A Testimony from a Former Vivisector

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A WORD OF WARNING: This is a sensitive posting. You may find reading

this disturbing as it contains a description of the torture and

killing of laboratory animals. Please do not read if you feel this

might be too upsetting for you. I have no wish to upset anyone,

especially pregnant women, but I am sending this out to help ensure

informed choice on medical testing in pregnancy for vegan mothers

(and indeed any mother who opposes such cruel treatment of birds).

I myself had the routine test referred to, in total ignorance in my

first two pregnancies, but now I am expecting a surprise third child

in Autumn, I shall be telling my doctor in no uncertain terms exactly

why I shall be declining this test.

 

 

What follows is the testimony of a woman I had a little

correspondence with about 18 months ago.

I had initially written to her on another matter, but had also

enclosed a few vegan/AR leaflets.

 

I knew nothing about her past work when I sent her the vegan and AR

leaflets, and here is the detailed (and somewhat disturbing in some

of its graphic content) reply I received, about her experiences as a

former vivisector.

 

She is happy for her testimony to be used to expose what goes on for

routine medical testing in pregnancy, and I will not divulge her

identity in case of reprisals. The animal movement needs

whistleblowers like her to expose the horrors, because who knows

better than one who has been involved in it first hand?! Some of the

most powerful voices against atrocities of all kinds are those who

have been personally involved at some time.

 

It is to my shame that I sat on this testimony for so long, I just

never got round to doing anything with it, but I am sorting out and

throwing out old papers and letters, in preparation for hopefully

moving to a bigger place, and I came across this again, and decided

it was definitely worth spending time typing in on the computer, and

passing it on.

 

I don't personally agree with her views on measles or smallpox

vaccination, but she has probably been brainwashed like so many

scientists. Maybe she doesn't know that the smallpox vaccine caused a

huge smallpox epidemic in the UK very soon after the vaccination

programme started, most people don't know that.

 

Lesley

 

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Dear Lesley,

 

I am so sorry that I have not got back sooner to you about your great

kindness in sending me the " bumf " about animal suffering. It did

inspire me to write the enclosed essay on animal experimentation,

which I wrote soon after I'd received your letter and it has been

hanging around my office ever since (Euphemism that word " office " ; I

have my bedroom in an attic conversion and part is walled off as a

little sort of " box area " between my bedroom and the stairs and I

have my desk and typewriter in it nicely! Great work has been done by

many people using desks with typewriters in box rooms!!).

 

The essay gives " the alternative view " , many of the arguments put

forward by animal experimenters themselves. Although I wrote it, I

have indeed worked in such laboratories and have a different point of

view to the essay. I have seen not only outright cruelty to animals

(including the worst sort of vivisection, when the animal remains

conscious and is obviously terrified) but I have seen the worst of

human beings ever, there also. I do find from my own experience of

doing this that the killing of animals for or in experimentation does

have a distinct BRUTALISING effect upon one.

 

I was required in one laboratory to kill about 50 day old chicks

every Monday. I can't tell you what for, it is a professional secret,

but the chick blood was used in general hospitals locally in order to

do certain sorts of tests on certain sorts of patients. In this test

the blood was used as an indicator that the test had worked.

 

I do think in fact I will tell you....

In pregnancy women are given a RUBELLA test to see if they have

increased antibody levels to German measles which would mean that

they had been exposed to this virus during their pregnancy. German

measles can produce blindness and deafness in the unborn baby so if

there was increased antibody levels the woman would be advised to

abort. And no doubt many do. The test is done by a TITRATION of

antibody taken from the patient and standard virus solutions. The

indicator of the LEVEL of antibody is done by putting day old chick

blood cells, washed of their own serum, into the titration mixes.

Agglutination of the chick blood reveals the part of the titration

where the " end point " of the level of antibody is reached, like a

point in a graph, that shows the level of antibody.

