Sonia T. Felipe

(Sent to Animal Pensata for editing in volume in November 2007)

Proponents of animals, favorable to the abolition of the use of the animal model to study the cure of human disease, Contrary to what Petry says André, are not “obscurantist zoofílicos” who want to stop all scientific research in health and human medicine. André Petry seems quite “blind and obscured” by his own egocentric view, and possibly not yet had time to read anything that has been published in recent 30 years about the need to change the paradigm to another vivisector more in line with scientific and technological advances of mankind enlightened. What are the arguments that support the position nothing “obscured or medieval”, two abolitionists?

The first, is that human health is the health of a living species, whose biology, physiology and psychology is very similar to many other living species that inhabit the planet earth. It is true. On behalf of this, abolitionists argue that one can not ethically justify the use of live animals in painful and lethal experiments, because no sentient life is replaceable by another, or the species itself, or any other kind. Being alive is the only grandiose and wonder for each of the sentient beings. Take the lives of hundreds of millions of sentient beings to test drugs invented to deal only with the symptoms of the disease produced in humans, justifying that ultimately destroyed their lives have no inherent value to some beings decimated, that value exists only in relation to what humans can do by taking advantage of their vulnerability, is not ethical argument. That argument does not hold up ethically, why could not validly be used to justify the use of humans in vulnerable conditions in similar experiments.

The second argument of animal advocates (erroneously called by André Petry of “Zoophylic”, right would say zoophiles, Greek zoo = animal, e philia = amor), not based on the assumption “stop in the name of science vermin”, in other words, interruption of any scientific research, but the abolition of any research that wants to be considered scientific but still make use of live animals as a model for testing of chemicals and drugs that multiply not only unnecessarily around the planet, always promising to cure the ills human ever to be cured chegam, but lethally, to induce the scientific community to believe that, to be similar bodies nonhumans and humans, from the standpoint of physiological structure and in many cases neurological and mental, from the point of view of the similarity of the molecular structure repeat.

It is not true that the metabolic perspective are equal any two living organisms. If an organism is endowed with a central nervous system organized, Hormones are produced, be aware of events that affect positively or negatively, this is, has emotions, This organism is similar to, but by no means is equal to another body with the same characteristics. Not only sex, age, species, lineage, status in the social group are features that significantly change the perceptions of an individual sentient (does not matter here if this guy is a rat, a pig, a horse or a human), but, beyond these variables a million or millions of other trace a network impossible to be scanned in each individual pet used as a model or prototype for testing of pharmaceutical and chemical industry. Each individual produces a chemical itself, similar to the pairs of the same species, but infinitely singular. No two exactly alike metabolic processes, although similar patterns do is to recognize individuals in the same age, sex and strain.

The millions of other interferences must take into account, from the kind of confined in the same peer group loans to serve as guinea pig, by sounds or noises produced or subtracted from the environment in which the animals are caged as they are used for the experiments. The smell of humans can not perceive odors that permeate a room for experimentation, from the smell of the shampoo used by student, until your deodorant, Nail Polish, makeup, fabric of their clothes, shoes, and other odors from your body. Multiply this by 10 or 20 persons entering and leaving the laboratory everyday, we ate two days before, now or in the cafeteria… was washed their hands, or not, after paying snack and touch the money stinky… ah! still has the stench of their portfolios, sweaty and handled for years, their pockets, in which lay and take hands dozens of times a day… and the smell of their handbags, of its material science, Ink in which the article was just printed… the products used for disinfecting the environment, this, when such concern exists… the smell of the cages, the floor, the walls, the chemicals used to make drinking water coming from the tap, the smell of the mat on which all cleaning feet … if they do, before entering the laboratory, and odors that entram below the door, on windy days, of chuva, dust and heat… and the smell of new clothes that are using three or four… the smell of sex that just do before coming to work vivisector, and the smell of their hálitos infectos with smoke, alcohol, fried, refrigerants and parts of corpses that just eat the last meal… Many smells to upset the smell of mice and rats, Cats and dogs as if they were caged in pairs shoes in boxes in which evil can move. Each smell of these triggers on their bodies metabolic reactions thousand, over which the researcher has the lowest control. Therefore, there is no such the “control variables”. Therefore, what the researcher thinks that ensures control variables in their research is only apparent, is little or nothing, When it comes to beings who have 300 million olfactory cells more than our own.

