Cover of my 6th vegan artbook. With my animal liberator character: Sanctuar saving bunnehs from testing labs. Of course it had to be bunnehs because I love bunnehs! The grafitti text "Test on yourselves, we're free" is based on a real grafitti text left by activists who saved an entire lab of animals from the monsters. They took all of them with them. Amazing! Animal testing is the epitome of injustice, so I thought this concept would suit the cover most, even though the artbook focuses on much more than that subject. And yes, this time my character Sanctuar will finally appear in the series. To read his backstory, you'd have to read my other book: The Devil of justice though. This new book VEGventures INJUSTICE contains another load of comics and art about animal rights. 

 Art & comics
 Cover illustration 

ETHICS

I completely disgust people who approve of animal testing. It's different than with people who consume animal products, because those are just ignorant most of the time. But everyone knows how ugly research labs using living beings against their will are. Seriously, I would never trust anyone who approves of animal testing with my dogs or my children! They're the epitome of malice because they have no respect for the lives of other beings and treat child molesters, rapists and murderers better than the most innocent beings in the world just because "they are not like us", just like their disgusting ancestors did, who used to test on human slaves against their will in their era. The only ones who deserve to be forced in harmful tests are people who approve of doing this to other beings. And honestly, if someone who approves of purposely giving innocent beings a deadly disease or injury, then I'd even call it karma if disease or injury struck those people themselves. What goes around comes around. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Would I take medication that was tested on animals to save my own life? Probably, if there was no other option. But I would do the same when it came to taking medication that was tested on Jews, black slaves or other human beings against their will in the past. That doesn't mean that I think testing on animals/people without their consent is ok though. It should end and more money should be used for the alternatives, because those labs, who test on humans and human tissue, have booked so much more results (doh!), but are always forced to halt their research because of the lack of money. The parasites who approve of animal testing need to get off their high horse and stop acting like their lives are more special than others: they're not. In fact: from a neutral perspective, when it comes to who's the most useful, those people are at the bottom of the ladder, because all they do is take and destroy, and never give back to the earth. People who claim that animals are of lower value than humans can never explain why exactly they believe that, because they just blindly copied the excuse from the scum that raised them. Their argument always narrows down to "because they're not like me" which is the same argument used by sexists, racists and homophobes to defend what they're doing to their victims and also completely irrelevant to determining the value of one's life. You could compare people like this with the spoiled brats of millionares who think they are above everything just because of something irrelevant: their money. People like this always tend to pull some irrelevant stuff like gender, sexual preference, skin colour or species to claim their own superiority.

"Because they're not straight."
"Because they're not men."
"Because they're not white."
"Because they're not human."

Irrelevant. All living, sentient beings value their lives just as much as you do. You are not superior. You are not the crown of creation. So...

If you approve of testing on living sentient beings without their consent...
And feel sorry for all the people with (lifestyle) diseases...
Why don't YOU go be the test subject?
Or don't you care enough about people with diseases to let researchers rip your organs out and spay poison into your eyes?
If you wouldn't do it to yourself and your own family, you shouldn't force it upon others and their families.
You are not a god. You are not superior. You're just an ape who thinks s/he's something better.

Also, animal testing has become a business today. Instead of teaching people how to avoid heart disease or reverse it (like the doctors on Forks over knives and What The Health do, saving thousands of lives), animal testing "researchers" act like it can't be cured unless you wait for their methods in which they can make money of. They purposely delay finding a cure for many, many decades, because people with heart disease, diabetes, cancer, kidney disease etc. are worth millions to the medical industry. They exploit naive people and use most of their donation money for their own personal bullshit. And their excuses are always the same as the ones used by people who tested on slaves, Jews etc. It's disgusting and disrespectful. Instead of realizing that it was wrong to test on other living beings after WWII, they'd rather copy the oppressor's ways, and even their excuses. The only thing that's changed is the victim.

