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by Professor Pietro Croce, MD
First published in Italy in 1981
Republished in English (and updated and expanded) in 1991
Copyright © 1991 by Hans Ruesch Foundation
Published by
CIVIS
POB 152
via Motta 51
CH-6900 Massagno/Lugano
Switzerland
Translated from the Italian by Henry Turtle in collaboration with the Author.
Prof. Pietro Croce, MD is a luminary of medical science. Born in Dalmatia in 1920, he graduated at the famed University of Pisa, Italy. His curriculum includes: Fulbright Scholarship, Research Department of the National Jewish Hospital of Colorado University in Denver, Research Department of Toledo, Ohio. Research Departmente of Barcelona, Spain. From 1952 and 1982, head of the laboratory of microbiological-pathological anatomy and chemo-clinical analyses at the research Hospital L. Sacco of Milan, Italy. A member of the College of American Pathologists, he is also a prolific author of medical books, scientific papers and press articles. He now lives in Vicenza Italy, with his Swiss wife and their teenage son.
PART ONE: VIVISECTION
PART TWO: SCIENTIFIC METHODS
I used to experiment on animals for many years. I had been obeying a stale positivistic logic which had been imposed on me during my university studies and which for a long time conditioned me in the following years.
"Scientific positivism, the only possible logic in medical and biological research."
But to assert that the human mind can have "only one possible logic" means admitting that it is unable to look in more than one direction.
With my head filled with notions handed down by the professors, from books, practice in hospitals in Italy and abroad, I tried to put my thoughts in order and forced myself to arrange my convictions in logical sequence. But it was like trying to assemble a jig-saw puzzle which had left the factory in defective condition; the pieces did not fit together, producing distorted images, separated by spaces which could not be filled and forming a mosaic which at the least jolt fell apart, scattering in chaotic disorder.
I said to myself: there must be something wrong with medical thinking and practice. The factor must be both fundamental and elementary, capable of undermining its entire basis and vitiating everything built upon it: a methodological error.
Vivisectionist thinking arises from empirical science which reached its peak in the last century and which postulates the choice and the construction of "experimental models" with which to reproduce ad libitum (freely) those phenomena to be researched.
As an example, two condensors charged positively and negatively with electricity placed near together produce a spark. This is the experimental model of a natural phenomenon which is lightning. But for the study of man, what is the appropriate model for his functions and his malfunctions of his illnesses?
The solution seems obvious, but just for this reason it contains that deception which threatens all those things that, at first sight, seem to be "even too obvious". The proposition is made: "Let us take the animal as the experimental model for the human being." But here at once comes the first objection: "Which animal?" There are millions of species of animal on the earth. So, which should we use? The mouse? The dog? And why not the rhinoceros or the warthog?
In the physical and mechanical sciences the researcher projects and constructs his experimental model with characteristics appropriate to the aim he sets for himself each time.
In contrast, the researcher in biological sciences, assuming "the animal" to be the model, is obliged to accept something offered to him "prefabricated" by Nature. And it would indeed be a strange and improbable coincidence if such characteristics were right for the ends in view.
Even the choice between different species of animal is illusory: actually one is not even speaking of there being a choice at all, but of a kind of fishing blindly among different possibilities in a haphazard way or, worse, according to opportunistic criteria in deciding which animal is more or less convenient: the mouse, the rabbit, the guinea pig are "convenient" because they are easy to keep; cats and dogs because they are easily and cheaply obtainable: everything except the one element which ought to be the deciding factor: an animal having morphological, physiological and biochemical characteristics applicable to man. However, such an animal can only be man himself, or a chimera.
An experimental model of the human being does not exist. Every species, all the varieties of animals and even individuals of the same species are different from each other. No experimentation carried out on one species can be extrapolated to any other, including man. To suppose that such extrapolation could be legitimate is the main reason for the failure and sometimes for the catastrophes which are inflicted upon us by modern medicine, especially in the area of drugs. Too little is spoken or written about certain facts, partly in deference to a science which purports to be the "saviour of mankind", but more usually to avoid provoking the huge economic and political interests which prop up this benefactor. For example, in August 1978 only Japanese newspapers reported the appearance in Tokyo of 30,000 people paralysed and blinded by Clioquinol. The trial and sentencing of the firm which produced the drug was necessary for us to be able to know about the matter indirectly.
Another example: some publications like "Il Bollettino d'Informazione sui farmaci" (Drug Information Bulletin) of the Ministry of Health are not widely read. The issue of no. 8 of August 1983 tells us that:
"From 1972 to June 1983 the registration of 22,621 medicinal preparations has been revoked" (i.e. the sale prohibited). Clearly, all those preparations had passed with flying colours the animal experiments imposed by law.
But how many years must pass before it is realised that a medicine is dangerous and how many have fallen victim to it in the meantime?
This question is answered by Professor Hoff, (Congress of Clinical Medicine, Wiesbaden, 1976) "...6% of fatal illnesses and 25% of all illnesses are due to medicines".
Prof. Dr. Remmer of Tuebingen, at a meeting of German insurance companies, said "...in the Federal Republic of Germany about 30,000 deaths a year are due to medicines".
