. Human microdosing, based on the concept that the best model for man is man, helps in selecting the best drug candidates before advancing into full development, thereby reducing the chances of failure in later, more risky and more expensive phases.

During clinical trials, relevant pharmacological measurements should be made, which would give early warning of potential problems. It is true that some rare side effects will only be detected when drugs are prescribed to large numbers of people. This is why post-marketing drug surveillance is so important and should be strengthened, in order to pick up these effects as quickly as possible. Reports of adverse reactions to drugs are currently soaring in the US, where a record 422,500 adverse events were reported to the FDA in 2004. The FDA cautions that the actual number is likely to be between 10 and 100 times greater because of under-reporting.

What you can do

An independent survey of 500 GPs in August 2004 found that 82 per cent of doctors are ‘concerned that animal data can be misleading when applied to humans’, and that 83 per cent would ‘support an independent scientific evaluation of the clinical relevance of animal experimentation’.

In 2002 the toxicology working group of the Select Committee on Animals in Scientific Procedures concluded that ‘the effectiveness and reliability of animal tests is unproven’ and that ‘the formulaic use of two species in safety testing is not a scientifically justifiable practice, but rather an acknowledgement of the problem of species differences in extrapolating the results of animal tests to predict effects in humans’. It recommended that ‘the reliability and relevance of all existing animal tests should be reviewed as a matter of urgency’.

The anti-vivisection alliance Europeans for Medical Progress is now calling for an independent and transparent scientific evaluation of the use of animals in drug-safety testing and medical research. Many MPs supported this call in an early day motion tabled in December (early day motion 385), which says: ‘This house expresses its concerns regarding the safeguarding of public health through data obtained from laboratory animals, particularly in light of large numbers of serious and fatal adverse drug reactions that were not predicted by animal studies… [It] is surprised that the government has not commissioned or evaluated any formal research on the efficacy of animal experiments, and has no plans to do so; and, in common with 83 per cent of general practitioners in a recent survey, [it] calls upon the government to facilitate an independent and transparent scientific evaluation of the use of animals as surrogate humans in drug-safety testing and medical research.’

Please urge your MP to sign this important motion if they have not already done so. Given that parliament is in recess until the election, please get assurances from them that they will sign the early day motion immediately on returning to Parliament after the election. To monitor whether they have or not, and to follow the motion’s progress, type ‘animal testing of drugs’ into the search engine here or via www.cureddisease.net . Please add your own support at www.curedisease.net/edmform.shtml .

Significant parliamentary support for this motion would encourage a debate on the matter in the House of Commons. The next stage would be to instigate the historic evaluation called for in the motion, which the government is reluctant to do but a large number of signatories to the motion would make very hard to avoid.

The evaluation should be conducted by a panel of independent scientists without vested interests in the animal model. They should review the paradigm of the animal model as it is currently used in biomedical research and drug testing. For the first time, the medical utility of animal tests would be assessed entirely on their scientific merits, without the distraction of whether or not they are ethically justifiable.

The government should fund this evaluation and grant the panel privileged access to company information on all drug-testing data, both human and animal: not just the cherry-picked submissions to the regulators. For the sake of future consumers of medicines, or of medical research, this rigorous and impartial evaluation is crucially important: the simple fact is people’s lives are at stake.

Substantial evidence exists that animal tests are inadequate for the task they are supposed to perform, but, incredibly, this has never been systematically investigated. The only responsible course of action is to evaluate animal testing scientifically, in an independent and transparent manner.

by Kathy Archibald science director of Europeans for Medical Progress

....Don't be so harsh on Humpty dumpty, word on the street is he's had a nasty bash on the head.

He'll probably blame it on the AR "terrorists", and the BBC will devote a whole programme to it. I doubt they'll interview any of the "terrorists" though. They've already proved you only need one side of the arguement to produce propoganda.

My favourite part of the programme was having shown under-cover footage containing dead-animals, they asked the owner about it and he said "still born blah blah blah" and that was fine. Now if I was trying to be taken seriously as a reporter I may have asked for veterinary advice on whether the dead animals could be excused as still-born. But if I was just producing a piece of propoanda I probably wouldn't have bothered.

For the record Humpty, I don't support:

The digging up of a grave under any circumstances
Threats against a cleaner, golf club or local pub,
Ignoring non-violent protestors, due to a minority (which you won't believe, but a large majority of AR supporters are non-violent).
Abuse of animals
Abuse of humans

If you assume all AR supporters as terrorists, then you must also assume

All police are corrupt
All soldiers abuse POW's
All whites are racist
All muslims are fanatics
blah
blah
blah
blah

You'd have to be fairly ignorant to conclude that all the above statements are true. And you'd have to believe everything you read\hear in the media to believe that all AR supporters are terrorists.

