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An increasing number of researchers, scientists and practitioners
are questioning the use of animals in research on ethical, moral,
socio-political and scientific grounds. Use of animal research data to
affect change in their patients is rarely used by clinical
psychologists. This is certainly a public interest issue as it involves
an enormous amount of brutality. Animal research is a very lucrative
business, since billions of tax dollars are invested in it annually. An
enormous amount of this money going towards researcher’s salaries,
overhead costs, animal husbandry expansion and building maintenance.
These billions of dollars can be redirected to prevention, public
health programs, treatment and clinical research. There are too many
missed opportunities for advancement in psychology due to money spent
on theoretical, repetitive and exploitative animal research. In our
society we have come to see that animal research is an easy way to stay
alive in the “publish or perish” world of academia. Nearly anything can
be proven using animals as test subjects which is evident in the way
that the tobacco industry still claims that their research proves that
cigarettes do not cause cancer. (Linder, 1998).
In spite of the fact that animal experimentation can be traced back
as far as Galen (ca. 100 AD), its significance in consumer safety and
medical research and is a relatively recent phenomenon. In 1865, Claude
Bernard published his “introduction to the study of experimental
medicine”, which marked the beginning of animal experimentation as a
scientific method of research. (Menache, 1998).
The industry has always been quick to exploit the less than
conclusive results of animal tests, especially in fields such as
onconlogy. Consequently, the drug saccharin remains on sale to the
public because it appears to cause bladder cancer only in male rats.
The ingestible contraceptive drug Depo-Provera was banned in the United
States over twenty years ago on the basis that is caused cancer in
baboons and dogs. However, The Food and Drug Administration and The
American Health Regulatory Authority recently reinstated the drug
because twenty years of human experience in those countries, which did
not prohibit its use, had convinced the Food and Drug Administration
that Depo-Provera did not cause cancer in humans. Another example that
is even more bizarre is the drug Tamoxifin, which is used to treat
human breast cancer. Even though Tamoxifin reduces the incidence of
mammary cancer in rodents, it actually increases the presence of liver
cancer in rodents, and appears to be also toxic to the kidney (Menache,
1998).
Due to the unavoidable biological differences between human beings
and animals, the results of animal tests can’t be applied to human
beings with any degree of confidence. At the 1989 scientific workshop
held at the Ciba Foundation past scientific director of Huntington
Research Center (U.K.) stated that the best guess for the correlation
of extreme reactions in man and animal toxicity data is somewhere
between 5% and 25%. The information translates into unacceptable risk
levels for the general consumer public. To illustrate this point, the
General Accounting office in the United Stated reported that between
the years 1976-1985, out of two hundred medications introduced over
that period of time, 51% were either withdrawn from the market
completely or else re-labeled, because of severe side effects not
previously noticed.
The Food and Drug Administration has been faulted on animal drug
data. In a report to Congress in 1992, the General Accounting Office
found that the Food and Drug Administration in many instances did not
carry out inspections to verify the accuracy of data given by private
laboratories. Due to FDA’s incompetent management the agency was unable
to fulfill its task to protect the safety and health of animals and
people (Menache, 1998).
Professional groups of medical doctors, like the Medical Research
Modernization Committee, are now at the cutting edge on the scientific
movement advocating that animal tests be replaced with the new
methodologies. In addition to the priceless contributions to medical
science of clinical observation, epidemiology, autopsy studies,
non-invasive scanning, we are now entering a new world of technologies
involving tissue and organ cultures. Furthermore, what is more
important is the increasing availability of tissues of human origin,
which will reduce the margin of error even further, while compared with
extrapolating results from animal tests to humans (Menache, 1998).
Ever since the Gulf War, an estimated twenty thousand returning U.S.
soldiers have been experiencing a series of mysterious illnesses.
