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Vaccine testing - faster and better

Announcement posted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Australia 18 Jun 2020

The Editor,


Dear Editor,
 
Like many Australians of a certain age I’m spending most of my time at home, hoping a COVID-19 vaccine will be available very soon. The CSIRO, usually at the cutting edge of science and technology research in this country, is wasting precious time squirting the virus up ferrets’ noses! Ferrets don’t go to protests or footie matches, so let’s leave them alone!
 
Testing on non-human animals is not only unethical, it is scientifically unjustifiable. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) reports that 95 out of every 100 drugs that test safe and effective in animals never make it through human clinical trials. Tests on animals are no guarantee of human safety, and this was tragically illustrated in the 2006 clinical trial for the immunomodulatory drug Theralizumab, where six human volunteers suffered multiple organ failure after receiving a dose 500 times smaller than that found safe in animal tests. Thankfully, medicines regulators – including the Therapeutic Goods Administration – are waking up to this and have decided that some COVID-19 vaccines can go directly to human trials without waiting for the results of certain lengthy and deadly animal tests. Innovative, non-animal research methods, combined with responsibly conducted tests on human volunteers, are the surest route to effective treatments and vaccines.
 
Unlike humans, animals can’t agree to being experimented on. They are born and die in a laboratory and spend the intervening time in small, bleak cages, denied all freedom and autonomy. In these secret, high security institutions, they may be infected with the virus, then force-fed or injected with drugs for days or weeks before being gassed to death and dissected.
 
Not in our name, not on our time. Stop this cruel, archaic wastage, and go straight to human tests.
 
Desmond Bellamy
Special Projects Coordinator
PETA Australia
PO Box 2352
Byron Bay NSW 2481
0411 577 416
DesmondB@PETA.org.au