And, to go back to the fungal analogy above, in case you were thinking that I could have fed the mushrooms to some animal to test them, don’t. It is well known that a mushroom can be eaten by squirrels, rabbits, or other animals and still be dangerous for humans.
The Illinois Mycological Association, for example, says: “According to Dr. John Rippon, an IMA member and world expert on fungal diseases, squirrels have an interesting adaptation that allows them to eat mushrooms containing deadly amanita toxins without being affected.”
Article comments
1 - Mickey mouse
Naive article
2 - Enza Ferreri
Mickey mouse,
when I read your 2-word comment "Naive article" to my article, I didn't know whether you intended it as a joke (your name seems to confirm this angle) or not.
Please enlighten me and the other readers of your comment, and perhaps this time you could explain what it means.
3 - DrPat
Thank you, Enza, for not once using the "because they're so cute" argument in this reasoned appeal to end animal testing.
However, by carefully selecting the experimental procedures you cited, you manage to ignore the ones where animal testing is of value, those where the model DOES match reality.
The principal value in animal testing is the relatively short life of animals, and the relative willingness of researchers to sacrifice animals to complete a picture of internal changes during the course of the study.
Another value is the lessened impact of death, disease, or disfiguration that occurs in the test or control group of an animal study. Two or three cases of primary pulmonary hypertension served to halt use of the Fen-Phen drug combination as a weight-loss aid a few years ago. On the other hand, how many women continue to contract cervical cancer while HPV-specific anti-virals are tested in clinical trials?
But you are quite right that studies are commonly manipulated to serve the agenda of those funding the studies. Consider the carcinogenic effect of saccharine on pregnant mice, which directly contradicted the 100+ year record of humans (even pregnant ones) using the sweetener without an appreciable increase in bladder-cancer rates. Despite that, the same study was used to ban cyclamate sweeteners in the 70s in favor of corn and cane sweeteners. Guess who funded the original studies?
4 - Lisa McKay
There are, of course, problems with all of the alternatives you've mentioned as well, Enza. The simple fact is that since we can't test ourselves (for both ethical and practical reasons) we need to find models, animal or otherwise, that both closely approximate the condition of a living human body and also allow researchers to control extraneous variables as closely as possible. You mention, to take just one example, the epidemiologic method, which, while extremely useful in many ways, is not particularly helpful in determining causation because there are simply too many variables at play that researchers can't even define, let alone measure. Epidemiologic studies are also very expensive to conduct.
As an animal lover and someone who has worked in the field of medical research for my entire adult life, I, too, would like to see animals used less often, but not at the expense of progress in the treatment of disease, and I don't think that alternative models are sufficient to replace animal studies entirely at this point. I think animal research is here to stay, at least for a while.
5 - Enza Ferreri
To DrPat.
I did not “carefully select” any experimental procedures. I just focused on one example, which I chose for its centrality for the health of large numbers of humans, because it is easier for people to understand something abstract and complex by means of something concrete, but then I gave a number of general principles that show why animal research is a bad method, principles which should be seriously considered by the defenders of this method but which, as your comment shows, are not.
You refer to cases “where animal testing is of value, those where the model DOES match reality”, but you don’t specify what they are.
I’m not sure what to make of the examples you give, because they don't support your case.
Regarding weight-loss drugs fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine, used in the fen-phen combination, which caused heart valve problems in patients, some people say that the combination had been tested on animals (specifically, dogs and cats) and it was safe for them, other people say that the individual substances had been tested on animals but they had not been extensively tested on animals in combination.
Either way, it's hard to see how this could be used to prove the efficacy of animal testing: at best, it proves nothing, and at worst it proves the opposite, ie that animal testing is not safe.
Something similar applies to your other example: if animal testing has not been used, you cannot vouch for its validity.