Our demand for the abolition of animal experiments is not based on a love of animals but a concern for the health of our fellow human beings.
Anti-vivisectionist thinking is much more scientific than the boasting of the vivisectors who do not realise that they live and function in a medieval climate of thought; besides, they are too lazy or too greedy to break loose from a comfortable conformity and apply themselves to scientifically correct methods, i.e. those methods which are wrongly called "alternative" and are today largely obsolete, having been overwhelmed by a misleading methodology.
There are many "alternative" methods; about 450 have been counted. However, their number is theoretically unlimited as every research endeavour presupposes devising a method specific to that research, able to guarantee a credible result, in harmony with scientific logic, repeatable ad libitum and capable of satisfying the "criterion of falsification"* - all qualities missing from the vivisectionist method.
Scientific progress is achieved only by small steps. We would prefer them to be "tiny" steps, but sure ones. The vivisectors like to present animal experimentation as a short cut to biological science without, however, having noticed that such a short cut leads them in the wrong direction. The claim that medicine must progress by "trial and error" is unacceptable. In medicine, error means the sacrifice of one person or thousands of people. We say deliberately "one or thousands" because for us "one" is of as much value as "thousands". The vivisector says: "But we work for the benefit of the majority". NO. You have no right to sacrifice anybody, not even one person, for the hypothetical and entirely uncertain benefit of an indefinite number of "others" at some unspecified time in the future.
A few minutes ago (it is 5.25 p.m. on 16 November 1984) the radio announced that Baby Fae** had died.
* The "criterion of falsification" expounded by Karl Popper (the Austrian philosopher) asserts that a proposition is not scientific if it cannot also be proven wrong. For example, the proposition "In a thousand years the sun will be extinguished" is not scientific because nobody is in a position to demonstrate that the event announced will not happen.
** Baby Fae is the nickname given to a baby girl born in California on 14 October 1984, with a heart malformation which meant that she could not survive for long. On the 26th October 1984 at the University Medical Centre of Loma Linda, Dr. Leonard Bailey transplanted a baboon's heart into her. A procession of people marched past the hospital in protest. The little victim died 21 days after the operation due to rejection of the new heart.
Baby Fae was the guinea-pig in an experiment of vivisection. The primary object (presumably) of the experiment was to establish whether rejection would take place even when the immune system is incomplete. It is an interesting scientific fact that rejection occurred, even though it was easily predictable. But, apart from that scientific fact, human and medical ethics must be taken into account. No scientific advance can be justified by torture.
But that is not all. A footnote makes this dreadful story quite incredible even at an elementary technical level (I deliberately avoid the term "scientific level"): Prof. Bailey himself tells us that rejection did not take place due to the incompatibility of the baboon's heart with the baby's tissues, but because - and this is absolutely inconceivable - his team did not bother to do what is done every day in any "AVIS" (Associazione Volontaria Italiana del Sangue - Italian Blood Transfusion Service) in Italy and around the world. His team did not check the blood group of the donor (the baboon) and the recipient (the baby girl). It turned out later that Baby Fae was of Blood Group "O" while the baboon was of Blood Group "AB".
Prof. Bailey commented: "The mixing of the blood groups was fatal. We were more afraid of the difference between the species than about the blood. We made a mistake". (from "La Repubblica", May 13, 1987). One can only hope that Prof. Bailey will learn from his blunder. And in fact Prof. Bailey "promised" to try again at the first opportunity. All the best, Prof. Leonard Bailey.
THEY HAD NO RIGHT TO DO IT. As a scientist, I recognise the great scientific interest of the experiment, but as a human being I maintain that the baby girl has been used as a guinea-pig and the offender should be punished by law. Otherwise one shares in that perverse way of thinking that "the ends justify the means", a catastrophic maxim that has cast a blight upon mankind for thousands of years.
Let us return to the "trial and error" concept. I prefer to call "scientific" those methods that others call "alternative". They are scientific because they are the most reliable, permitting a minimum of error, that is, of human suffering and death. There are three basic scientific methods - epidemiological research, mathematical models and cell and tissue culture in vitro. These methods do not allow us to promise sensationally rapid progress but, they are short, safe steps on a straight path.
It is often asked: "Why, then, are they so little used?" One reason is that universities, in their arrogant and musty academicism, continue to instruct the new generations of students by means of animal experiments. They are unable or willing to free themselves from a way of thinking and acting in which they plod blindly round in a dead-end street. It is easier to keep to old habits than to innovate, and for this reason a certain cultural climate still prevails. But even the mightiest empires collapse, and the greater their power, the noisier the crash when it comes.
Some vivisectionists, perhaps those gifted with a more critical cast of mind, begin to have doubts and look for a way to reconcile them. They admit that animal experimentation is uncertain, but it gives an indication that one is on the right track, which makes it worthwhile continuing in the same direction. "Indication" means "incomplete, guiding information". Incomplete information can indeed be useful under one condition - that it is correct.
