The Facts About Animal Experimentation
Each year in the United States an estimated 20-70 million animals—from
cats, dogs and primates, to rabbits, rats and mice—suffer and die in
the name of research. Many doctors are now critical of such experiments,
calling them unnecessary, duplicative and extremely costly, and pointing
out that better research methods exist.
Laws regulating conditions for laboratory animals are minimal and poorly enforced. The federal Animal Welfare Act does not cover animals during experiments, no matter how long the experiment may go on. Conditions for the animal subjects of medical experiments are often squalid and stressful; confinement, isolation, repeated handling, physical pain and injury are routine.
Non-animal research methods, including epidemiology, clinical research, and cellular methods, have proven to be more accurate, more applicable, and often less time-consuming and less costly. Unfortunately, vested financial interests and adherence to tradition are stumbling blocks on the road to change.
Biological and Medical Experiments
Many animal experiments produce results which are far from relevant to human health. For example, animal experimentation in the “war on cancer” has been largely a failure. Few useful cancer-fighting therapies have resulted, and cancer death rates continue to climb. Researchers at the National Cancer Institute are now changing to new techniques which allow human cancer cells to be studied directly, and eliminate old-fashioned mouse chemotherapy screening tests.
Animals and humans differ in medically important ways, and often animal experiments can produce misleading results. For example, repeated animal studies failed to demonstrate a correlation between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. As a result, public warnings about the dangers of cigarette use were delayed, despite a wealth of compelling human data.
Likewise, animal experiments in stroke research led to false conclusions, misleading researchers and wasting time and research funds. Of the 25 drugs which appeared to reduce the effects of stroke in rodents, not a single one worked in human patients. Animal tests are poor predictors of the effects of other drugs, as well. Of the 198 new drugs that went on the market in the decade ending 1985, 102 (51.5 percent) turned out to be more dangerous than pre-market animal tests and limited human trials predicted.
In addition, science’s “publish or perish” environment and universities’ hunger for large grant awards drive a system in which wasteful and redundant animal experiments are commonplace. Barbaric head trauma experiments at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Cincinnati, in which hundreds of monkeys and cats received massive head injuries, were halted after physicians and scientists joined animal advocates in scientific and ethical opposition. A Cornell researcher was compelled to return funding for experiments which addicted cats to barbiturates and then forced them to undergo withdrawal. The research was condemned as irrelevant to human experience. A series of military-funded experiments in which hundreds of cats were shot in the head was halted following criticism from neurosurgeons and other trauma experts.
Consumer Product Testing
Animal tests for the safety of cosmetics, household products and chemicals are outdated, inaccurate and unnecessary. Antiquated tests, such as the Draize irritancy test (in which caustic substances are applied to the eyes and skin of live rabbits) and the Lethal Dose 50 test (in which substances are force-fed to animals in increasing amounts until half of the test population is poisoned to death) are less reliable and more costly than existing non-animal tests. Manufacturers most often conduct these tests simply to have data on hand for protection against product liability suits.
Education
Computer technology and highly sophisticated anatomical models have rendered the use of animals in education obsolete. In addition, educators across the nation are becoming increasingly aware of the subtle negative message that “animal labs” convey to students, namely that it is acceptable to inflict suffering on other living creatures. In a time of escalating societal violence and environmental destruction, students should be taught to respect life in whatever form it takes.
Approximately one-fourth of the 126 U.S. medical schools—including such schools as Yale, Georgetown, Ohio State, the University of Michigan and many others—have dropped all animal laboratories from their curriculum, and such exercises are optional at nearly all the remainder. Even the techniques for complex surgical procedures such as heart transplants and bypasses are learned by cadaver surgery and apprenticeship in the operating room, not by animal labs.
Non-Animal Research Methods
Epidemiologic Studies
Comparative studies of human populations have provided important information about the causes of many diseases. The discoveries of the relationships between smoking and cancer, cholesterol and heart disease, high-fat diets and common cancers, and chemical exposures and birth defects come from epidemiologic studies. Such studies also demonstrated the mechanism of transmission of AIDS, and showed how to prevent it.
Clinical Research
In the course of treating patients, much has been learned about the causes of disease. Studies of human patients using sophisticated new scanning technology (CT, PET, and MRI) have isolated abnormalities in the brains of victims of Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, epilepsy and autism. Dietary studies on patients with multiple sclerosis showed that adherence to a low-fat diet significantly reduced their death rate and the rate at which the debilitating disease progressed. Autopsy studies revealed that Alzheimer’s disease patients have abnormal concentrations of aluminum in their brains.
In-Vitro Research
An enormous amount of valuable in-vitro (test tube) research is conducted today. Cell and tissue cultures are used to screen for anti-cancer and anti-AIDS drugs and to test for product irritancy. The AIDS virus was isolated in human serum, and in-vitro methods are providing new insights into the virus’ effect on human cells. The National Disease Research Interchange, a non-profit clearinghouse, provides more than 130 kinds of human tissue to scientists investigating diabetes, cancer, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, glaucoma and more than 50 other diseases. In- vitro genetic research has isolated specific markers, genes and/or proteins for Alzheimer’s disease, muscular dystrophy, schizophrenia and other inherited disorders.
Computer Modeling
Computer programs can often predict the toxicity of chemicals including their potential to cause cancer or birth defects, based on their molecular structure. Mathematical models of various human systems, such as the circulatory system, can be programmed with data from patients and yield insights into the human condition. Computer simulations have also replaced living animals in medical education.
