Please help to ban experiments with animals in Estonia and write to

The Parliament of Estonia

http://www.riigikogu.ee/?c_tpl=1041&rep_id=31508

e mail   riigikogu@riigikogu.ee

President of the Republic of Estonia
http://www.president.ee/en/

Ministry of Agriculture
http://www.agri.ee/index.php/16439/

The Government of the Respubic of Estonia.
http://www.valitsus.ee/?lang=en

Information about Estonia 2007 year.

REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL AND THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT in year 2007.
Fifth Report on the Statistics on the Number of Animals used for Experimental and other Scientific Purposes in the Member States of the European Union.

NUMBER OF ANIMALS USED IN EXPERIMENTS FOR SELECTED PURPOSES
1.Biological studies of a fundamental nature -Mice 200 ,

2.Research and development of products and devices for human medicine and
dentistry and for veterinary medicine (excluding toxicological and other safety evaluations counted in column - Mice 4150 , Rats 484  ,Rabbits 66 .

NUMBER OF ANIMALS USED IN EXPERIMENTS FOR STUDIES ON HUMAN AND ANIMAL DISEASES
1.Human cardiovascular diseases - 340 mice, 14 rats , 66 rabbits
2.Human nervous and mental disorders - 2300 mice, 320 rats ,
3.Human cancer (excluding evaluations of carcinogenic hazards or risks) - 1070 mice ,
Other human diseases - 640 mice ,150 rats .
total 4900 animals

Animal Experiments: Overview

Experimentation on animals in laboratories generally falls into one of three categories—toxicity testing, education and training, and basic or applied research. It is a common misconception that most tests on animals are carried out with the aim of finding a cure for cancer, AIDS, or other devastating human diseases. Surveys clearly show that the public accepts animal experimentation only because it is believed to be necessary for medical progress.(1) But according to some national statistics, nearly two-thirds of all animal research has little or nothing to do with curing human diseases or advancing human medicine.(2) The reality is that much of this research is little more than curiosity-driven cruelty.

What You Can Do
Tell research-funding agencies to kick their animal experimentation habit.

When writing letters, make the following two points:

• Animal experimentation is an inherently violent and unethical practice that I do not want my tax dollars to support.
• Funding for research into health and ecological effects should be redirected into the use of epidemiological, clinical, in vitro, and computer modeling studies instead of laboratory experiments on animals.

The Way Forward
Human clinical, population, and in vitro studies are critical to the advancement of medicine; even animal experimenters need them—if only to confirm or reject the validity of their experiments. However, research with human participants does require a different outlook, one that perfectly illustrates the underlying philosophy of ethical science. Animal researchers artificially induce disease; clinical investigators study people who are already ill or who have died. Animal researchers want a disposable “research subject” who can be manipulated as desired and killed when convenient; clinicians must do no harm to their patients or study participants. Animal experimenters face the ultimate dilemma, knowing that their artificially created “animal model” can never fully reflect the human condition; clinical investigators know that the results of their work are directly relevant to people. Remarkably, however, health charities and government research-funding agencies currently devote more funds to animal studies than to investigations of our own species!

Human health and well-being can best be promoted by adopting nonviolent methods of scientific investigation and concentrating on the prevention of disease before it occurs, through lifestyle modification and the prevention of further environmental pollution and degradation. The public needs to become more aware and more vocal about the cruelty and inadequacy of the current research system and must demand that its tax dollars and charitable donations no longer be used to fund research on animals.

Troublesome Trends
In the rapidly expanding field of biotechnology, commercial pressures carry the threat of creating even more animal suffering through deliberate genetic manipulation. By inserting or removing genes from an animal’s genetic makeup, experimenters are producing entirely new (“transgenic” or “knockout”) breeds, which they hope to patent, thereby ensuring monopoly rights on the sale of these breeds. Major business applications of this technology include the creation of new animals to be used as “disease models” for research, animals to act as “drug factories” for producing pharmaceuticals and vaccines, and faster-growing animals for factory-farming operations.(12) Another controversial application of genetic-manipulation technology is the creation of “humanized” animals to serve as a source of organs and tissues for transplantation, even though animal-to-human organ transplants have never been successful and have the potential to spread dangerous viruses.