Humpty Dumpty also supported the deaths of millions of non-humans incarcerated and tortured to death in evil vivisection laboratories to 'produce' drugs that went on to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of women, men and children.

Shame on him!

What a fool was he.

There's no one to catch you here Humpty. You're on your own.

No soft matress for you to fall on, just hard, concrete reality and the bitter truth of what you are supporting.

I'm fully aware that the majority of animal rights campaigners don't commit crimes such as death threats, grave desecrations, ect. But however the campaigners conduct themselves, they're all working towards the same objective - the ending of a research practice that has saves countless human lives. If the most vile acts of a minority of campaigners can be focused on in the media, then so much the better as it will discourage a lot of sane people from taking up the cause.

"Humpty Dumpty also supported the deaths of millions of non-humans incarcerated and tortured to death in evil vivisection laboratories to 'produce' drugs that went on to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of women, men and children"

I must say that the drugs companies have clearly done well keeping that quiet from hundreds of thousands of doctors, pathologists, and healthcare professionals throughout the world, eh? Or are they in on the plot too?

The usggestion that animal based testing has produced such erroneous results is absurb. Yes, there are clearly failures and there are other successful drugs which of course have an adverse impact on animals ("non humans" - what a crap emotive phrase). But only an absolute fool would fail to acknowledge the overall benefits of animal-based testing.

You're absolutely correct. I've been trying to tell these people that correlation doesn't prove cause and effect, but nothing gets through. There is no medical evidence to suggest that the production of these bad drugs is caused by animal testing. Quite the opposite, while animal testing is not perfect and can't prevent all adverse effects (Nobody ever claimed it does), it's the best we have and the instances of side effects would drastically increase if this form of testing was banned. This view is backed up by the scientific community, the medical profession and leading research universities across the world.

Don't be fooled by their false concern for the 'bad mecine' that animal testing supposedly brings. They won't let scientific evidence or previous medical experience stand in the way of trying to save the fluffy animals. Animal rights organisations like PETA have made it clear that they oppose animal testing even in instances where it is conclusively proven where it saves lives. Ingrid Newkirk, PETA President says that she would oppose animal testing even if it could find a cure for AIDS. These people have made up their minds and now just look for excuses to try and justify their beliefs to sane people.

News Release: Europeans For Medical Advancement. August 2004

Shift in attitudes as doctors fear animal experiments endanger patients

Majority of GPs now question the scientific worth of animal tests, with 82% worried for their patients' safety.

Patient advocacy group Europeans For Medical Advancement commissioned a survey of 500 General Practitioners, conducted by TNS Healthcare  http://www.tns-global.com between 5th - 17th August 2004. The company, which has many large pharmaceutical clients, selected the GPs so as to ensure a thorough demographic and geographical UK spread. The results show a staggering level of distrust in results obtained from animal experiments:

82% were concerned that animal data can be misleading when applied to humans
only 21% would have more confidence in animal tests for new drugs than in a battery of human-based safety tests
83% would support an independent scientific evaluation of the clinical relevance of animal experimentation

This confirms what Europeans For Medical Advancement suspected - that a silent majority of doctors today are aware that animal tests are not the safety net the public and the medical profession are frequently assured they are by the government and the pharmaceutical industry.

In fact, there is evidence that testing new drugs and treatments for human disease on animals endangers human health and safety - for example, hormone replacement therapy increases women's risk of heart disease and stroke, even though studies in monkeys predicted the opposite. Aidsvax failed to protect 8,000 volunteers from HIV, even though it protected chimpanzees. Dozens of treatments for stroke have tested safe and effective in animals in recent years but patients have been injured or killed by all of them. Please see  http://www.curedisease.com for
more info

The clinical relevance of animal research requires urgent evaluation - a fact now accepted amongst the medical profession but not by the government, which "has not commissioned or evaluated any formal research on the efficacy of animal experiments and has no plans to do so".

* A paper published in the BMJ on 28th February 2004 asked “Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans?” If such evidence cannot be found, the practice should cease. Patients will benefit because they will no longer be damaged by misleading data, and also because the resources currently pouring into animal research will be freed for clinical research.

