Jain Spirit 2001 12 No 09

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 53

Killer Science
BARRY THOMAS, TEXAS
There is no better book on the human cost of experiments on animals than the recently published "Sacred Cows and Golden Geese" - written by C. Ray Greek MD and Jean Swingle Greek, DVM. This book is the result of mealtime discussions in the 1980s between Dr. Ray Greek, an anaesthesiologist and his wife Jean, a veterinary dermatologist. When they found their respective animal and human patients displayed similar symptoms yet responding to quite different treatments, their self-righteous and heated discussions led them to further investigation.
They discovered that they were both right. C FOR
Through detailed research, the Greeks were finding extrapolating data from animals to humans is either misleading, unnecessary, dangerous or all three. At the simplest level, none of this should surprise us. Why should we afford credibility to those who would have us believe that humans are identical to the many species of laboratory animals - any more than we would buy "free size" shoes from a peddler? More importantly, as the Greeks point out, BSE should have taught us that the fatally infectious protein particles called prion (which could inhabit all animal tissue and seems indestructible) will rule out any complacency about animal-to-human organ transplants.
Campaigns have begun lately for raising the legal "rights" of the great apes on a par with ours, because
humans and apes share between 97% and 98% of DNA. It is our responsibility to care for animals
The pro-vivisection lobby use this fact to promote the use of and not to exploit them
chimpanzees in medical research and genetic engineering, Let's remember that cures for many common disease are What they fail to clarify is that proximity in DNA is only a still elusive and little attention is paid by the pharmaceutical small part of the picture. The Greeks point out that it is the giants to "orphan drugs" - those made in the developed world very tiny changes in DNA which separate the animal but unaffordable in poor countries. The World Health species. It only takes one change in the DNA base sequence Organisation is seeking help to address a shortage of antivenom at a particular gene to translate into very large differences used to treat snakebites which cause more than 50,000 between the species and also within the species. Sickle cell deaths yearly and disable half a million more people due to anaemia and cystic fibrosis are just two examples of complications such as amputation of gangrenous limbs, kidney diseases which each result from just one change. failure and cancers. Children can be permanently disabled by No single book can contain the encyclopaedic rotting limbs while productive farmers may be transformed into transgressions of animal experimentation - there is copious beggars. One wonders: would there be such a shortage of material for further volumes. “Sacred Cows and Golden antivenom if the keepers of poisonous pet reptiles were bitten Geese" concentrates mainly on the top three killers of the in their Manhattan penthouses?! Similarly, would so much be Western world - heart disease, cancer and stroke. It takes on spent on Aids research if only poor countries were affected? A many but not all animal experimentation's reputed recent UK Channel 4 documentary focused on sleeping hallmarks and challenges the prevarication and outrageous sickness, a dangerous brain infection that results in very painful claims the pro-vivisectionists have used down the decades. death, affecting mainly rural Africans unable to afford an It tackles the latest promotion - genetic engineering. The existing drug. The pharmaceutical giants have chosen largely book also traces the history of animal experiments, the legal to ignore the victims. Lately, however, it has been found that a | machinery which props it up and the "mutual admiration component of the same drug may help women in the West with society" of institutions which attract and depend on funding, unwanted hair - so the race is on to develop it for that the suppliers of laboratory animals, the cage manufacturers cosmetic purpose.
- to name but a few players. Science should not be allowed Thanks to the animal welfare lobby, most of us have seen to kill. gruesome photos of what happens to wretched laboratory animals. Many of us dumbly accept that it is the price they Diana Lord is an active campaigner for animal have to pay for us. But what is the price that we humans pay? | compassion based in London.
December 2001 - February 2002. Jain Spirit
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