The vivisector have the pride to tell the public that their research is scientific, because all the variables under its control experimental. Lie. Not. And look, I refer here only to one type of stimulus that completely alters the physiology of the animal sentient super-olfativado. I have not spoken sounds. But there are so variable in quantity and “without any control”, a vivisection lab, carrying the body of animals to produce unique chemical, in reaction to what they hear without being able to decode: the sound of water flowing into the walls, the pipes embedded. Sounds that vivisector not hear, even with an ear “superior” when your guinea pig. She is also the sound of electricity, which also passes through pipes embedded in the walls. Also these sounds horrible and stressful the vivisector not hear, even having a biological superiority over all other species. But, no laboratory vivisseccionista, only researchers are deaf, not just noise unbearable that these are only perceived by the ears very sensitive, the same ears tormented 24 hours a day with these and other deafening noises that do not exist in the natural environment of the animals used in vivisection. She is also the noise of computers, air conditioning, Printer and keyboards, the sounds of metal objects manipulated in the experiment, the sound of falling on the ground or on metal bases. It has the sound of the voices of 10 or 20 vivisectors entering and leaving the lab talking, laughing, crying, laughing… gadgets and their ears stuffed with MP3, and their cell phones, bips, e Ipods…. and the sound of cars out there, the buzinas, das trovoadas, and the sounds of the upper deck, do inferior, drawers are opened and closed, of open and closed cabinets, metal doors or not, key in the lock past, Door latches handled, closures of purses and bags open and closed, equipment being turned on or off.

These three, yet, temperature variation, air humidity, the amount of chemicals that the water company has just put to “treat” after that withdrawal of water from the contaminated water was being serviced… and the unbearable odor of the food served, always the same brand and nutrients that are only needed for vivisector, not for the welfare of the animal sentient. And has the touch of the wielder, and no longer need to describe what they do to the animal then.

I made just a tiny list of the variables that affect the metabolism of an animal sentient, and the results that lead to misleading levels. This list does not reach 1% everything that an animal used as a live model realizes. Which control the vivisector has on these variables and other? Even though all sentient animals are of the same lineage, of the same age, of the same sex, the intensity of their perceptions, similar to what occurs in humans, varies from individual to individual, and even an individual of a sudden, or overnight.

A third argument leading abolitionists to oppose the use of live animals in science, is precisely the loss of time that such a model has represented to scientific advance, it is that science really wants to find the cure of human ills and not just drugs to be consumed and surrender profits to the pharmaceutical industry, moreover, one of the most powerful around the planet.

Most human diseases habits that are produced by humans have only. The abolitionists did not preach the end of genuine scientific research on human health. They advocate the end of the use of nonhuman animals as the object of these researches. When, after all, Scientists agree to the fact that one can only know the etiology of human diseases by studying the human clinical? What the abolitionists want is that all the money invested today around the planet in an animal model is invested in real scientific research aimed at studying the etiology of human disease. No need to use humans as guinea pigs in experiments barbarians.

Over 50 years of drug testing in animals and in humans are sufficient to have data on reactions to all drugs sold worldwide since the late 60 twentieth century. Just build a database with all the results so far, with all medical reports obtained from the use of these drugs invented million and used human guinea pigs around the world without those guinea pigs even have the notion that, what their doctors just like to announce the latest drug to cure their diseases, is actually an experiment that they may be harmless, or deadly.

The abolitionists are not medieval obscurantist [if the average age was obscurantist, although doctors were the kings, to open frogs, pigeons and dogs to examine their viscera and respond to the sovereign or not about curing their diseases. The abolitionists did not support this medieval practice, on the contrary, advocate the end of it!]. On the contrary. Humans are aware of the waste of human intelligence, which today is only trained to prescribe legal drugs with the wall of his workroom a diploma of medicine. What is being done with the intelligence of young people who enter a medical school in order to help humans to remove their ills and heal their diseases? Prescribing drugs, although legal, young doctors just are killing the kidney, liver, the stomach, a bexiga, the blood of many of their patients, effect of medication widely tested on animals.

A fourth argument abolitionist refers to more lethal and chronic diseases that affect mankind: cardiovascular, pulmonary, digestive and urinary tract, psychic, back pain, cancer, neurological degenerations… curable with abstention, for a few months, of all animal products [read, Foods that Fight Pain e The Food Revolution].