Medical Director of Europeans For Medical Advancement, Dr. Ray Greek, commented,

"An independent, transparent and public evaluation of the scientific value of animal experiments is clearly overdue. My medical colleagues have long been frustrated by the Establishment's refusal to debate this issue openly. We believe they must now do so. Today, we are studying disease on the molecular level, where differences between species make mistakes inevitable. Today, medicine is much more evidence-based and it is time to weigh the real harm from animal experiments against the alleged benefits."

..Sad apologists for animal torturing sickos.

Things would be very different wouldn't they chap's if it was you who was being vivisected on?

Thankfully for your sorry arses, that isn't the case, hence you have the freedom to talk shit and not give a flying f*** about anything but your sad sorry arsed whining selves.

Think about the people dying in hospitals waiting for cures.

but then again, that doesn't bother you.

Stick with the medical research defence forums, that's where all the other pervs hang out.

> The usggestion that animal based testing has produced such erroneous results is absurb.

Are you foaming at the mouth 'BOAB' or are these just typing errors?

"Think about the people dying in hospitals waiting for cures but then again, that doesn't bother you. "

Lost me there mate. I'm for whatever way we can test drugs quickly, effectively, and then get them out on the street saving human lives. If that means valuing human lives over animals, then I'm quite happy to go with it. And, unfortunately for our animal rights friends, that's what the law says too. If you don't like it, lobby parliament and get the law changed. It worked with fox hunting, didn't it?

But what intrigues me here is the suggestion that many, many people have died because of animal based test results. To go back to my original point, if deaths were occuring on this scale how come the hundreds of thousands of healthcare professionals worldwide haven't blown the whistle? What about the BMA? Hell, what about lawyers pursing claims?

It just doesn't stack up.

Lilly to Pay $690 Million in Drug Suits
By ALEX BERENSON
Published: June 10, 2005 New York Times

Eli Lilly & Company said last night that it had agreed to pay $690 million to settle about 8,000 lawsuits filed by people who claimed they developed diabetes and other diseases after taking Zyprexa, a medication for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder that is Lilly's biggest-selling drug.

The settlement will cover 75 percent of all the Zyprexa-related suits against Lilly in the United States, according to the company, which said it would continue to defend the other cases. After lawyers' fees and costs, which will probably total more than $250 million, the average plaintiff will receive about $50,000 in the settlement. The settlement covers both state and federal cases.

Zyprexa will remain on the market, the company said. Sales of Zyprexa fell 8 percent in the United States last year, mainly because of concerns that the drug causes weight gain and increases the risk of diabetes.

Because the cases are being settled individually, rather than collectively as part of a class action, the settlement does not require judicial approval, according to Christopher Seeger, a lawyer whose firm represents 900 plaintiffs. But Mr. Seeger said he expected that Jack Weinstein, the federal district court judge in New York who is overseeing the federal cases, would examine the settlement for fairness.

The settlement is reasonable, Mr. Seeger said. Because diabetes is common in schizophrenics, plaintiffs might have had difficulty proving Zyprexa was responsible, he said. And many schizophrenics are unemployed, so they can claim only limited economic damages.

Sidney Taurel, Lilly's chief executive, said in a statement that the company had decided to settle the cases in part because the suits "interfered with the process of physicians making treatment decisions."

Some doctors have been reluctant to prescribe Zyprexa because they feared they would be sued, Mr. Seeger said. As part of the settlement, the plaintiffs agreed to dismiss claims against doctors and other health care workers named as co-defendants. In addition, Lilly will require that the lawyers not disclose the documents they received from the company during the pretrial discovery process, Mr. Seeger said.

"It was very important and material to Lilly that these documents not be made public," he said. Zyprexa was introduced in 1996 and had worldwide sales of $4.4 billion last year, including $2.4 billion in the United States. It is the best-selling of a class of drugs called atypical antipsychotics, used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Many psychiatrists say that Zyprexa is the most effective of all the new drugs. But in September 2003, after a study that linked atypical antipsychotics to diabetes, the Food and Drug Administration required Lilly and other drug makers to change the drugs' labels to warn prominently about the risk that the drugs caused the disease.

The Zyprexa suits contended that from 1996 to 2003, Lilly did not adequately disclose the drug's risks.

The settlement does not prevent the lawyers involved in the cases from bringing additional suits. But Mr. Seeger said he did not expect a second wave of suits, because the label change protects Lilly from people who claim they developed diabetes from taking the drug after 2003.

