ANTIDOTE-EUROPE press release, forwarded by EQUIVITA

21.05.2014

To candidates for the European Parliament election in May 2014.

You know that the European Union (EU) has competence over health and scientific research, but you probably are not aware of the current state of health of EU citizens, or even that of your own country’s citizens. According to official French epidemiological records (In VS , HAS, OPEPS ... ), in France more than one in 10 (a total of over 6 millions) is affected by Alzheimer's, diabetes, hormone-dependent cancers (breast, prostate) or autism, and 2 million new cases will be diagnosed by the end of this year. These figures have more than doubled in a decade. French population being approximately 1/8th that of the EU, easy to calculate the figures for the latter ...

It is obvious that the EU has paid insufficient attention to the prevention of these diseases and to the scientific progress that is needed to cure them.

If these trends are to persist, we will discover that children born in 2000, when being in the prime part of their life, will suffer from diabetes one in three, and from Alzheimer's disease one in four. Prostate cancer would affect all men, breast cancer would affect one in three women, one birth in three would be autistic, male infertility would be the rule by 2025 ...

The EU population is facing a serious health crisis , which threatens the survival of our species by the end of this century. The EU (and MEPs as well ) has legal and material means to curb right now this disastrous course.

Antidote Europe (AE*), a charity aiming exclusively at the application of scientific progress for the benefit of human health, conducted a rigorous scientific analysis to identify the causes of the present health crisis, due to ineffective preventive measures on avoidance of toxic hazards present in our environment, and to lack of medical progress to cure the diseases mentioned above. The analysis has shown that there is a common pitfall among these failures: the use of animals - considered as biological “models” of humans - for human-specific prevention and medical research in general. This is a fatal methodological error, since no species can be considered a biological "model" for another species, no matter how close in evolutionary terms. This biological fact is a simple consequence of the definition of a species, it’s reproductive isolation, which infers that genes of a given species are unique (and their expressions as well). A given species will react in a test or to a disease with its own unique genes, in a species-specific manner. Under identical test conditions, a different species’ reaction could be similar, different or even opposite, only the actual test will tell.

Any prevention and medical research on animal 'models' is of no value to man, is at best useless, but often a source of deadly false outcomes, for which our health will have to pay the price.

A European Citizens' Initiative (ECI " Stop Vivisection ") aimed at prohibiting the use of animals in testing or research for human health issues, collected 1,340,000 signatures. Antidote Europe participated in this ECI for compelling scientific reasons proving the absurdity of the animal "model" concept. After the elections, the new European Commission will be obliged to schedule a public meeting to consider the proposals and arguments of the ICE STOPVIVISECTION. Following this the european Parliament wiil probbly have to discuss a new directive resulting from the ICE, and take a stand .
Please let us know by mail to [email protected]. (your answers will be published before the election):
(1) if you are in favor, or against, the use of animals used as biological "models" for prevention and biomedical studies concerning humans;
(2) if you are determined not to deviate from this position , regardless of the political or commercial pressure (lobbying) to which MEPs will be exposed.

Claude Reiss, physician and cellular biologist,for 30 years laboratory director of CNRS in Paris

Note: AE is not an animal welfare charity. AE has developed fast and cheap scientific methods (quoted in REACH , see alsoTOX21 ) to assess toxic hazards in human cell and tissue samples. It also proposes new, patented therapeutic approaches against AIDS, SARS, hepatitis C, Dengue, West Nile fiever etc. aimed at human patients.