Symptoms included chronic fatigue, joint pain, rashes, hair loss,
memory loss, lack of bowel control and even brain damage. Disturbing
repots of miscarriages, stillbirths, birth defects and death among the
babies conceived by the returning soldiers have also emerged. There is
mounting evidence that the Desert Storm Syndrome may be contagious. It
has been learned that the American soldiers were exposed to
experimental vaccines, drugs and pesticides. On a daily basis the
soldiers were required to take an experimental, anti-nerve drug called
Pyridostigmine Bromine. The drug was supposed to be a precautionary
measure that would protect the soldiers in case Saddam Hussein engaged
in biological, chemical warfare. Additionally, the soldiers were given
a powerful insect repellent called DEET and the uniforms were also
treated with another pesticide called Permethrin (Supress, 1998).
It is obvious that the soldiers were exposed to countless chemicals
such as nerve drugs, pesticides, depleted uranium and possible other
chemicals that we are not aware of. In addition they were also exposed
to experimental vaccines, drugs and pesticides. We already know why
these problems have occurred, and that these chemicals are responsible
for these extremely serious health problems.
All of the chemicals mentioned above had been tested on different
animals prior to their use on the soldiers. Nevertheless, the animal
tests were evidently not able to prevent the Gulf War veterans and
their children from becoming the real guinea pigs. It is a known fact
that the military uses unknown numbers of animals to test all kinds of
weapons, including atomic bombs and its chemical and biological weapon
arsenal. But it would be a terrible mistake to assume that the military
used only animals, and not humans, as guinea pigs. Over the last
decades it has been repeatedly revealed that our military has been
caught red-handed conducting experiments not only on thousands of
unsuspected and no consenting United Stated soldiers but also on
American civilians. During the NBC program Now, entomologist James
Moss, PH.D formerly with the United States department of agriculture
stated that he wanted to conduct a serious of experiments on rats for
the Department of Defense. The intend and purpose of this experiment
was to expose the rats to the drugs, chemicals and pesticides that the
American soldiers were exposed to in order to see if the rats live or
die. Why bother with animal experiments when we already know what
happened to human beings? The fact remains that, even if we didn’t know
what happens to humans, animal experiments will never be able to tell
us anything about human conditions. Each species of animal is a
different biochemical entity and the results of such studies and
experiments can’t be extrapolated from one species to another.
(Supress, 1998).
Stroke is a dominant cause of sickness and death. However as Dr.
Robert Sharpe reports, it’s human studies that hold the key to success,
not animal studies. Human epidemiological studies have the power to
save millions of lives, showing that major advances can be achieved
without animal experiments. Moreover, animal tests have a dubious
record in predicting useful drugs to combat the effects of a stroke.
Animal researchers indicate that barbiturates could protect against the
effects on the stroke, experiments on dogs, rabbits, and monkeys. In
human stroke victims, however, barbiturates had little or no protective
effect. By comparison, the drug nimodipine can help people with a
specific form of a stroke such as sub-arachnoids hemorrhage, but the
animal data is conflicting and inconsistent. In application with cats
and baboons, for instance, nimodipine produced no overall beneficial
effect. Furthermore, as Dr.Sharpe states: “the leading cause of deaths
in patients suffering form sub arachnoid hemorrhage is cerebral
vasospasm, a condition in which the blood vessels in the brain
constrict. Human cerebra blood vessels, obtained within twenty-hours of
death, have been used to study the problem since little is known about
the underlying processes.”
(Supress, 1998, p. 3).
Researchers at the University of Gottingen stress the importance of
human tissue since “there are considerable advantage is the possible
use of pathologically damaged vessels, for example, from
atherosceletoric lesions, which are more difficult to obtain from
animals.” The researchers conclude that much needed improvements in
treatment can be expected from human tissue studies. (Supress, 1998
p.3).
The Medical Research Modernization Committee (MRMC) has reviewed
scores of so-called animals “models” of human diseases and found that
they have little or no relevance to human health. Dr. Kaufman explains
further that what they found with the study of non-human diseases in
non-human animals that it is a fundamentally unsound methodology.
(Kaufman, 1998).
Despite animal researchers routinely take credit for virtually every
medical advance; a growing number of medical historians are revealing
that medical progress has rested on human clinical investigation, not
animal research. The most valuable medical research tools are clinical
tools, such as autopsies, thorough observation of patient’s conditions,
tissue biopsies and epidemiology. (Kaufman, 1998)
The use of animals for research and testing is only one of many
investigative techniques available. Dr. Barnard believes that although
animal experiments are sometimes intellectually attractive, they are
poorly suited to addressing the urgent health problems of our era, such
as cancer, heart disease, stroke, birth defects and AIDS. In addition,
animal experiments can mislead researchers or contribute to illness or
deaths by failing to predict the toxic effects of drugs. The U.S.
