ANIMAL TESTING: myths exposed

Animal experimenters want us to believe that if they had to give up their archaic habit, children and other disease and accident victims would drop dead in droves. However, the most significant trend in modern research in recent years has been the recognition that animals are rarely good models for the human body.

Studies have shown time and again that animal experimenters are often wasting lives, both animal and human, and precious resources by trying to infect animals with diseases that they would never normally contract. Fortunately, a wealth of cutting-edge, non-animal research methodologies promises a brighter future for animals and human health. Here are some key points covering several facets of the case against animal experimentation.

MYTH: “Every major medical advance is attributable to experiments on animals.”

Not true! Many of the most important advances in health are attributable to human studies, among them the discovery of the relationships between cholesterol and heart disease and smoking and cancer; the development of x-rays; and the isolation of the AIDS virus. Too often, reliance on animal tests has proved dangerous or misleading. For decades, and up to this day, animal experimenters have been testing cigarettes and their components on animals.

They have forced primates, dogs, rabbits and rats to breathe concentrated cigarette smoke to determine what its effects are. Yet, after all these decades of research, their results continue to be “inconclusive,” since some species are impacted negatively while others suffer no health problems.

Life expectancy in the United States has increased from 47 in 1900 to 77 in 2001. While animal experimenters insist that credit for this much improved life expectancy is theirs, medical historians concede that improved nutrition, sanitation, and other behavioral and environmental factors – not anything learned from animal experiments – are responsible for the decline in death rates since 1900 from the 10 most common infectious diseases.

In Feb 2004, a paper was published in the British Medical Journal entitled “Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans?” authored by researchers at the Yale School of Medicine and several British universities. These researchers systematically examined animal studies and concluded that little evidence exists to support the idea that animal experimentation has benefited humans.

MYTH: “If we didn’t use animals, we’d have to test new drugs on people.”

The fact is that we already do test new drugs on people; but animal tests are so unreliable, they make those human trials all the more risky. In August 2004, the Food and Drug Administration noted that only eight percent of all drugs that pass animal tests make it onto the human market. This means that of all drugs that are found to be safe and effective in animals, a whopping 92 percent are found to be either unsafe or ineffective in humans. Vioxx, Phenactin, E-Ferol, Oraflex, Zomax, Suprol and Selacryn are some of the drugs that had to be pulled from the market in recent years for killing or seriously harming thousands of people. Despite rigorous animal tests, prescription drugs kill 100,000 people yearly, making this our nation's fourth-biggest killer.

MYTH: “We have to observe the complex interactions of cells, tissues, and organs in living animals.”

Taking a healthy being from a completely different species, artificially inducing a condition, keeping her or him in an unnatural and stressed condition, and then trying to apply the “results” to naturally occurring diseases in human beings is risky at best. While all animals in laboratories typically display behaviors indicating extreme psychological distress, experimenters acknowledge that the use of these brain-damaged animals jeopardizes the validity of the data produced. Even humans who lived in cages in labs would not be very good models for human disease processes occurring in the real world.

Furthermore, internal interactions vary enormously from species to species. Penicillin kills guinea pigs while being inactive in rabbits; aspirin kills cats and causes birth defects in rats, mice, guinea pigs, dogs, and monkeys; and morphine, a depressant to humans, stimulates goats, cats, and horses. Sir Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin remarked: “How fortunate we didn’t have these animal tests in the 1940’s, for penicillin would probably have never been granted a license, and probably the whole field of antibiotics might never have been realized.”

Studies have found that chemicals that cause cancer in rats only caused cancer in mice 46% of the time – that’s about the same as flipping a coin. If extrapolating from rats to mice is so problematic, how can we extrapolate results from mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, cats, dogs, monkeys, and other animals to humans?

MYTH: “Animals help in the fight against cancer.”

In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon declared a “war on cancer.” In spite of the tens of billions of dollars spent through the ensuing decades and in spite of the millions of animals tormented and killed, cancer remains our nation's No. 2 killer. In fact, the incidence of cancer has risen 18% and the mortality rate has increased by 7% since 1971.

Richard Klausner, former head of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), has observed, “The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn’t work in humans.” The NCI now uses human cancer cells, taken by biopsy during surgery, to perform first stage testing for their new anti-cancer drugs, sparing the 1 million mice they used to use every year, and giving us all a much better shot at combating cancer.

Furthermore, according to the World Health Organization, up to 90 percent of all cancers are preventable, yet most cancer-focused health organizations spend a pittance on prevention programs such as public education. The NCI, for example, spends less than one quarter of 1 percent of its budget on prevention. Epidemiological and clinical studies have determined that most cancers are caused by smoking and by eating high-fat foods, foods high in animal protein, and foods containing artificial colors and other harmful additives. We can beat cancer by attending to this human-derived, human-relevant data, implementing creative methods to encourage healthier lifestyle choices.

MYTH: “Science has a responsibility to use animals to keep looking for cures for all the horrible diseases people suffer from.”