We have to test on animals to make sure cosmetics are safe
At this stage, we have pretty sound knowledge of so much in chemistry, most research is redundant actually and is only going on in the same way because of outdated laws stating that it must take place. It's essentially ridiculous bureaucracy perpetuating what is clearly unethical at this time. Many products are no longer tested on animals, some countries have outlawed it entirely for cosmetics, and it is no problem. There are alternatives to animal testing.

We have to test on animals to make medical advances
Many people like to make the argument that X people will die unless we experiment on Y animals, therefore it's justified as human life is more important, and if you outlaw animal testing then you have essentially just killed X people. It isn't as simple as that, because actually animal testing has alternatives. Companies like www.drhadwentrust.orgare working to continue medical research, without having to torture, exploit and kill animals. There is another question - is animal testing even useful to us, as we are very different to animals? Read more here to learn more.
www.huffingtonpost.com/aysha-a…

But would you use medicine to save your life? 
I don't know because I've never been in that situation, but it is highly likely that I would, yes. Putting me in a position where I would actually die, means that my decision making is going to be based around survival, probably to the exclusion of others entirely. Put a gun to my head, I might do anything which I'd otherwise say is unethical, to avoid being shot. That does not make the action ethical outside those circumstances. On another note, if a cure already exists, then not using it on principle because of the way it was discovered, it's questionable in terms of its effect on anything. It might make a good final statement before you die from the condition if you could get news coverage, but ultimately I think it's understandable to take that cure to save your life because of the situation. But, if we look at it in terms of ongoing research on these animals, if you have a condition and at the time there is no cure - would you volunteer your companion animals to be tortured and then killed as part of the research? Or would you say, they are nothing to do with it, and you'd rather accept your situation than have them experience hell so you can potentially find a cure? I know that I wouldn't want it to happen. But luckily, it is not an either/or situation because there are alternatives to animal testing like www.drhadwentrust.org

- Vegan Sidekick

WHY WE STILL TEST ON ANIMALS

As we saw in the first post regarding animal testing, non-animal tests are generally more reliable, less costly, and always more humane. So you may ask, why the $#@&^ are we still testing on animals? well here are the three main reasons:

1. Momentum (meaning familiarity, or “it’s what we’ve always done”)
2. Money
3. For companies to cover their sses!

So, reason one, momentum. According to SaferMedicines.org, which by the way, is an organization that has nothing to do with animal rights and everything to do with human safety say, “many factors perpetuate animal experimentation, the most obvious of which is momentum.  The tradition is so deeply ingrained that the whole system is based on it.  Technological lock-in and status quo bias are powerful factors here.”  This is the same argument of eating animals and animal byproducts because it’s what we’ve always done.

And now on to the second reason, the big number two.  And I mean that in both ways: money. Researchers attract grant money based on how many papers they publish in scientific literature. It is much easier and faster to publish papers using animals, than by doing human-based research. Remember Dr. Vlasak from the first post?  He’s the medical doctor who is also an animal rights activist and he states,

“I was told that I could make a name for myself if I published papers and experimented on animals; and I was told that universities were given lots of money by the government as long as they continue to do experiments on animals.  Being the naive young doctor and wanting to follow the lead of others, I did a year of vivisection and visited animal labs throughout the country.  What I learned and what I saw with my own eyes was mind-boggling.  I learned that the pharmaceutical companies spent millions of dollars taking doctors out to dinner and paying for lavish vacations for them and their families.

“And in turn, these researchers were to manipulate animal experiments to get the results the drug industries wanted.  I learned that the way universities get grant money isn’t by coming up with the best and most scientific research methods, but by continuing to use animals as a model because of the billions of dollars made in the vivisection industry.  Greed, corruption and absolute power; these are the things that drive the vivisection industry; not saving lives or preventing disease.  The scientists who still use animals in their research are not only frauds, but are addicted to an outdated form of research.  Colin Blakemore for instance, who has sewn kittens eyes closed for fun and profit, is no more of a true scientist than the mad scientists in the monster movies we watched in the 50s.