General Accounting Office reviewed 198 of the 209 new drugs marketed
between years of 1976 and 1985 and found that 52% had “serious
postapproval risks” not predicted by animal tests or limited human
trials. These risks were defined as adverse side effects that could
lead to disability, hospitalization or death. Consequently, these drugs
had to be relabeled with new warnings or withdrawn from the market.
(Barnard, 1998).
Human population studies of HIV infection elucidated how the virus
was transmitted and helped guide intervention programs. Using human
cells and serum in vitro studies allowed researchers to identify the
AIDS virus and establish how it causes disease. Many animals have been
used in AIDS research, but without much in the way of concrete results.
For example, the extensively reported monkey studies using the simian
immunodeficiency virus (SIIV) under unnatural conditions suggested that
oral sex presented a transmission risk. However, this study did not
help extrapolate whether oral sex transmitted HIV in humans or not.
(Barnard, 1998).
Experimenters have been infecting chimps with the HIV virus since
1984. In spite of being infected with several different strains of the
virus, none have become clinically ill. Experimenters designed
treatments to specifically destroy the cells, which are thought to be
most active in protecting the body from HIV infections. In addition to
being co –infected with other viruses, which were presumed to help HIV
gain a foothold. There are many physiologic and anatomic differences
between humans and chimpanzees. These differences make them a poor
“model” for humans. The differences in the chimpanzee and the human
immune system are dramatic and emphasize the impracticality of using
these animals as a model for human AIDS. ( Tracher, 1998).
To predict human causes for birth defects has relied heavily on
animal experiment. Although, these have typically proved to be
embarrassingly poor predictors of what can happen to humans. In nearly
all-animal birth defects test, scientists are left scratching their
heads as to whether humans are more similar the animals that develop
birth defects or like those who do not. The rates for most birth
defects are needed to trace possible genetic and environmental factors
associated with birth defects, just as population studies linked heart
disease to cholesterol and lung cancer to smoking. (Barnard, 1998).
The issue of what role, if any, animal experimentation played in
past discoveries in not relevant to what is necessary now for research
and safety testing. Prior to scientist developed the cell and tissue
cultured common today, animals were routinely used to harbor infectious
organisms. But there are few diseased for which this is the case-modern
method for vaccine productions are safer and more efficient. Animal
toxicity tests to determine the potency of drugs such as digitalis and
insulin have largely been replaced with sophisticated laboratory tests
that do not involve animals. (Barnard, 1998).
The results of animal tests can’t be applied to human beings due to
biological, physiological and anatomical differences. In my opinion, we
can’t rely on misleading and faulty information obtained from animal
experiments. Animal experiments put human health in risk and danger.
Animal experiments showed to be useless in the past, so why should “
we” exploit the animals? Why should we make them suffer and cause
unnecessary pain? Good science and scientist is an alternative to
animal research.
References
Barnard, Neal. D., (1998). Animal Research Is Wasteful and Misleading. (On-line). Available: htttp://www.sciam.com/0297issues/0297barnard.html
Kaufman, Stephen. R., (1998). Animal Tests Are Inapplicable. (On-line). Available: http://www.uilwa.edu/vpr/research/animal/esalt/htm
Linder, Lorin, (1998). A Time To Re-Evaluate The Use Of Animals In Psychological Research. (On-line). Available: http://home.mira.net/~antiviv/article1.htm
Menache, Andre, (1998). Animal Experimentation The Medico-Legal Alibi. (On-line). Available: http://home.mira.net/~antiviv/article1.htm
Supress, (1998). Desert Storm Syndrome. (On-line). Available: http://home.mira.net/~antiviv/article1.htm
Tracher, Wendy, (1998). Tests Results That Don’t Apply to Humans. (On-line). Available: http://www.pcrm.org/issues/Animal_Experimentation_Issues/chimps.html
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