Animal Experimentation: Promoting Alternatives

OVERVIEW

	A 3-D computer model of a mouse lung, used in the study of pollutants.

Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.

— George Bernard Shaw

Scientists and doctors have demonstrated and documented over and over again that vivisection — experimentation on live animals — is conceptually invalid and methodologically unsound. It is also morally unacceptable to burn, blind, infect, shock, addict, and genetically or surgically mutilate healthy animals. Nevertheless, millions of animals are tortured in laboratories every year. All universities and hospitals in Israel perform experiments on animals, and chemical and biological warfare experiments are performed on animals at the Biological Institute in Ness Ziona. Financial support for these experiments comes from the U.S. government and from the American Jewish community. For detailed information about vivisection, see Animal Experimentation.

In various ways, CHAI has promoted the use of alternatives to replace animals in experimentation.

• Fund to promote alternatives
  CHAI has established a fund to promote alternatives to the use of animals in laboratories in Israel. The money may be used to sponsor an exhibit of currently available alternatives for Israel's biomedical research community or to award a grant to a student or a scientist working on developing an alternative.
   

• International medical conference on alternatives
  CHAI sponsored a major international medical conference, keynoted by Henry Heimlich, M.D., inventor of the Heimlich Maneuver, on alternatives to the use of animals in laboratories. This was the first conference of its kind anywhere in the world. CHAI's second alternatives conference, scheduled for April 2000, was cancelled after the then-head of the national committee charged with overseeing animal experiments, himself a vivisector, threatened to exert his influence to see that funding was withheld from the medical schools if they continued to sponsor the event.