Incidentally, Gina Kolata reported in the New York Times of September 16, 1997, on fen-phen:
”Why weren't these problems [heart valve abnormalities] noticed before? Dieters in Europe had used Dexfenfluramine for decades. Dr. Friedman [an FDA official] said he could only speculate. No one had initially thought to examine patients' hearts, he said, because animal studies had never revealed heart abnormalities and heart valve defects are not normally associated with drug use.”
You mention what you consider practical advantages of animal testing, but you forget to mention how difficult it is for researchers to control and manipulate laboratory animals to suit their purposes.
Finally, I can only applaud you for your last paragraph on "the carcinogenic effect of saccharine on pregnant mice, which directly contradicted the 100+ year record of humans (even pregnant ones) using the sweetener without an appreciable increase in bladder-cancer rates."
Look at Answers, under "cyclamate":
"The sodium and calcium salts were commonly used as artificial sweeteners until 1969, when their use was banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration after reports that ingestion of large quantities of cyclamates appeared to cause cancer in some animals. There is no evidence that cyclamates are associated with cancer in humans."
QED.
It all boils down to this: something which is inherently unreliable cannot be made reliable by counter-examples.
6 - DrPat
My point is this, Enza: Neither animal testing nor clinical studies on humans is the entire answer, and either can equally be "spun" to produce results desireable to those funding the studies.
There is value in animal testing, where the model in animals (skin response to irritants, for example) has been well-proven to match the reality well enough to lend credence to the results.
And even where the correspondence between animal response and human response has not been proven, it may be worthwhile to test on animals first, given the larger emotional impact of human death, disease and disfigurement, compared to that of lab animals in a study.
Finally, there are animals for which teratological response is VERY similar to that of humans. There are animals in which carcinigens produce much the same effects as they do in humans. And there are species which have testably similar reactions to toxins and intoxicants as do humans. Shall we test these substances on people? Or shall we continue to discover (whenever we can) the possible negative effects of using them before we expose a human to the first clinical trial?
For those who say we can't wait, I have only answer: Thalidomide. Animal testing in Europe was not done correctly, and its results may even have been faked. The drug was never approved by the FDA in the US, because the reviewer had previously done animal toxicity research (including effects in pregnancy), and refused to clear the drug for sale until better documentation of its effects were obtained.
7 - Art Vandeley
Without animal testing, 90% of existing medical progress wouldn't exist.
Think about the negative effects of smoking on humans. They take many many years to appear. Why do you think animal testing would magically make the symptomes appear overnight? After a certain period of time, when no negative health impacts have been observed, researchers induce that a product isn't harmful. In most cases, waiting for forty years just to make sure a product is safe isn't realistic. If you want another example, look at asbestos.
To summarise, in agreement with Mickey's post, a very naive article.
8 - Ellator
Art Vandeley, you obviously find medical progress and humans more important than animals, a selfish point of view that I don't share.
9 - Enza Ferreri
To Lisa.
You say: “I think animal research is here to stay, at least for a while.”
That gives me a feeling of deja vu.
This is what a few years ago the big cosmetic companies were also saying.
They were all saying that they couldn't manage without performing animal experiments. But today more and more cosmetic companies are publicly boasting that they no longer need to test their products on animals.
About epidemiology, the reason why the epidemiological method is not used as much as it should be is not because it’s expensive.
It’s because epidemiology can be extremely useful for prevention of diseases, but there is not much money to be made with prevention.
Only public health benefits from prevention, not the finances of drug companies.
For pharmaceutical companies, which are among the richest businesses in the world, it’s much more lucrative to let people get ill, develop a treatment (or supposed treatment) and sell it at high profits.
The epidemiological method is difficult, I grant you that. But it’s difficult because, instead of relying on quick fixes, it requires careful consideration and study, which is also what makes it so effective and its results so important.
Of course there are different variables to be considered, but that does not mean that the problem cannot find a solution. These problems are the same in every statistical method, but statistics are successfully used in all fields of science, especially when human beings are the subject of study.
