I am writing this letter in response to the one submitted by Ms. Ann Marie Fick (Feb. 19). A large portion of her article was devoted to describing how useful animals are in the cure of cancer AIDS, and other terminal diseases.

Every second in the United States, three animals die in research laboratories. Before being "sacrificed" for science they are blinded, burned, cut, drowned, shocked, poisoned, irradiated, injected with diseases, addicted to drugs and driven insane.

At least 50 percent of the experiments which are performed on some 70 million dogs, cats, monkeys, mice and others each year have nothing to do with biomedical research.

The experiments deal with such projects as product testing (rabbits are held immobilized in stock while concentrated doses of products such as bleach are dropped into their eyes), military warfare experiments (dogs are immobilized then shot at close range), psychology experiments (maternal deprivation of monkeys) and car crash testing.

A large portion of experiments which are biomedical in nature are duplicative (between 1975 and 1982, tests entailing asphyxiation had been performed at least 875 times), inapplicable (giving animals large quantities of toxins, levels no human would consume, to see at what dosage 50 percent of the animals die) or just plain trivial (to find that animals with severe burns require more liquids).

Animal research reflects that the thrust of modern medicine is toward treatment rather than prevention. The nature of human disease, including cancer, is a complex process which involves environmental, physiological and genetic factors.

Billions of dollars have been spent trying to find a cure for cancer, but most cancer research is fruitless because, artificially induced in animals, it has no relation to human cancer which develops from the aforementioned factors.

Most of these diseases can be reduced or even eliminated through changes in our diet and lifestyle.

Concerning vaccines, those such as polio, rabies, rubella and smallpox were initially developed from animal materials, but caused severe reaction and even death in many cases. The development of many vaccines can utilize human cells in vitro and avoid the contamination caused by using animal tissue.

If scientists had used other than animal means in the development of vaccines, progress against the diseases would have been more effective and less costly in terms of human lives.

The use of animals in research against animal diseases (such as canine distemper and feline leukemia) is an ironic use of animals. The ethical argument against animal testing is that because animals can feel pain, man has a moral obligation to not inflict unnecessary pain and suffering upon them.

Animals have an innate instinct for survival and man should have no authority to violate those instincts. To kill animals to find cures for animals' diseases is an outright stupidity.

Suppose someone approached you and said that you had been chosen to suffer and die for research against a particular human disease. It is more than likely that you would argue this point, and be against this decision.

But this is what we do when we kill dogs and cats for the sake of research against canine distemper or feline leukemia. One major difference is that the animals are incapable of arguing back.

In the United States and the rest of the world, laboratory animals have no protection under the law against cruel experiments. The public has little knowledge of what goes on behind laboratory doors. And so the suffering continues.

Alternatives have been slow to come about because scientists have been openly resistant to the idea of developing non-animal testing methods. There are alternatives (cell culture, and computer modeling, among others), but only through dedication to perfecting these methods can the wasteful, dangerous and, for the most part, useless experiments be stopped.

It is our duty to find alternatives to this pain, suffering and wastefulness performed for the sake of "science" on millions of innocent animals each year.