Specious Science

There is a great divide between species that makes extrapolation of biochemical research from one group to another utterly invalid. In their previous book, "Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Cost of Experiments on Animals", the Greeks showed how an amorphous but insidious network of drug manufacturers, researchers dependent on government grants to earn their living, even cage-manufacturers have perpetuated animal research in spite of its total unpredictability when applied to humans. (Cancer in mice, for example, has long been cured. Chimps live long and relatively healthy lives with AIDS. There is no animal form of Alzheimer's disease.) In doing so, the Greeks challenged the "specious science" we have been culturally conditioned to accept. This book takes these revelations one step further. In accessible language, it provides the scientific underpinning for the Greeks' philosophy of "do no harm to any animal, human or not," by examining paediatrics, diseases of the brain, new surgical techniques, in vitro research, the human genome and proteome projects, and an array of scientific and technological breakthroughs.