Reaching Out to Paris Hilton

Haley as you are just 15 years old you should profit more from the positive side of animal protection and not critizize the steps which PETA is making an active animal rights fighter has not an easy life this I can tell you because instead of 15 years I have 55! Because from your writing I may suggest that you hate animals because you love people but I think you can love the two and fight for the two with equal measure!

Haley is 15 years old says it all!!!!! Maybe when she has had a life she may understand what is going on around her.

to rojo polio mumps rabies aspirin peniciline etc. all these famous medicines were found before they were tested on animals! hans ruesch did a huge research and wrote his famous book. there everything is proved and documented. the book's name in german is 'nackte herrscherin' so i think in english it's called 'naked empress' the dismantling of medical science. i think you can find it on google with the name 'hans ruesch' or his association 'civis'. i knew him personally years ago this man sacrificed all his life for the mistreated animals you can trust him! he made a famous documentary 'the suffering of the animals' spoken by famous actress julie christie who at that time was president of the vegetarian society in england. this film is very interesting! it shows the electrocution of an elefant by edison when he wanted to show his invention of electricity. furthermore it shows the military experiment of the atom bomb on the bikini atoll where thousands of animals were killed specially donkeys and cows for testing the deadly reaction of nuclear weapons. after you saw that film you shall surely understand that there are some people in this world who do not anymore much appreciate their own species! check it out!

Rojo thanks anyway but I've already volunteered for a drug testing and got wellpaid for it by a pharma company. It's not really a matter of saving a mouse. It's more a question of losing a human life. Animals tests cannot be predictably extrapolated to humans. If a drug does poorly in animal tests it will probably be shelved even though it might have performed admirably for people. Disease occurs on a molecular level and this is where we differ widely from other species not to mention from one another. For the best results you have to be treated for your own specific genetic makeup pharmacogenomics etc.. Some people had success with Vioxx but many didn't. Naturally Merck can now use animal testing as a legal shield since Vioxx had to have by law "passed" animal tests. Animal tests or not you are ALWAYS ultimately going to be the guinea pig. Curing mice of cancer hasn't be seen to be a step in the right direction for humans even though the war on cancer was declared decades ago. We're also attempting to replicate diseases in animals that never naturally occur in them. The drug Thalidomide causing phocomelia is one of the most notorious examples of a drug that caused no problems in a multitude of test animals they finally produced it in the White New Zealand rabbit by megadosing it and in monkeys with ten times the normal dose but was teratogenic in humans. The drug company's belief in the veracity of the animal tests delayed the removal of the drug from the market causing untold and unnecessary human pain and suffering. Anyway the fact that some drugs pan out after animal testing is more a matter of luck than science. To quote my own post "In 1996 108000 Americans died in hospitals from adverse reactions to FDAapproved drugs properly administered by licensed medical professionals as reported by the Journal of the American Medical Association. In the same year 2.2 million Americans had adverse reactions to FDAapproved drugs. All these were drugs that had passed animal tests with flying colors". According to the Journal of the American Medical Association 1997 Vol 277 pp 3016 adverse drug reactions to animaltested drugs costs the general public over $136 billion dollars a year in healthcare expenses. If you are openminded read the book "Sacred Cows and Golden Geese" by Dr. Ray Greek and Dr. Jean Swingle Creek. They have more recent books but "Cows" is certainly a good one. We can do better in the 21st century.

mike It is a big claim to say animal research has held back medical progress. Perhaps you could site some specific examples that mouse cancer can be cured at all is a step in the right direction for the human variety. Sucessful vaccines for poliorabies mumps and measels involved animal testing in a pivotal role. Training on animals accelerated learning about organ transplants. Animals play a part in virtually every cure or anaesthetic developed. To downplay their importance is naive at best. Animal testing for perfumeshampoo type experimentation does not have my support but such testing is vital for modern medicineso far. Do feel free to volunteer for testing though it may save a mouse or three.