But, million mice and rats are killed every year for a drug to be invented to cure humans triglycerides, hypercholesterolemia, lack of calcium, excess uric acid, hypertension, diabetes, and so on. Vivisectors want they want to do for those who suffer from these diseases believe that soon, logo, a drug will be marketed to deliver them from the evils that they themselves invent wrong with your diet.

But, if the doctor did not prescribe any drugs, if you look at his patient and says: Dois months for want “test” yourself on the following milk-free diet, eggs, butter, yogurt, meat, fish, chicken or any of its derivatives… this doctor will be dismissed from the clinical. After all, for which he was awarded a diploma, if it is not to prescribe to patients legal drugs placed on the market?

The World Health Organization has made public the medical reports that warn of the need to redesign the human diet [leia The Food Revolution, e Diet for a New America, de John Robbins]. But, scientists want that millions of animals die in their hands until they have managed to invent drugs that humans do not have to give up anything you usually eat, By this is more toxic to their bodies.

At all, even if you found a drug to cure high cholesterol, this drug certainly trigger other evils. These, again, require vivisection, so that the scientist could find a new drug to rid patients who had used the previous evils it produces. The cadeia is expanding to infinity. This is precisely what we are already. What vivisectors do not want to realize is that this story does not only lead to success, but is responsible for its failure.

The majority of maladies including humans suffering, today, or had existed for more than 5 centuries, or no more than 2 anos honey, or resulted from the use of chemicals tested in animals and placed in food, Beverage and medication.

Animals do not have any guilt of our choices. They do not benefit from our advantages. They do not have to answer the questions that scientists should be seeking to answer the math, with computer simulations, with reasoning about the data already available to the student.

The abolitionists, to defend animal liberation of their condition of enslavement, advocate the release of the scientists that mesh and lace desatina. We do not think that vivisectors are wicked and cruel. We are just men and women “unhappy”, in the Aristotelian sense of the term, mean, are rational beings, they know what is expected of them, for their “excellence”, but are condemning yourself to do exactly the opposite of what is expected of them. This is the concept of unhappiness in Aristotelian ethics: know what is expected to, and do what it takes instead of the expected result.

Animal liberation is human liberation, the liberation of the mind and human intelligence, so you can finally lend itself to more refined purpose for which should have been improved: seek to know, without taking the life of beings vulnerable. This is the intelligence that we hope to see flourish in biomedical science. But the obscurantist vivisectors do not want to become so intelligent that other, since learned to obscure his intelligence revolving viscera of animals vulnerable, instead of the hone-, creating mathematical models and computer and research methods in human non-invasive, after all, the recipients of such commitment, or not?

And, finally, is not to be accepted and defended by “the community” vivisseccionista, the practice becomes vivisector, then, ethics. If André Petry is not obscured by his rage against the abolitionists, must remember that human history files of the greatest episodes of acceptance by a majority barbarities, while a minority anticipate ethical criticism to such customs or traditions. It was thus, in the Roman Empire, with the forced fights between gladiators and animals; so with the enslavement of Africans, against whom no one dared to raise his voice, and who did, Brazil, was sentenced to hanging; was well, with the National Socialist European empire in the twentieth century, not only with a whole country forming the most supportive, including the “community of physicians and scientists” conducive to such practices; so with the exclusion of women, the inquisition, dictatorship and consumption that will lead our planet to death. The truth is not necessarily on the side of stronger, there is only the force. Who challenges the dominant moral tradition is attacked as obscurantist. Just do not say clearly what kind of light illuminates vivisection. A “curing diseases” human, unfortunately, not. The abolitionists are not illuminated by this light, they are, By another: Peace for all animals live their own good, in their own way, no arrests, unfettered, without torments. Just being alive to suffer bad times. Needs no infliction of new torments.

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Sonia T. Felipe, Dr. em moral philosophy and political theory pela University of Konstanz, Germany, member of the Bioethics Institute of the Luso-American Development, FLAT; postdoctoral fellow in bioethics with cutout animal ethics, Professor and Researcher, UFSC, Eastern Monographs, dissertations and theses in bioethics, ética animal, environmental ethics, human rights and theories of justice. Author of, Ethics and animal experimentation: abolitionists basics (Edufsc, 2007) and As a matter of principle (Cripple, 2003). Collaborator of Animal Magazine Pensata, www.sentiens.net.