Recent Research Funded by the BHF

In one BHF test, dogs' chests were cut open and their blood was circulated out of their bodies and back again, in order to allow blood pressure to change in the neck arteries quickly. The experimenters then came to the conclusion that a person bending down and suddenly standing up could experience dizziness and fainting!

In another experiment, dogs' blood vessels and nerves were cut away, the dogs were implanted with electrodes and they were injected with other dogs' blood. This was done to find out about blood storage in the liver, even though the experimenters acknowledged that dogs store their blood differently than humans do.

In a gruesome experiment on cats, the animals' chests were cut open, their back legs were skinned, tubes were inserted into their necks and legs and they were shocked and injected with sodium cyanide to test muscle reflexes and blood vessel activity.

Some health charities ask for donations to help people with diseases and disabilities yet spend the money to bankroll horrific experiments on dogs, rabbits, rats, mice, primates, hamsters, pigs, ferrets, frogs, fish, guinea pigs, sheep, birds and other animals. While human health needs cry out for attention and so many people are going without medical care, animal experimentation enriches laboratories and scientists but drains money from relevant and effective projects that could really help save lives.

Healing without Hurting

Instead of ravaging animals' bodies for cures for human diseases, compassionate charities focus their research where the best hope of treatment lies: with humans.

They realise that animal experiments are unnecessary, unreliable, and sometimes dangerously misleading. Enormous variations exist among rats, rabbits, dogs, pigs and human beings, and meaningful scientific conclusions cannot be drawn about one species by studying another. Non-animal methods provide a more accurate method of testing and can be interpreted more objectively.

Compassionate, modern charities know that we can improve treatments through up-to-date, non-animal methods, so they fund only non-animal research, leading to real progress in the prevention and treatment of disease-without starving, crippling, burning, poisoning or cutting open animals.