PRESS RELEASE EQUIVITA 09/11/10

Vivisection and science: two diverging roads  

The enforcement of the new Directive 2010/63 on  animal testing (with a two-year transposition period) officially confirms the rejection, by the EU, of a scientific update, which is not only  necessary, but crucial for the safeguard of human health and the  environment, and its intention to relaunch an erroneous, misleading research  method.

The experimentation on “animal models” has always been  proven unreliable and deceptive for the purposes of biomedical research. In  recent years, this evidence has become official among scientific bodies of maximum importance and credibility.

An “epochal turning point” in  toxicological research has been announced, for example, by the National  Research Council of the U.S.A., which, comparing it to historical events  like "the discovery of DNA and the creation of the first computer”, has  described it as a “shift from a system based on the study of animals to a  system based on in vitro methods, which are now able to evaluate the  way a substance alters gene function inside human  cells”.

Everybody (except for the majority of European  regulators, or so it seems) knows that:
Every living species can only be a  model for itself. This is shown by poisons, like strychnine and hemlock,  to mention only 2 out of 1000, which are excellent food for various laboratory  animals; this is also shown by the fact that, out of 100 substances which pass  animal testing, 92 of them fail clinical trials on man.
Animal testing  is still relaunched today, in 2010, because Europe is subject to the  lobbies of chemical manufacturers and wants to enable them to reach the best  business results by selecting the most suitable animal species,  and wants to avoid taking any civil responsibility in case of  environmental or pharmacological disasters (in order to say, a  posteriori, “we all know that an animal test is not a reliable test…”).
 
The extraordinary recent technologies (due to new  achievements in the fields of science, genetics, biology, chemistry, computer  science, etc.), which are 10,000 times faster and 1,000 times more  cost-effective and, as the final report of the “VII World Congress on  Alternative Methods and Animal Testing” (Rome, 2009) states: “generate a  wealth of knowledge which has never been reached or discovered before”, permit  the achievement of an immediate safeguard for our health and the  environment; however, these primary values are unfortunately set aside for  profit.

Moreover, the new technologies follow the common feeling of European citizens, who can no  longer stand the terrible sufferings of tenths and hundreds of  millions of animals sacrificed on the altar of a fake science (this remark  goes alongside with the previous one, since the ethical aspect is not  secondary to the scientific one).

EQUIVITA Scientific Committee and the great majority of European citizens, who have already expressed  themselves on all possible occasions (for example, in the demonstrations of  25th September in Rome and 6th November near Brescia), under the coordination  of some (few, and therefore praiseworthy) European members of Parliament,  will not give up fighting against vivisection and, when the new  regulation for the application of Art. 11 of EU Treaty is ready, they will  organize a petition to promote a popular initiative for a bill which could  make the EU regain a minimum degree of dignity and consensus.  

EQUIVITA Scientific Committee (ITALY)
Tel 39.06.3220720, 39.335.8444949

E-mail: [email protected]

www.equivita.org

(Translated by Giuliana Mafrica, Translators Against Vivisection)