Lilly said it would take a pretax charge of at least $700 million this quarter to cover the settlement and other unrelated product liability cases. The charge will essentially wipe out Lilly's profits for the quarter, according to analysts' estimates. Mr. Seeger said his firm would encourage its clients to set up "special needs trusts" with the money they received. The trusts would require that clients spend their settlements on necessities like rent. But plaintiffs have the final decision, he said.

MERCK SAYS ALL NEW DRUGS ACCOMPANIED BY RISKS

Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 04:33 PM BST
Contributed by: Toad
-------------------------------
ANGLETON, Texas -- Merck's head of clinical trials told the jury in the nation's first Vioxx-related trial yesterday consumers would have no new drugs if all safety risks had to be eliminated first.

Reicin, calm and composed, testified for a second day in a civil case over the death of Robert Ernst, a 59-year-old Texas man who died in his sleep after taking the once-popular painkiller for six months. "Are safety concerns seen sometimes after things come to market? Yes, they are," Reicin said. "If society decided they didn't want to take that risk, we would have no new drugs on the market."

(Taken from:  http://www.keeponfighting.net/index.php?topic=Miscellaneous)
--------------------------
Here's a good websites for an insight into the anti-vivisection argument from the scientific perspective:

 http://vivisection-absurd.org.uk/indexf.html

But above all, if you get the chance - and want to get a grasp of the truth - then beg, steal, borrow or buy a copy of SACRED COWS AND GOLDEN GEESE: THE HUMAN COST OF EXPERIMENTS ON ANIMALS written by Ray Greek (see  http://www.curedisease.com/efma.htm) for more details.)

Sorry if I've come into this discussion a bit late, but do people really stop to consider what medical research is for?

Why are we pouring millions of pounds of our own money torturing animals just to try and find a paper-over-the-crack cure for self-inflicted illnesses?

The next time those who write so freely and glibly about the sanctity of "advancing" the human race and medicine, could they also please spare a moment to think about the kind of people they wish to help.

Look around you the next time you walk down the high street or go on the tube: fat-eating, fag-smoking arrogance. The kind of sad culture that has no respect for one's own body; that gorges on instant self-gratification; that breeds without thought; that subsequently expects to be made better by a pill.
These slobs are the lives you vivisection apologists wish to prolong far beyond their useful life-spans. Do you really want that? Why do you want to kill animals for them? Do you really want to see drug company bosses get richer on the back of these useless human creatures?

Wow slobodan, those comments are pretty damn stupid. Most diseases aren't self inflicted. Yes, stuff like obesity and smoking drastically increase your chances of getting cancer but that doesn't mean that all cancer is self inflicted. Look at a lot of cancers like testicular, prostate, breast cancer and leukemia, among numerous other types. These could happen to any one of us. All you have to do is look on a children's cancer ward to see that. Perfectly normal, healthy children struck down with diseases and dying in agony. Hardly self inflicted.

And that's only the cancers. There are plenty of diseases all across the world that people die from every day through no fault of their own. To say that animal testing's sole purpose is to keep slobs alive is one of the most pathetically ignorant and offensive comments I've ever seen on this site. And believe me, that's saying something.

Oh, Humpty, we should have known how sensitive you are; you find my comments offensive, no doubt on behalf of all the sick kids dying of cancer. What a humanist you are.

Go on, Humpty, reveal yourself...who are you, what do you do? Are you a parent who has plied your children with carcinogenic foods? Or have you watched your parents suffer after a lifetime of gorging, ignorant of the effects? Or maybe you're suffering now, and you're looking for something, someone to blame?

Humpty, there's always a fault somewhere for diseaes. Do you not agree that the millions poured into temporary "cures" might be better spent in preventitive education? Disease starts somewhere, comrade, and for a reason.

I suggest you go do a bit of your own research. You may find that diet is crucial to prevention. You mention prostate cancer: research the incidence in dairy-free Japan, you may start concluding something.

Do you really believe it's in our interest to have pills that suppress one symptom to create others? Wake up, Humpty, and look at the economic dynamics of scientific research. Scientists are not the altruists you naively suspect. They're interested in their own names and their own wealth, like most other people. They lobby for funds from their bosses, the funds come in, they lobby to create their own parameters for success, the tests are "successful", the product goes to market, massive marketing/ inducements with government and doctors, patients plied with drugs, symptoms suppressed temporarily, profits, short while later patient develops new "unrelated" problems. Demand and supply creation - it's a beautiful economic model.

Self-inflicted? Yes. We all, including you Humpty, have a duty to search out the truth. Read up, mate, and stop being such a corporate propoganda-swallowing lackey.