"Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for entertainment.' ................ Ingrid E Newkirk [PETA]..................."We have enslaved the rest of animal creation and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form." ................William Ralph Inge......................"Look Deep Into The Eyes Of Any Animal, & Then For A moment, Trade Places, Their Life Becomes As Precious As Yours & You Become As Vulnerable As They. Now Smile If You Believe All Animals Deserve Our Respect & Our Protection, For In Alot Of Ways, THEY ARE US, & WE ARE THEM." '.' "The Soul Is The Same In All Living Creatures, Although The Body Of Each Is Different."............................May all beings be free of suffering...................The best way to help these animals is to stop supporting industries that regard animals as food machines instead of as living beings with feelings, wants, and needs................I am in favour of animal rights as well as human rights, that is the way of a whole human being.............Lincoln.................The greatness of a nation and it's moral progress can be judged by the way it treats it's animals......... M Gandhi........... Animals of the world exist for their own reason. They were not made for humans, anymore than black people were made for whites or women for men..................Alice Walker...... .s

 

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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