Sample Letter to Urge Ceasing of
Practice
of Dissection of Animals in Schools:
Dear
I am contacting
you in regard to your students' requests for alternatives to guarantee
students the choice not to dissect/vivisect animals.
I believe
your students' requests are reasonable in light of the fact that the
majority of medical schools are replacing their animal labs with
superior alternative methods of studying anatomy and behavior. Not only
is animal research unreliable, detrimental to human health, and a waste
of money, but also a cruel and barbaric practice that should be
consigned to the trash bin of our past, along with slavery, foot binding
and alchemy.
There are many reasons to oppose vivisection. For
example, enormous physiological variations exist among humans and
non-humans, thereby discounting any information obtained from animal
research, since such "evidence" cannot be successfully extrapolated to
human beings. In many cases, animal studies do not just hurt animals and
waste money; they harm and kill people, too.
A General Accounting
Office report, released in May 1990, found that more than half of the
prescription drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration between
1976 and 1985 caused side effects that were serious enough to cause the
drugs to be withdrawn from the market or relabeled. All of these drugs
had been tested on animals.
Animal experimentation also misleads
researchers in their studies. Dr. Albert Sabin, who developed the oral
polio vaccine, cited in testimony at a congressional hearing this
example of the dangers of animal-based research: "[p]aralytic polio
could be dealt with only by preventing the irreversible destruction of
the large number of motor nerve cells, and the work on prevention was
delayed by an erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease
based on misleading experimental models of the disease in monkeys."
Not only are sophisticated non-animal research methods more
accurate, but they are less expensive, and less time-consuming than
traditional animal-based research methods. Patients waiting for helpful
drugs and treatments could be spared years of suffering if companies and
government agencies would implement the efficient alternatives to animal
studies. Fewer accidental deaths caused by drugs and treatments would
occur if stubborn bureaucrats and wealthy vivisectors would use the more
accurate alternatives.
Please listen to your wise students who
are encouraging [name of school] to move ahead with the times. I look
forward to hearing positive news from you soon that you are modernizing
your policies and providing alternatives to your students or, better
yet, replacing vivisection altogether with modern methods of studying
behavior and anatomy.
Sincerely
[Name]
[Address]
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