We recall the story of the traveller who stopped a passer-by to ask: "Excuse me, where is the Church of St. Giobbe". The one asked makes a vague gesture with his hand in the eastward direction. This is an "indication", that is, a bit of information which, however incomplete, may help if the direction indicated is right. But if the passer-by, instead of giving an indication towards the EAST (where the church really is) indicates the WEST, or the SOUTH, or the NORTH, then his indication is not only incomplete, but also wrong and misleading.
The same is true of the vivisectionist method of research. If it gives incomplete, but correct indications, the method might be of some use. On the contrary, it is not only useless, but even misleading, because it provides only accidentally indications which coincide with the right direction, without the researcher having any way of foreseeing whether a fortunate coincidence can be verified or not.
What do the terms "by chance" or "by coincidence" mean? We have no difficulty in admitting that, for example, a substance poisonous for the dog can be so also for man; but that may be a pure coincidence obeying the law of probability, and, in accepting it, we commit an error which could claim victims before we become aware of it. There are, in fact, plenty of victims of modern medicine, so many, that learned papers are written about iatrogenic illnesses, that is, illnesses caused by doctors who seem to have forgotten the basic Hippocratic precept: Primum non nocere (First, don't cause harm).
The notion of vivisectionist experimentation on man is not a macabre fantasy. It is reckoned today to occur on a large scale. The vivisectors themselves are clearly beginning to realise that to experiment on one species of animal in order to extrapolate the results to another species (inter species experimentation) is a methodological error. They are therefore turning to intra speciem experimentation which means experimenting on the dog to learn things about the dog, on the cat to learn things about the cat... and on human beings to learn things about humans. But this sophisticated variation of vivisection, despite its allure, does not guarantee any more reliable results than those obtained by experimentation inter species (between species).
"No animal species can be an experimental model for any other species"; only superficial judgement can be content with morphological similarities like saying "the dog too, like man, has a head, two eyes... a liver, a heart, etc". Just as crude and misleading is it to have recourse to certain behavioural analogies as: "if I crush the foot of a dog, it howls, if I crush the foot of a man, he cries out, if I take the new-born infant away from a female monkey, she mourns, if I take the new-born baby away from a human mother, she mourns."*
* This truth should be reconsidered from its very roots: see the chapter about human mothers selling their children for vivisection.
These analogies exist and it would be foolish to deny them, but why do they exist? Having a common root they are attributes of that unfathomable and indivisible entity we call LIFE, an entity pervading the universe and possessing the quality of immanence, manifesting itself in every being, be it a plant, a worm or a man*.
However, turning to the material components of the tissues of countless animal species one needs to pause for a moment to consider the following: can two species of animal be considered analogous when it is known that the tissues of each species are made up of thousands of proteins (about ten thousand) of which not one belonging to one of two species is identical to a corresponding protein of the other species, and whose DNA (dioxyribonucleic acid) molecules which transmit hereditary characteristics, are all unlike each other in different species?**
DNA molecules differ from each other in different animal species, by the length of the chain of their double helix, by the number and arrangement of the nucleotids of which they are made up. The combinations which one can hypothesize from mathematical calculation are billions of billions, that is, as many combinations as are possible bearing in mind that there are about three billion nucleotids in human DNA.
A fundamental rule, to be strictly observed in each scientific experiment, is that each experiment must be capable of being repeated. An experiment is repeatable when it is carried out anywhere, at any time and by any researcher, and always produces an identical result. If that does not happen it means that there is something wrong. Either the hypothesis is wrong*** or it is not demonstrable or the method used to demonstrate it is flawed. Now, the question is this: does the experimentation on animals (including the human being) have the intrinsic characteristic of being repeatable anywhere, at any time and by any researcher?
* That certain types of behaviour should have a common root seems clear when we pause to consider, without scientific bias, any living being: the search for food, flight from danger, the reproductive urge and other kinds of behaviour which we might for the sake of convenience term "instinct". These fundamental attributes of the phenomenon LIFE.
** Diversity between proteins and between other components (mainly polysaccharides) of different species (animals and plants) is basic to all phenomena in immunology, from allergies to organ rejection.
*** A false proposition is of this type: "Man can fly by waving his arms". This proposition, however, contains within itself Popper's criterion of falsification, because anyone can demonstrate its falseness. On the other hand, a proposition of which nobody could ever demonstrate the falsity is the following: "In a thousand years the sun will be extinguished".
The reply comes from research carried out at the University of Bremen, in a paper entitled "Die Problematik der Wirkungsschwelle in Pharmakologie und Toxikologie" ("Problems of activity threshold in pharmacology and toxicology"):*
The authors of this research concluded that "if such trifling environmental conditions bring about such widely differing and unforeseeable results, this means that animal experimentation cannot be relied upon in assessing a chemical substance and it is all the more absurd to extrapolate to problems of human health results which are intrinsically wrong."
Finally, the following should be noted. The above observations are made, not by anti-vivisectionists, but by vivisectors, who have had the merit of defining the limits of a methodology in which, hitherto, they have certainly believed.
* The data indicated with an asterisk on this and on part of the next page were supplied by the medical doctor and surgeon Dr. Werner Hartinger of Waldshut-Tiengen.
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