Animal research gobbles up an estimated $15 billion a year in the United States from taxes, charity, and industry and this country spends $600 billion—more than any other country on Earth—on treating illness, yet we rank a scandalous 21st in infant mortality and 19th in life expectancy for men. While rates of heart disease and stroke have shown slight declines recently—due to lifestyle factors like diet and smoking rather than any medical advances—cancer rates continues to rise, while alcohol- and drug-treatment centers, prenatal care programs, community mental health clinics, and trauma units continue to suffer closures for lack of funds.

More human lives could be saved and more suffering spared by educating people on the importance of avoiding fat and cholesterol, quitting smoking, reducing alcohol and other drug consumption, exercising regularly, and cleaning up their environment than by all the animal tests in the world.

MYTH: "Many experiments are not painful to animals and are therefore justified."

An honest view of the situation should take into account the totality of the suffering imposed on the animal from the stress of capture, if any, transportation, and handling; to the housing in confined and unnatural conditions; to the privations that constitute standard training procedures; to the physical and psychological stress experienced by animals used for breeding, who suffer through cycles of impregnation only to have their young removed from them, sometimes shortly after birth.

Animals in laboratories endure lives of privation, isolation, stress, trauma and depression even before they are enrolled in any sort of protocol. This fact is especially apparent when one considers the specialized needs of each species. In nature, many primates, including rhesus macaques and baboons, stay for many years or for life with their families and troops. They spend hours together every day, grooming each other, foraging, playing and making nests for sleeping each night. But in laboratories, primates are often caged alone. There are usually no social interactions or family groups, no companions, no grooming possibilities, and no nests or surfaces softer than metal.

Indeed, in many laboratories, animals are handled roughly – even for routine monitoring procedures that fall outside the realm of an experimental protocol; and this only heightens the animal’s fear and stress. Video footage from inside laboratories shows that many animals cower in fear every time someone walks by their cages. A 2004 article in Nature magazine (“Cage Enrichment and Mouse Behavior”) indicates that mice housed in standard laboratory cages suffer from “impaired brain development, abnormal repetitive behaviors (stereotypies) and an anxious behavioral profile.”

This appalling level of suffering results simply from standard housing conditions – before the animal undergoes any sort of procedure. A November 2004 article in Contemporary Topics in Laboratory Animal Science (“Laboratory Routines Cause Animal Stress,” by Dr. J. Balcombe, Dr. Neal Barnard, and Dr. Chad Sandusky) examines eighty papers to document the potential stress associated with three routine laboratory procedures commonly performed on animals.

The authors conclude, “Routine handling, venipuncture, and orogastric gavage lead to elevations of heart rate, blood pressure, and glucocorticoid concentrations that persist for 30 to 60 min following the event, suggesting that despite their routine use in laboratory studies, these procedures are acutely stressful for animals.”

MYTH: “We don’t want to use animals, but we don’t have any option.”

Human clinical and epidemiological studies, cadavers, and computer simulators are more reliable, more precise, less expensive, and more humane than animal tests. Creative scientists have developed, from human brain cells, a model “microbrain” with which to study tumors, as well as artificial skin and bone marrow. We can now test irritancy on protein membranes, produce vaccines from human tissues, and perform pregnancy tests using blood samples instead of killing rabbits.

TOPKAT, a sophisticated software package that allows researchers to predict the oral toxicity, and the degree of skin and eye irritation of chemicals, is currently being used by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Army, 3M Corporation, and Philip Morris, sparing countless animals the agony of having substances dripped in their eyes, rubbed into their shaved, abraded skin, or pumped into their stomachs and lungs. The Department of Transportation was using animals to test corrosive substances, but PETA persuaded it to adopt a replacement test. Now, instead of smearing animals’ backs with corrosive chemicals, the Department of Transportation uses Corrositex, in which substances are placed on a protein membrane.

MYTH: "Don’t medical students have to dissect animals?"

In Great Britain, it’s against the law for medical (and veterinary) students to practice surgery on animals, and British physicians are just as competent as those educated elsewhere. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and other U.S. medical schools have dropped animal laboratories in favor of hands-on practice on human patients under the direction of experienced physicians.

MYTH: “Animals are here for human beings to use; if we have to sacrifice 1,000 or 100,000 animals in the hope of benefiting one child, it’s worth it.”

If experimenting on one mentally retarded person might benefit 1,000 children, would we do it? Of course not! Ethics dictate that the value of each life in and of itself cannot be superseded by its potential value to anyone else.

Experimenters claim a “right” to inflict pain on animals based on animals’ supposed lack of reason. But were lack of reason truly the basis by which we justify animal experimentation, experimenting on human beings with “inferior” mental capabilities, such as infants and the mentally retarded, would also be acceptable. The argument also ignores the reasoning ability of many animals, including pigs, who demonstrate measurably sophisticated approaches to solving problems, and some primates, who not only use tools but teach their offspring how to use them.

The experimenters’ real argument is, “Animals are ours to use because might makes right, and we want to use them.”

  • Credit

> PETA.org

> PETA Asia Pacific