Lauren L's List: Animal Testing

• Its results are often inconclusive and cannot be accurately extrapolated to  humans. As a result, relying on the results of animal testing can be dangerous to human health. It is  a system which is long overdue for a critical review and yet no such review is  on the horizon.
• More importantly, properly carried out human clinical trials and thorough  reporting of drug side effects by post marketing surveillance are urgently  needed. The AMES (in vitro test used to identify the presence of toxins) test  used in conjunction with other in vitro tests can be very effective in  determining carcinogenic (cancer causing) and teratogenic (ability to cause  birth defects) properties of substances. And yet these methods are not widely  used. Consequently, researchers are unfamiliar with them and resistant to the  idea of new training. Because they are not widely used, they are more expensive.  Because they are more expensive, they are not widely funded. The truth is that  animal testing is the bargain basement of  medicine.
• • Allergic reactions, some blood disorders, skin lesions and many central nervous system effects are even more serious examples that cannot be demonstrated by animal models.
• Animals, for instance, cannot let the experimenter know if they are suffering from headache,  amnesia, nausea, depression and other psychological disturbances.
• The drug industry can be relied on to ask for the best drug solution to each  medical problem. We must broaden the question: what is the best solution  overall? Sometimes it may be a drug, more usually not. A drug may relieve the  pain and inflammation of displaced muscles and joints, but only a manipulative  treatment stands any chance of curing it. Diet offers major benefits in dealing  with rheumatism, which drugs cannot improve in the long run. The likelihood is  that drugs will retain a major part in the first aid treatment of many diseases,  but that other methods will offer better chances of long term benefit and  prevention of relapse."

3 more annotations...

• I also know that behind this human suffering is another level of suffering,  more hidden from view: the suffering of animals  used in costly and needless experiments that benefit no one.
• A major problem with animal experiments is that  the results frequently do not apply to humans. For example, Irwin Bross, Ph.D.,  former director of biostatistics at the Roswell Institute for Cancer Research,  testified before Congress in 1981 that "[w]hile conflicting animal results have often delayed and hampered advances  in the war on cancer, they have never produced a single substantial advance  either in the prevention or treatment of human cancer."
• Neurological diseases are another major cause of death and disability in the  United States. Again, animal experiments in this  area have not correlated well with human disease. A 1990 editorial in the  journal Stroke noted that of 25 compounds "proven" effective for treating  strokes in animal models over the last 10 years,  none have proven effective for use in humans
• Two other areas where animal experimentation has been both consumptive of health  care dollars and unproductive are psychology and addiction.
• Yet in 1986 alone the National Institute of Mental Health funded 350 animal experiments in psychology at a cost of more than  $30 million. The Alcohol Studies Center in Scotland stated in 1985 that  "[n]othing of clinical relevance has been achieved to date for the vast range of  experiments in alcoholism" and that "animal  models of addiction are not relevant to human addiction."
• Animal experimentation is currently being inappropriately  overfunded at the expense of crucial clinical and epidemiological studies,  preventive medicine, public health programs, and in vitro studies.

4 more annotations...