Because of the unpredictable nature of genetic manipulation, any “mistakes” that are made can have disastrous consequences for the animals involved. Transgenic pigs who were bred to grow faster and leaner have suffered from arthritis, lethargy, abnormal skull growth, and impaired immune systems.(13) The widely recognized potential for genetic manipulation to result in adverse effects on animals’ health and well-being prompted the Canadian Council on Animal Care to classify these experiments in the second-most severe “category of invasiveness”––with the potential to cause “moderate to severe distress or discomfort.”(14,15)

The creation of new strains of genetically manipulated animals is also incredibly wasteful and inefficient. Only between 1 and 10 percent of animals successfully incorporate the foreign genetic material injected into their embryos; those who do not are killed.(16) This means that as many as 99 animals may be killed for every “viable” transgenic animal who is born.

Wasteful and Unreliable
Each year, around the world, millions of birds, cats, dogs, farmed animals, fish, mice, monkeys, rats, rabbits, and other domestic and wild animals are subjected to a wide variety of experiments in the name of biology, psychology, biochemistry, physiology, genetic manipulation, and bio-warfare.  The growing trend toward curiosity-driven research is largely a product of today’s “publish or perish” research environment, in which scientists are recognized for the number of research papers they publish rather than the contribution that each study makes to the advancement of science or medicine.

Diseases that are artificially induced in animals in a laboratory are never identical to those that occur naturally in human beings. And because animal species differ from one another in many biologically significant ways, it becomes even more unlikely that animal research will yield results that will be correctly interpreted and applied to the human condition in a meaningful way. The fact that the species most often used in laboratory experiments are chosen largely for nonscientific reasons, such as cost and ease of handling, casts further doubt on the validity of this research. In addition, the results of animal experiments are often so variable and easily manipulated that researchers have used them to “prove”––depending on the source of funding––that cigarettes do cause cancer and that they do not! A careful scientific review of 10 randomly chosen “animal models” of human disease found that they made little, if any, contribution toward the treatment of human patients.(7)

San Marino bans vivisection

Maybe a small step, but it seems highly significant to me: the Republic of San Marino, an independent state lying entirely in north-east Italy, has abolished all experiments on animals.This tiny country on the Adriatic Coast, which already has the record of being the oldest republic in the world, now can be proud of another record in the history of civilization: to be the first country on the globe to totally forbid animal experimentation.In February of this year the Associazione Sammarinese Protezione Animali (A.P.A.S.) presented a law proposal supported by citizens’ signatures to ban vivisection, which on the 20th September 2007 has been approved by the General Council, San Marino’s legislative body.Now San Marino can call itself a “cruelty-free country”, at least as far as animal experimentation is concerned."We are very happy of this result, so good and quick" say Marina Berati from NoVivisezione.org and Massimo Tettamanti, Europe manager for I-CARE (Centro Internazionale per le Alternative nella Ricerca e nella Didattica), who, along with Stefano Cagno from Rome’s Lega Anti-Vivisezione, have been helping to achieve this outcome, "and A.P.A.S. volunteers have been extremely determined and successful. From now on San Marino will be off-limits for chemical and pharmaceutical companies carrying out animal tests and for all research institutions, both public and private, often funded by unaware members of the public, which base their research on vivisection".A.P.A.S. Press Office says that thanks to this new law, which heavily punishes animal experimenters, San Marino Republic will represent a pole of attraction for companies using methods alternative to vivisection, which are better, more reliable and cheaper too.I don’t know how many animal tests were conducted in San Marino before the introduction of this law. But I don’t think that the number of animals saved is the only issue here. I believe that this is a breakthrough anyway, because it establishes a precedent and has great historical significance, morally and politically.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/11/please-help-stop-quotiamsquot-cruel-testing-on-animals

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