With thanks to Diana for supplying this very interesting and informative article.
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http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2225931/inferring_outcomes_beneath_the_fur.html
Associated Content. 5 October 2009.
Inferring Outcomes: Beneath the Fur of Animal Experimentation.
By Aaron Brown
Does Animal Experimentation Lead to More False Positives Than Actual Positive Results?
Is animal experimentation still at the head of scientific development, or is it time to say goodbye to an archaic methodology? Animal experimentation is viewed by most of today’s modern scientists as misleading, expensive, and laborious. Burgos states that large and ever increasing numbers of scientists and doctors claim that animal experimentation is not only ineffective but also counterproductive (par. 16). False findings and toxic medications lead only to more pain and heart ache for the families of the terminally ill individual.
Although the findings of William Harvey allowed for the medical community to understand the workings of the heart and the circulatory system, Harvey’s use for animal experimentation is a far cry from that of modern medicines use of animals in drug experimentation. For when one assumes that the findings in animals are directly correlated to those of human beings then one need only look to the findings of recent discoveries showing accounts of vast differences between animal and human trials of the same drug.
An individual does not need to be an animal activist or a PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) fundamentalist to reason that animal experimentation has long outgrown its usefulness. Burgos goes on to say that each animal is a completely different biomechanical and biochemical entity in and of itself, being that it makes no sense to attempt an extrapolation of data from a non-human animal to that of a human, or even from one species of animal to another (par. 6).
This being the truth, how does modern medicine perceive that attempts at introducing the AIDS virus to an animal (which have all but failed) is a reliable and sound way to find a cure for a disease that seems impossible for a non-human to contract. Even if a way was found for a non-human to obtain the AIDS virus, what reliable data could be gathered from the research that was done on an animal whose genomes react quite differently from that of the human’s? The thought that bone marrow from baboons into human beings (in attempts to fight Leukemia) has failed with costly consequences, furthermore, interspecies organ transplantation has met just as dark fates comparable to artificial organ transplantation and genetic manipulation. These failures are synonymous with the failures and harmful treatments that have been tried on humans due to a positive outcome of an animal test subject. An example of such is how different an animal will react to a chemical than that of a human individual. Burgos points out the fact that although strychnine is fatal to a human, the same drug has no effect on the same guinea pigs that we test much of our modern day medicine on (par. 14).
With the advent of comparative genomics on the forefront of modern science we learn that rats and humans share a common ancestor, yet modifications over time and evolution have changed us so humans are not rats and rats are not humans.
Although there are some extremely close similarities between rats and humans, the end result lies in the details. The variance amongst human genes alone can be a staggering number to look at; no one individual is alike on this planet. Genes may be similar amongst varying species, yet guinea pigs reactions to strychnine is much the opposite from humans, The failures and disinformation that can only be seen as a fault to the medical research community is not only a research failure, but an economic failure as well, the costs of funding these projects is staggering and only growing day by day.
The cost of animal research pushes health care costs through the roof. Estimated costs for health care in the year 2000 were a daunting two trillion dollars, and projections claim a rise to 16 trillion by the year 2030, a whopping 32 percent of the U.S. economy. Of the two trillion that was spent on health care costs in 2000 a potential 9 billion of that was appropriated to the animal research sector. Universities are the obvious benefactor of a majority of these research funds,
Ohio’s Case Western Reserve University received almost 96 million in the year 2001, and that was near median in the budget scale (“The Escalating Cost of Animal Experimentation”, par. 12) One would suppose that with the rise in the health care budget we would see a decrease of terminal diseases, but this is just not the case. Since Nixon’s launch of the “War on Cancer” 37 years ago, cancer rates have gone up by 18 percent and cancer deaths have gone up by 7 percent (Burgos, par. 12).
If funding is not finding a cure for these diseases, then why the high costs, and what is the answer?
The EU (European Union) has found a way to limit animal deaths, limit spending, and still found a cure for a common affliction. The Brussels team in May of 2003 found that when inserting a drug that contained fever-causing agents (pyrogens) into human blood cells opposed to rabbits they would still obtain the same affect. Using human blood cells as an alternative to rabbits in finding cures saves 200,000 rabbits a year and millions of dollars.
The Brussels research group claims to have a better understanding of human immunology now than they did 20 years ago, which will hopefully lead to the safer drugs for consumers due to the fact that they are now testing these human cells as biosensors for pyrogens.
These new tests have several advantages in comparison to the rabbit tests of yore: they are less laborious, cheaper, and more sensitive (meaning higher accuracy and quality ratings).
Validation studies suggest that complete replacement of rabbit testing is possible and are in contrast even better (Brussels Research Group, par. 1-12). Animal testing as shown above is not the only way to obtain testing results, and if anything is a forgone procedure.
The validation of the human blood cell experiment is a first proof that testing can be done without the sacrificing of funds and live beings. These experiments are a stepping stone to the reduction if not the remission of animal testing and experimentation. So gone may be the days of rat mazes, monkey cages, and suspended metal tipped water bottles. Although these projected scenarios may be far in the future, the risky business of animal testing may be standing on its last weak leg.
With the EU on the forefront of breakthrough medical research with regards to animal experimentation, if the pyrogens injected into human blood cells during in vitro testing can produce results independently then the need for animals could be falling further and further away as medical research progresses.
The cost benefits alone will help change the outlook on American health care, with the system in crisis it is time to be looking to alternative means of healthcare. This being the ever changing landscape of the human gene, yesterdays ‘one size fits all therapy’ healthcare outlook may someday be a more personal, individually planned healthcare analysis.
Although many of the animals that are tried and tested in drug experimentation are within near 99 percent of our gene mapping, does not leave us to speculate that the outcomes in animal trials will be the same for human results. When most animal to human trials only obtain a little over a 50 percent success rate, one cannot say that animal experimentation is a viable school of research. Skeptics and realists have longed looked at the cost analysis of animal testing, the Machiavellian means meeting the ends argument, and every time animal testing just seems to fall short of any real scientific goal.
Burgos, Javier B. “Animal Experimentation Is Unscientific.” At
Issue: Animal Experimentation. Ed. David M. Haugen. San Diego:
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