“In all reality, vivisection is a business.  The organization Last Chance for Animals states that “vivisection uses images of sick children and notions of medical necessity to play upon our sympathies and generate revenue.  In reality, children all over the world routinely die from starvation and curable diseases while we waste millions on animal experimentation.”

Now just how much money are we talking about?  Every year the US vivisection industries spend over $18 billion on animal experiments.  The United States National Institutes of Health is the world’s greatest source that funds animal experimentation, with an annual budget of more than $13 billion.  And just where does this money come from?  Your wallet.  More than $16 billion of US taxpayer money goes to animal testing, despite its ineffectiveness.

So just what are you paying for?  Here’s some examples of animal experimentation funded by taxpayer money:

 

• At the University of Pennsylvania, to study the results of head trauma, primates were strapped into machinery to receive high impact blows to the head.  A video camera captured by an animal rights activist, showed footage of vivisectionists taunting the injured animals who were left with severe brain damage.
• To examine severe burns on life tissue, the United States army restrained pigs who were burned alive with a flame thrower until their charred flesh could be removed in large pieces.
• To measure injury recovery, the Uniformed Services University Department of Defense strapped dogs down and cut apart the skin on their knees, leaving flaps.  At the end of the study, all the dogs were killed.
• At Emory University, to demonstrate that the eyes protein levels are the same in sight deprived monkeys compared to normal ones, animal experimenters sewed the monkeys eyelids shut.
• Our government-run space agency NASA, committed $1.75 million dollars in taxpayer money to fund experiments subjecting 1 foot tall squirrel monkeys to massive amounts of radiation.

All of these cruel labs are very expensive.  Each dog lab at the University of Colorado for instance costs taxpayers about $40,000.

And finally reason number three: companies covering their asses.  Pharmaceutical companies continue to do animal tests because they provide liability protection in court when the drug happens to kill or injure a person.  Companies test on animals in order to provide data that they can use to defend themselves when they are sued by injured customers.  Even though the very same courts have ruled that the FDA has failed to show that the results of animal tests can be extrapolated to humans.  Basically the unreliability of animal test allows companies to put virtually any product on the market.

- Bitesizevegan

_{Resources:
PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine)
Safer Medicines.org Articles
ADAPTT.org
Negotiation Is Over
Video on the finding from the raid of UPenn’s head trauma lab
Infographic on taxpayer money funding animal testing
www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-env...
and www.negotiationisover.net}


This book will probably be available for pre-order later this year.
Keep an eye on my pages, I'll link to it soon.



If you're interested to learn more about the truth about vivisection, I suggest you order the book:

They All Had Eyes: Confessions of a Vivisectionist ( www.amazon.com/They-All-Had-Ey…)

written by Michael Slusher. Most people have a blind spot in their understanding of how biomedical and pharmaceutical research is performed. They may be vaguely aware that some mice and rats were involved - the animals themselves no doubt benefiting from wondrous injections of life-saving compounds, with minimal suffering. The truth is far more horrifying and brutal than people can imagine. In this book, the author has laid open a raw wound in his heart to help people see behind the curtain and observe what actually takes place in what can only be described as true dungeons of despair. In it, he chronicles the animals that he worked on - from mice to dogs to monkeys - and the terrible procedures that he performed on them as a matter of business. The author shares his reflections about his work and the traumatic memories he experiences as a result, pulling no punches nor whitewashing the details of his previous profession. This book highlights the intense suffering and waste of thousands of lives in such a way as to leave the reader without any doubt about whether animal research is justified or required.

or...

The book 

Censored Health (www.amazon.com/Censored-Health…)

written by Dr. Gabor Lenkei. Why do we live half as long as we possibly could? Why do only traditional people live to be a hundred? Who shapes our ideas on health? Why were the most important scientific discoveries abouth health suppressed, and by whom? How can you make a fortune on children, using an invented illness?
What are the most important causes of obesity? Who concealed the cure for cancer? Do you know how easy it is to remain in a good health?