The epidemiological method is expensive, you say.
Can you name specific, precise animal studies which have produced results of comparable importance to the link between smoking and lung cancer, for example, spending as much or less?
10 - Enza Ferreri
To DrPat #6.
Gosh, the example of Thalidomide is exactly what a defender of animal experimentation should never produce.
It was one of the greatest cases of a drug disaster being caused by animal research.
First of all, Thalidomide had been tested on animals extensively prior to its marketing.
Even now, despite the clinical evidence to the contrary, British health authorities like the Medical Research Council maintain that the vast bulk of evidence from laboratory and animal tests is against thalidomide having any genetic effects.
“Animal testing in Europe was not done correctly,” you say.
The point is: there was no way that it could ever have been done correctly.
The disaster caused by Thalidomide in the 1960s was due to its teratogenic effects, ie effects on the foetus.
Teratological effects of drugs were little known then. They were brought to public attention because of the Thalidomide tragedy on humans, therefore only after it.
How on earth could animal researchers have thought of those effects before the disaster?
Even after the Thalidomide caused birth deformities in humans, researchers tried to reproduce the same effect in dozens of species of lab animals without success.
Take a look
“As a consequence to the thalidomide tragedy there has been a marked upsurge in the number of animals used in testing of new drugs. Also drugs are now specifically tested on pregnant animals to supposedly safeguard against possible teratogenic effects on the human foetus. Vivisector's claim that if such tests were carried out prior to thalidomide's release, birth deformities in humans would have been discovered. This is of course sheer nonsense. "In pregnant animals, differences in the physiological structure, function and biochemistry of the placenta aggravate the usual differences in metabolism, excretion, distribution and absorption that exist between species and make reliable predictions impossible." (15) (Dr Robert Sharpe, former senior research chemist.)
“In fact when the link between human foetal abnormalities and thalidomide was established (through clinical observation), the world-wide explosion of animal testing, using a large range of species, proved very difficult to duplicate the abnormalities. (16) [my emphasis] Writing in his book Drugs as Teratogens, J.L. Schardein observes: "In approximately 10 strains of rats, 15 strains of mice, eleven breeds of rabbit, two breeds of dogs, three strains of hamsters, eight species of primates and in other such varied species as cats, armadillos, guinea pigs, swine and ferrets in which thalidomide has been tested teratogenic effects have been induced only occasionally." (17) Eventually after administrating high doses of thalidomide to certain species of rabbit (New Zealand White) and primates could similar abnormalities be found. However researchers pointed out that malformations, like cancer, could occur when practically any substance, including sugar and salt, be given in excessive doses. (16)“
The link you provide is odd from your viewpoint, because the FDA researcher you point to, Frances Oldham Kelsey, had doubts about Thalidomide’s safety because of side effects shown in human clinical trials.
Frances Oldham Kelsey: FDA Medical Reviewer Leaves Her Mark on History:
“In December of 1960, three months after Richardson-Merrell submitted its application, the British Medical Journal published a letter from a physician, Leslie Florence, who had prescribed thalidomide to his patients. Florence reported seeing cases of peripheral neuritis, a painful tingling of the arms and feet, in patients who had taken the drug over a long period of time.”
And here:
“Dr. Kelsey continued to resist, pointing out in February 1961 that a study in England had indicated the new product caused “a serious side effect on the nervous systems of patients who took the drug repeatedly,” so she asked for assurances that such side effects wouldn’t occur. By May she had developed a theory that if thalidomide caused paralysis of the peripheral nerves, the drug probably would cause greater damage to the developing embryo.”
The emphases are all mine.
The answer is: better control of the effects of medicines after they have been marketed.
“We need to encourage doctors and drug companies to watch for, report and take note of side effects in order to protect patients properly. If proper drug surveillance techniques had been available in the 1960s the thalidomide problem would have been picked up much earlier. We still don't have proper post marketing trials in place.” (from the source above)
Testing on humans is going to happen anyway, because any new drug which is marketed is an unknown, due to the unreliability of previous animal testing.
