Animal research
Sir - You quoted me saying that Oxford University will be glad if and when animal research becomes unnecessary. This is true. However, as I went on to explain, that day has not yet arrived. There is scientific consensus worldwide that some animal research is needed to make medical progress.
Those who believe scientists are unwilling to move away from animal use because of inertia or lazy thinking are misguided. There is every incentive - legal, moral and financial - to find other ways to answer research questions.
Animals are used only where no other research technique is possible.
Professor Rodney Phillips, University of Oxford
I am not myself in favour of the usual sort of animal research that is done "to make medical progress", especially when the "medical progress" is for the supposed benefit of people, rather than animals themselves, and often entails a lot of suffering for the hapless animals that are the subjects of the research. I believe this suffering cannot be morally justified. And there have been plenty of instances of drug companies suppressing evidence they don't want us to know. - Have a look at some of the evidence:
The news that antidepressants in actual fact don't work better than sugar pills and increase the risk of suicide has filled major media during the past year. Psychiatrists, Big Pharma and medical agencies, responsible for distorting the facts for many years, are now working hard to save profits and careers, says Swedish independent investigator and reporter Janne Larsson.
Read article on Sepp Hasslberger's Health Supreme website
Tricyclic antidepressants, e.g. amitriptyline, also known as Elavil, Tryptanol, Endep, Elatrol, Tryptizol, Trepiline, Laroxyl, also cause weight gain/fluid retention and are therefore a common cause of obesity, a very serious illness. Likewise several steroids and HRT - See prescribed steroids and HRT and amitriptyline
Glaxo 'downplayed' warning on heart-attack risk from Aids drug
GlaxoSmithKline and one of its key executives are facing possible manslaughter charges re. side-effects of an anti-Hepatitis "B" vaccine
US VACCINE MAKER TARGET OF HOMOCIDE INVESTIGATION
In a criminal case guaranteed to send shockwaves throughout the international pharmaceutical industry, French authorities are targeting a US-based drug company and its executives in a homicide investigation. The multi-billion dollar corporation GlaxoSmithKline and one of its key executives are facing possible manslaughter charges stemming from allegations that the company failed to fully disclose side effects from an anti-Hepatitis "B" vaccine distributed between 1994 and 1998. Also being investigated is the French-based drug company Sanofi Pasteur, which also sold doses of the Hepatitis "B" vaccine, according to French news sources
Read article at newswithviews.com
Drugs 'of no benefit' to hyperactive children
Scale of pharma payments to med schools revealed
It was reported on 19 July 2006 in Britain's "Daily Telegraph" that the British Pharmacological Society has drawn attention to the widespread poor prescribing practices among doctors.
I was glad to see this, especially following on as it does, the Sunday Telegraph's report 'Sleaze in the Medical Profession' of July 9th 2006. As a steroid victim myself, damaged and made morbidly obese by being inappropriately prescribed HRT (without testing hormone levels first) and by inadequate monitoring and testing thereafter, I feel peculiarly well-placed to make critical comments.
We are not just badly served by our extremely highly paid doctors, we are ill-served by our politicians and by the Department of Health and by the Parliamentary Select Committees and many other individuals and agencies and professional bodies who should be monitoring these matters. - I wrote well over 30 letters to MPs and Select Committees, medics, scientists, media people and others in 2001 about the dire consequences of inappropriate prescribing - often in high dose - of certain steroids and of HRT and of amitriptyline, an antidepressant drug. Following those I received only one helpful reply - from Professor Sir Richard Doll, agreeing with what I had written about the obesity problems caused by poor prescribing and indicating that these could be lessened by diuretics and/or eating less salt/sodium, a fact I had already deduced. He wrote that all doctors should know this. - Mine didn't - and furthermore, mine CATEGORICALLY refused me diuretics when I asked to try them!
It is over 50 years since steroids were first prescribed and it is both incredible and deplorable that most doctors are still unaware in practice of their potential for causing sodium and water retention and morbid obesity, cancer and type 2 diabetes, heart disease, blindness and the many other serious health problems attendant on these... - That this is the case MUST be largely the responsibility of the researchers working for the drug companies, and the drug companies themselves, who MUST have known the facts because of their research on animals.
Animal research doesn't seem to have saved much suffering in the case of the many millions of victims of drug-induced morbid obesity, does it, since the findings of the animal research have been so well concealed from the people who most needed to know the truth? Nor, of course, was there justification for the deaths and suffering of the animals sacrificed in this research.
See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page.
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