Section: Quotations
Subsection: Vivisection
Last revision: January 31, 2008
Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are like us." Ask the experimenters why it is morally OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are not like us." Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction. -- Professor Charles R.Magel
At present, scientists do not look for alternatives simply because they do not care enough about the animals they are using. -- Grace Slick
Nothing but total abolition will meet the case of vivisection. I am quite disgusted at the frequency of the most horrible experiments to determine the most trivial facts... evidently carried on for the interest of the 'research' and the reputation it gives. -- Alfred Russell Wallace (co-discoverer of evolution)
What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit for their cruelty. -- Leo Tolstoy
Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research. -- George Bernard Shaw
Vivisection. Nothing is of such high importance as to justify such unethical methods. --Albert Einstein
Doctors who speak out in favour of vivisection do not deserve any recognition in society, all the more so since their brutality is apparent not only during such experiments, but also in their practical medical lives. They are mostly men who stop at nothing in order to satisfy their ruthless and unfeeling lust for honours and gain. -- Dr. med. Hugo Knecht
One day the world will look upon research upon animals as it now looks upon research on human beings -- Leonardo Da Vinci
Results from animal tests are not transferable between species, and therefore cannot guarantee product safety for humans...In reality these tests do not provide protection for consumers from unsafe products, but rather they are used to protect corporations from legal liability. -- Herbert Gundersheimer, M.D., member, PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine)
I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. -- Mark Twain
I despise and abhor the pleas on behalf of that infamous practice, vivisection... I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured to death on the pretense of sparing me a twinge or two. -- Robert Browning (poet)
I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Mutilating animals and calling it "science" condemns the human species to moral and intellectual hell...this hideous Dark Age of the mindless torture of animals must be overcome. -- Grace Slick
I do not believe that any of the suffering I have caused to laboratory animals has helped humanity in the slightest. -- Richard Ryder
I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better, it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty. The whole thing is evil. -- Dr. Charles Mayo (founder of the Mayo Clinic)
The medical argument for animal testing doesn't stand up. Even if it did, I don't think we should kill other species. -- Paul McCartney
I had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in Holland. They lived next to each other in separate cages for several months before I used one as a [heart] donor. When we put him to sleep in his cage in preparation for the operation, he chattered and cried incessantly. We attached no significance to this, but it must have made a great impression on his companion, for when we removed the body to the operating room, the other chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for days. The incident made a deep impression on me. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures. -- Christian Barnard (surgeon)
If you don't like my opinions leave.But just remember, the animals can't leave the cages that hold them. They are captive and suffering. As you cozy into your bed tonight, try to imagine the pain and the suffering that they endure day after day and night after night. Next time you get some soap in your eyes, try to imagine that pain for 3 or 4 days at a time. Next time you have a stomach ache, try to imagine liquid plumber being poured down your throat till you puke so much blood that you bleed to death. Next time you bump your head, try to imagine being a monkey and getting a steel plate smashed into your skull at 50 miles per hour. Then, only then should you feel compelled to tell me that I'm wrong about my opinions. For all these things have happened in the name of science. They continue in abundance till this day. -- Ricki Rockett
They've been trying to test on animals for the past 50 years. Nobody's come up with a cure. If you want to test on somebody, test on me. -- Montell Williams
Men who have practiced tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame. How can they still hold their heads high among human beings? -- Samuel Johnson
Many vivisectors still claim that what they do helps save human lives. They are lying. The truth is that animal experiments kill people, and animal researchers are responsible for the deaths of thousands of men, women and children every year. -- Dr. Vernon Coleman, Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, UK.
During my medical education at the University of Basel I found vivisection horrible, barbarous, and above all unnecessary. -- Carl G. Jung (psychologist)
Vivisection is barbaric, useless, and a hindrance to scientific progress. -- Dr. Werner Hartinger, Chief Surgeon
The cruel experimenter cannot be allowed to have it both ways. He cannot, in the same breath, defend the scientific validity of vivisection on the grounds of the physical similarities between man and the other animals, and then defend the morality of vivisection on the grounds that men and animals are physically different. The only logical alternatives for him are to admit he is either pre-Darwinian or immoral. -- Richard Ryder
There will come a time when the world will look back to modern vivisection in the name of Science, as they do now to burning at the stake in the name of religion. -- Henry J. Bigelow