TRAFFICO INTERNAZIONALE DI ANIMALI PER LA SPERIMENTAZIONE ANIMALE, I test bellici e spaziali, il traffico di primati, cani e gatti

Abstract

Vivisection is a word used as a synonym for animal testing and animal experimentation. Every experiment involves the suffering of animals, even without sectioning them alive. Anaesthetic by law can also be avoided if the aim of the experiment requires this; anyway the awakening from the anaesthetic can cause upsetting pain, and death, for the animal, can represent liberation. Animal experimentation causes disasters to human beings and to other animals, like the Thalidomide tragedy: a sedative that caused congenital malformation in humans but not in animals on which it was tested on. It was commercialized from 1957 to 1962 because no species of the lab animals treated with Thalidomide produced foetuses with congenital malformation. Only when 10.000 children were born with congenital malformation, the drug was withdrawn from the market; because only when the Thalidomide was tested in huge doses on the white rabbit of New Zealand produced congenital malformation in animals. Vivisection is based on 3 enormous errors: 1) All species are different from each other; 2) The environment has some effects on a living being, like for example the condition of staying in the laboratory changes the reaction of the animals; 3) Diseases are artificially induced on animals, while in nature they come spontaneously; so there is confusion between the symptom and the syndrome. Toxic substances for human are totally harmless for many lab animal species and vice versa: the similarities can only be demonstrated after the experiment is repeated on the second species. Vivisection damages humans in 3 ways: 1) Animal testing does not give predictive results for humans. So without a preventive selection the substances are tested on humans; 2) There is the risk of rejecting useful substances for humans, because they result poison for another species; 3) Time and money wasted on animal testing could be used for specific tests which may be useful for humans. By law after animal testing there is human testing and that’s a proof that animal data are not predictive for humans; if it was the case, it would be possible to pass from animal testing directly to commercialization.As this is a degree in Comparative International Relations, I gave an international perspective to this work, focusing on animal experimentation for war and space purposes, to show how animals are used to prepare men to kill other men. During the Cold War, because of the competition between USA and USSR, both powers tortured and killed an uncountable number of animals.It’s an international topic the trafficking and commerce of non-human primates that from Asia, Africa and Oceania are brought into European and American laboratories, the most of the times dying on the way. The island of Mauritius is, after China, the biggest exporter of monkey in the world. United Kingdom is one of the biggest importers of monkeys for research.At the moment there are still two air companies (Air France and ABX Air) that transport monkeys. To stop them we have to demonstrate against them and boycott them.Another international subject is the illegal trafficking of stray and personally owned dogs and cats that in Italy are stolen from the streets, the kennels or the owners to be taken in the Centre-North European laboratories. To stop this trafficking, we need to isolate the corrupted associations and kennels, to avoid couriers and seats, making adoptions in the nearby and by checking before and after putting the animal under the care of someone.The ECI Stop Vivisection, with a Scientific Committee, asked the abolition of the 63/2010 Directive, the promulgation of an European law to put an end to animal experimentation, a European scientific conference before 2016, the alternative methods became compulsory, validated without using vivisection as the gold standard for comparison, the promotion of the alternative methods by European Union.