Edited for clarity and to remove profanity:

Don’t slander John Draize.  He is dead, and no-one uses the Draize test any more.

This was actually a comment on a post I wrote a while ago.  I was really annoyed by this request.  It was not politely worded — I have cleaned it up A LOT.  If you want me to take you seriously, write a polite request, okay?  

I have three points to make in my rebuttal of this argument.

(1) I don’t think I’m “slandering” John Draize.  I’m telling the truth about him.  He invented a test that involves mutilating animals by putting chemicals in their eyes that damages their eye-tissue.  Is that a lie of any kind?  An exaggeration?  In what way?  Explain to me how that is slander, exactly.  Perhaps I should have been more careful to emphasize that the Draize test has probably saved a lot of people from cosmetics that may “irritate” (irritate=damage in animal testing euphemism) their eyes — but I think I made it fairly clear that I think the Draize test is of toxicological value — I’m promoting tests that provide the same information the Draize test does in a less horrific way.  (I find the slander thing kind of funny — I never said Mr. Draize was involved in any kind of scandalous affair with an underage stripper or embezzling money from a pension plan, and the whole slander thing strikes me as amusingly old-fashioned.  Maybe someone will invite me to duel at dawn after besmirching Mr. Draize’s good name?)

(2) Second, it’s true Dr. Draize is dead.  Why shouldn’t I reveal the truth — or as you call it “slander” — about a man who caused a huge amount of animal suffering and mutilation just because he is dead? Should I not say negative things about Nazi medical doctors who basically performed Draize-like tests on live human beings?  Most of the Nazi doctors are dead too (as far as we know . . . ).  Should I be nice about Doctors Rascher, Eppinger, Heissmeyer, Verschuer, Clauberg, and Mengele?  Doctors who used people “as guinea pigs” in brutal medical experiments in concentration camps? Like Dr. Rascher, who immersed over 300 people in ice baths to discover how long pilots could survive in the frozen North Sea after their planes went down?  And who asked to move his laboratory from Dachau to Auschwitz because there was more space at Auschwitz so his victims’ screaming as their limbs froze wouldn’t disturb his wife’s sleep? (Source.) I think once you pass a certain level of atrocity you lose your right to have only good spoken about you after you are dead.  

 (3) You claim the Draize test isn’t used any more?  According to Johns Hopkins and the 3R Research Foundation in Switzerland, it’s still in use.  Please cite your source for your claim that the Draize test isn’t used any more.  Really, I’d like to know.  I’m not a toxicologist — tell me the Draize test isn’t used any more, and I’ll be very happy.

Categories : against animal testing, cruelty free, dear emily