 

The chick blood is taken by taking a day old chick in the palm of

your hand, its head held by its neck under your thumb and its legs

held by your other fingers. You then take a ten ml. syringe with a

bit of heparin in and a bloody great cannula needle and thrust the

needle into the chest cavity of the chick from between its collar

bone and shoulder. Actually I'm not sure that chicks have collar

bones, but you push the needle in from the front of the shoulder

area. The needle pierces the heart and you draw off two ml. of chick

blood which you keep fluid in the syringe with the heparin. You

repeat this with 5 chicks until you get the syringe full. Other

technical details follow with what you do with the blood to prepare

it for the titration.

 

In most laboratories where this is done, compassionately, the chicks

are DOSED UP with CO2 before they are bled as this dampens their

central nervous system so much that they are so drowsy that it is

THOUGHT that they feel so pain. In OUR laboratory TO SAVE MONEY we

used NO CO2 so the chicks were bled fully conscious and sensitive and

obviously in terrible pain. You could see the terrible pain in their

eyes, and they SHRIEKED in a chick-like way in both pain and fear.

 

You then kill the chick by pressing the heel of your hand against its

neck on the edge of the laboratory bench. How many women who have

routine Rubella testing (and it's routine for all pregnant women),

actually KNOW what lies behind those tests?

 

Thus it is that many scientists and technicians, like my boss who

saved money by refusing to get in CO2 for this procedure are totally

brutalised and insensitive, non-compassionate and callous and THIS

stems from working with animals in this vivisectionist way for YEARS.

Vivisection BRUTALISED human beings to such an extent that they

neither see nor understand the cruelty they are inflicting and in my

own case, bleeding chicks gave me a distinct blood lust into killing

birds.

 

We had a cat at the hostel where I lived who one day came in with a

blackbird alive in its mouth. I managed to get the bird off the cat

with little injury to the bird so I put it into a shoe box outside

with the lid on to recover as it was so much in shock. Laterone, two

hours later, I went and got the bird out. The bird as it sat in my

hand looked at me with an expression of pure gratitiude and trust in

its little eye. I then brutally killed it just as I had killed chicks

every Monday for months for no reason at all except out of a sense of

power over the life of this bird. THAT is what animal experimentation

does to a human being. THAT is why it HAS to be STOPPED. I cannot

have ever been the only scientist so brutalised by the animal work I

did.

 

I have seen other laboratory technicians, when required to kill

guinea pigs for taking tissue out of them for experimentation,

killing the animal with utter glee and relish. I'VE SEEN THIS.

THIS is why it must be stopped. So although I've written an essay to

the contrary, I MUST explain that as a result of writing that essay,

I read it back and then said to myself " EVEN SO, THIS IS

UNACCEPTABLE " .

 

All great scientific advances were and are made because some

scientist FLEW IN THE FACE OF EVERY OTHER PERSON IN HIS OR HER FIELD

WHO SAID " IT CAN'T BE DONE " , DID IT AND SO PROVED " IT CAN BE DONE " .

 

WHERE THERE IS A WILL THERE IS A WAY.

 

It takes a scientist of TRUE VISION to have both the WILL and to

endeavour to discover the WAY.

 

The man who invented PLASTICS worked ALONE for donkeys years being

ridiculed by the rest of his colleagues for " concentrating on TRIVIA " .

Yet PLASTICS have changed the WORLD. It is not the COMPUTER era we

live in, nor the TRANSISTOR era we live in, nor the NUCLEAR era we

live in, but the PLASTICS era!!

 

For eg WHOLESALE SAFE VACCINATION OF MILLIONS OF CHILDREN WORLD WIDE

AGAINST MEASLES IS ONLY DONE BECAUSE PLASTIC THROWAWAY SYRINGES HAVE

MADE IT BOTH POSSIBLE AND SAFE. The eradication of smallpox worldwide

in about 1972 was achieved by using safe cheap throwaway PLASTIC

SYRINGES FOR

VACCINATION.

 

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