Testimony
The live-mouse screen is just not producing action against the major tumors,’ said John A.R. Mead, an official in the National Cancer Institute’s drug development division. In a new system, all compounds will be tested against more than a hundred different strains of human cancer growing in test tubes. Officials believe the new method will be far more sensitive than the old one..." —New York Times, December 23, 1986
“The lack of appropriate animal models for HIV research makes the application of animal research to humans uncertain.” —Presidential Commission on HIV, June 1988
“...[W]e are losing the war against cancer...A shift in research emphasis, from research on treatment to research on prevention, seems necessary if substantial progress against cancer is to be forthcoming.” —John C. Bailar III, M.D., Ph.D, Harvard School of Public Health, New England Journal of Medicine, May 1986
“...Artificial skin can be used to test cosmetics and pharmaceuticals to see if they produce irritation - instead of using the Draize tests in which a compound is placed into a rabbit’s eye. ‘Toxicity testing is a business in itself,’ says Arthur Benvenuto, Marrow-Tech’s CEO, who foresees a $1 billion market in alternative research technologies.” —Business Week, March 20, 1989
“It appears that the [medical research] system has changed from
one of NIH giving grants for scientific research to one of scientific research
being done solely to get NIH grants.”
U.S. Rep. Thomas Bliley (R-VA)
Hearings on Scientific Fraud and Misconduct
House Energy and Commerce Committee,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
April 12, 1989
“My experience as a member of the Letterman Army Institute of Research
Institutional Review Committee showed the facility to be a place of vast
suffering, abuse and waste of tax dollars.”
Jan Polon Novic
Testimony before the Research and Development Subcommittee
House Armed Services Committee
April 7, 1992
“I recall from my medical school days watching a guinea pig, strategically
placed on the professor’s desk, die from anaphylactic shock when challenged
with an allergen. It is hard to imagine that I could not have learned this
equally well by reading about it or watching a computer simulation. I tried
to learn about the use of epinephrine on cat muscle while expressing my
horror at watching a live cat used in the demonstration. I have often thought
as I practice surgery that I would be happy to have medical students come
into my operating room and watch the effect of epinephrine and any of a
host of other drugs commonly used in surgery on the pulse oximeter attached
to the patient.”
Marjorie Cramer, M.D.
Plastic Surgeon
New York, NY
Journal of the American Medical Association, December 25, 1991
“... Most in-vitro cytotoxicity tests were predicting human acutely
lethal concentrations and dosage... better than the prediction of acute
human toxicity by rodent LD50 data.”
Bjorn Ekwall, M.D., Ph.D.
Department of Toxicology, University of Uppsala, Sweden
Managing Director of Validation
The Multicenter Evaluation of In vitro Cytotoxicity
November 13-14, 1991
“Organogenesis, a biotech firm in Massachusetts, has come up with
a safe and cruelty-free alternative for these tests [cosmetic tests on animals]:
a lab-grown piece of human skin... Testskin is already being used by laboratories
at Helene Curtis, Estee Lauder, and Mary Kay Cosmetics.”
Discover Magazine, August, 1991
“Clonetics Corp. recently introduced its enhanced Neutral Red Bioassay
for in vitro toxicity testing, a normal human cell culture method that provides
an alternative to animal testing... Clonetics’ tests, at $20 per compound,
are much cheaper than using animals, which may cost up to $400 each.”
BioWorld Today, November 12, 1992
“The findings were that if you enclosed animals in a field armored
vehicle and set off an explosion inside, that the ear drum and the middle
ear mechanism may be damaged... More valid information regarding sound pressure
levels presented to the middle ear could have been much more easily obtained
by the use of a Kemar mannequin placed in the appropriate position in the
vehicle.”
J. William Wright III, M.D.
The Ear Institute of Indiana
October, 1990
“I have taken the ATLS [Advanced Trauma Life Support] course recently.
During the part of the course that used dogs I was thinking how useless
it was to use the dogs for this purpose... Procedures such as CVP line placement,
chest decompression, pericardiocentesis, diagnostic peritoneal lavage, and
cricothyrotomy are primarily learned by memorizing landmarks, directions,
and use of the equipment... Landmarks can be easily learned by using volunteers,
cadavers, or simulators. In fact these would all be preferable to learning
the landmarks on dogs since dogs obviously have different landmarks because
of differences in anatomy.”
Peggy Carlson, M.D.
Emergency Medicine
Boulder, CO
April, 1992
“... We have decided to cancel our invasive airway management lab
scheduled for July 14, 1992. This decision was based upon evidence that
these skill competencies can be attained with the use of manikins and cadavers.
Evidence also seems to be lacking to show that skill proficiency is increased
through the use of animal labs for these particular skills. In addition,
our program medical director is confident that we will be able to arrange
cadaver experience for the paramedic students.”
Abigail T. Harning
Medical Command Coordinator
Emmco East, Inc.
Kersey, PA
1992
“Human trials, meanwhile, have already begun, action justified in
part by the fact that primate data doesn’t really tell us how humans
respond to HIV immunogens. We wouldn’t want to get 10 years down the
line and then have to spend another five or six years just getting basic
information for humans.”
Barney Graham, M.D.
Director of Vanderbilt University’s AIDS Vaccine Evaluation Unit