SPEAK - Dr Jerry Vlasak replies to media libel

SPEAK CAMPAIGN PRESS RELEASE: 25th July 2004

DIRTY TRICKS CAMPAIGN SWINGS INTO ACTION - Dr Vlasak Replies


Over the past week we have seen an attempt by the Pharmaceutical companies and Government - ably assisted by their friends in the media - to discredit the animal rights movement and campaigning groups at the forefront of challenging the vivisection industry in the UK.

Organisations mounting legal challenges against the effectiveness of vivisection have been labelled as extremist, terrorist and fundamentalist. The purpose of this is to divert attention from the real perpetrators of violence who thus become the implied victims, therein masking the true face of those inflicting terror and concealing what goes on behind laboratory walls.

Today saw yet another attempt to divert public attention away from the truth with a story by a journalist in the Observer newspaper, who made libellous allegations against Dr Jerry Vlasak, one of SPEAK's scientific advisers. Dr Vlasaks reply to those falsehoods is printed in full below. Both the SPEAK campaign and Dr Vlasak will be taking legal advice to address the remarks incorrectly attributed to Dr Vlasak in the article.

"I was outraged by Jamie Doward's article in the Observer stating that I, a medical doctor who spends my entire life SAVING lives, is calling for or encouraging the assassination or killing of any being, human or non human. Mr Doward has libelled me and I am going to meet with an attorney to discuss my options. This just proves that in order for the government and the biomedical industry to continue making billions of dollars off the tax payers, they will go to any lengths (even smearing a doctor) in order to continue their needless and scientifically fraudulent experiments causing the horrific suffering, abuse, neglect, exploitation and death to millions of primates, dogs, cats, rabbits, birds and other animals.

What I did talk to Mr Doward about was the fact that animal experimentation is NOT scientifically valid and the reasons why. I also spoke to him about the fact that you cannot put the animal rights movement in a vacuum. You must put it in a historical context. We are fighting for the right of non human sentient beings to not be exploited, taken against their will, imprisoned and then tortured beyond anyone's comprehension for profit and bad science.

In looking at other historical movements to end the obscenity and egregious violence and death to innocent lives, including the fight against apartheid in South Africa, the fight to free black slaves here in the US and the fight for the rights of indigenous cultures, violence has been used and there have been casualties. People have been killed over absolutely ridiculous things like oil, power and money. It would be "speciesist" of me to say that in a battle for the moral and ethical highground, in the fight on behalf of the most oppressed, abused and tortured beings the world has even known, that there will never be casualties. I'm not encouraging or calling for this, I am simply stating that the animal rights movement is and has been the most peaceful and restrained movement the world has ever known considering the amount of terror, abuse and murder done to innocent animals for greed and profit. If by chance violence is used by those who fight for non human sentient beings, or even if there are casualties, it must be looked at in perspective and in a historical context.

I am a scientist, I shamefully have done vivisection. I realised after I published countless papers and documents on the results of my obscene research, that it was all a lie. It was a terrible waste of money, time and most of all it did nothing, and I will say it again, NOTHING to help my patients and cure disease. There are hundreds of alternatives and research practices that would save lives, save money and cure disease that are NOT being used because of the biomedical industry's obsession with using animal models to come up with human cures. Today, we need to look at genes and gene expression to cure disease; a male rat will offer different outcomes then a female rat in experiments because of their gene expression. Therefore you cannot extrapolate the outcome you get from a rat, dog or monkey and use this for humans. Animal experimentation has caused thousands of needless human deaths every single year, and millions of animal deaths whose agony, despair and torture is not seen by an uneducated public. But I have seen their agony, I have seen it with my own eyes and it is not only scientifically invalid, but the most obscene and evil thing we can do to another sentient being.

In closing, I will be contacting a lawyer in the UK to possibly sue the Observer and Mr Doward as well as to complain to the PCC and draft a letter to the Home Secretary.

I have a great deal to offer the citizens of the UK by educating them as to what the medical industry ought to be doing to save the lives of patients and cure their diseases. I speak on behalf of all sentient beings and am proud to be a voice on behalf of the animals whose miserable and incomprehensible agony goes unseen by the public and is directly preventing my patients from getting the proper care and treatment they deserve."