Let me repeat: you cannot make an unreliable method reliable by counterexamples.
Even if you happen to encounter cases where animal tests results have not been refuted by their application to humans, this does not alter the unreliable status of the method.
Your comments about alternatives, as well as Lisa’s, arguing that animal tests are necessary because alternatives are not yet comprehensive seem to be missing the point that animal testing is not only useless, it is dangerous because misleading.
It is so unpredictable and unreliable that continuing with it does great harm to humans as well as to animals.
I cannot see how you can say, Dr Pat, “it may be worthwhile to test on animals first,” even if it’s unreliable.
It does not make any sense, there is no logic. If you cannot trust a result, what is the point of repeating the same exercise?
I know that habit (and career, publications, money) are all powerful motives: these are the reasons for animal research, there is no valid scientific reason.
But there must come a point when people have to take notice of the writing on the wall.
There are cases where there is a correspondence between human and non-human animals. But how do we know that? Because we transferred the results of animal testing on humans. That is, for all practical purposes, we tested them on humans.
It is an unavoidable fact.
No matter how many animal sacrifices are made, we cannot satisfy the gods.
There was a time when people sacrificed animals to the gods, in the hope that the sacrifices would deliver them from evils.
The times have changed, but the hope that sacrificing somebody else, someone who cannot defend himself (or herself), will save us is still present.
Animal experimentation is the heir to the ritual sacrifice, the modern-day equivalent of the hope that a "scapegoat" will take from us all the bad things and dangers and free us.
11 - zingzing
animal testing is horrible, but it is necessary. it's just something that exists... until we find a better way (if there is one, NAME IT,) then, sad to say, it's going to stick around.
no, it's not always reliable, but what do you want? ignorance? human test subjects? let us all know...
12 - Enza Ferreri
To Art Vandeley.
I try to answer all comments, but I have trouble with yours.
For instance, what does this mean?
“Think about the negative effects of smoking on humans. They take many many years to appear. Why do you think animal testing would magically make the symptomes appear overnight? After a certain period of time, when no negative health impacts have been observed, researchers induce that a product isn't harmful.”
This is exactly my point. Animal testing DOES not produce results about harmful effects of many substances and therefore is dangerously misleading.
Either you have misunderstood my article and I invite you to read it again carefully, or you have to rethink your argument completely.
You say: “Without animal testing, 90% of existing medical progress wouldn't exist.”
For such a sweeping statement, you don’t offer even a shred of evidence in its support.
13 - Enza Ferreri
To zingzing
I wish people took the trouble to read my article before sending comments.
The answers to all your questions are in it and in my previous comments, including the alternatives and better ways that you ask about.
14 - zingzing
to enza- meh. caught me. i'll go read it.
15 - Cherine.k
Enza why do you even bother replying to such ignorant posters these people don't want to believe in a cruelty free world as it stands in the way of their selfish needs and their close minded thinking if these people had any common sense they wouldn't think in such a foolish way knowing that there are hundreds of companies that do not test on animals and that the tests alternatives are more accurate and less expensive than animal testing
Is ''Clarins'' the cosmetics brand not as good as ''Oley''? no! it is in fact way better than Oley yet Clarins don't test on animals while Oley which is one of Mars.inc brands test on animals. So if an idiot still thinks animal testing is needed in anyway i don't think they have the slightest knowledge and are not worth your replies.
And testing tobacco on animals is the most pathetic joke ever!
16 - Adien Aggenbach
Animal Testing is archaic, inhumane and scientific fraud.
Thank you for the article. For the people that think it is acceptable to test on animals - Do you even know the torture, pain and suffering that these animals go through. Most of the time the products are already on the shelf. Please see the website PCRM.
Read stories about ex-animal testers and evolve
PS: If humans want to be stupid enough to smoke why should animals suffer?