Animal Research Data Base
Greg Popken,
UNC-CFAAR
Introduction
The vital role of animal models to medical
advancements past, present, and future is inescapable. As long as the facts
regarding animal use are presented in a reasonable manner I feel the general
public would also reach this conclusion.
I have created this base as a one stop
shopping source for all those tidbits you may need when discussing the issues
surrounding the use of animals in research. Although I would like to take full
credit I cannot. Much of the information here is available from other sources.
This base would not have been possible without the help of my associates on the
Internet (you know who you are). Why? Because some of the essays presented have
been blatantly and shamelessly plagiarized from the Internet. I have attempted
to place credit (or blame) where credit (or blame) is due in such instances. In
addition, I have empowered myself to edit their essays as I see fit. (If anyone
is uncomfortable with the editing of their pieces feel free to contact me.)
Finally, (unless those attempting to stop
animal research give up) this data base will be under continual revision. If you
should find errors, questionable information, or issues you would like to be
included please let me know.
Send Comments to:
Itsmine@med.unc.edu
Table of Contents
The UDSA is responsible for enforcing the
Animal Welfare Act, amended in 1985. Currently the act does not cover rats,
mice, and birds. However, in 1991 a federal judge ruled in favor of a suit
brought against the government by several AR groups demanding that mice, rats
and birds be included in the AWA. (The Richie decision). Just recently, an
appeals court overturned that ruling. The Act applies to all research
facilities: public or private, academic or industry based, whether or not they
receive federal funds. All covered facilities must register with the USDA and
report to the USDA verifying compliance and indicating the number and species of
animals used by types of procedures (i.e. painless, pain relief given or not
given because of scientific necessity). The USDA is required to inspect each
facility at least annually. The inspections are unannounced. More frequent
unscheduled inspections are made if significant deficiencies are identified.
All registered facilities are also
required to establish a Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) that reviews and
approves procedures involving animals before they take place, and inspect
facilities semiannually for compliance with the AWA. At least one member of the
committee must be a veterinarian. At least one member must be a "public" member,
not affiliated with the institution, who represents the general community
interest in the care and treatment of the animals.
The US Public Health Service has an animal
welfare policy that applies to all federally funded institutions.
The Public Health Service maintains a
Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. This guide is consistent with
and similar to the AWA and applies to all vertebrate animals. The Public Health
Policy and Government Principles Regarding the Care and Use of Animals states:
Whenever US Government Agencies develop
requirements for testing, research or training procedures involving the use
of vertebrate animals, the following principles shall be considered; and
whenever these agencies actually perform or sponsor such procedures, the
responsible institution shall insure that these principles are adhered to:
The transportation care and use of
animals shall be in accordance with the Animal Welfare Act (7USC 2131 et
seq.) and other applicable Federal laws, guidelines and policies^1.
procedures involving animals should
be designed and performed with due consideration of their relevance to human
or animal health, the advancement of knowledge, or the good of the society
The animals selected for a procedure
should be of an appropriate species and quality and the minimum number
required to obtain valid results. Methods such as mathematical models,
computer simulations, and in vitro biological systems should be considered.
Proper use of animals, including the
avoidance or minimization of discomfort, distress, and pain when consistent
with sound scientific practices, is imperative. Unless the contrary is
established, investigators should consider that procedures that cause pain
or distress in humans beings may cause pain or distress in other animals.
Procedures with animals that may
cause more than momentary or slight pain or distress should be performed
with appropriate sedation, analgesia or anesthesia. Surgical or other
painful procedures should not be performed on unanesthetized animals
paralyzed by chemical agents.
Animals that would otherwise suffer
severe chronic pain or distress that cannot be relieved should be painlessly
killed at the end of the procedure or, if appropriate, during the procedure.
The living conditions of the animals
should be appropriate to their species and contribute to their health and
comfort. Normally housing, feeding and care of all animals used for
biomedical purposes must be directed by a veterinarian or other scientist
trained and experienced in proper care, handling and use of species being
maintained or studied. In any case, veterinary care shall be provided as
indicated.
Investigators and other personnel
shall be appropriately qualified and trained for conducting procedures on
living animals. Adequate arrangements shall be made for their service
training, including the proper and humane care and use of laboratory
animals.
Where exceptions are required in
relation to the provision of these Principles, the decision should not rest
with the investigators directly concerned but should be made, with due
regard to Principle 2, by an appropriate review group such as an
institutional animal research committee. Such exceptions should not be
solely for the purposes of teaching or demonstration.
For guidance throughout these
Principles the reader is referred to The Guide for Care and Use of Laboratory
Animals.
American Association for Accreditation of
Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC)
This nonprofit corporation was formed in
1965 by leading US scientific and educational organizations to promote high
quality animal care and use through a voluntary accreditation program. The
animal care facilities of applicant institutions are visited and thoroughly
evaluated by experts in animal laboratory sciences, who submit a detailed report
to the Council on Accreditation. The council reviews applications and site visit
reports using the guidelines in Guide for Care and Use of laboratory Animals, to
determine whether full accreditation should be granted. Accredited facilities
are required to submit annual reports on the status of their facilities, and
site revisits are conducted at intervals of three years. The council reviews the
annual reports and site revisit reports to determine whether full accreditation
should be continued.
- There are approximately 56 to 100
million cats and 54 million dogs in the US.
- It is estimated that every hr 2,000
cats and 3,500 dogs are born.
- Between 10.1 and 16. 7 million dogs
and cats are put to death in pounds and shelters annually.
- Approximately 17-22 million animals
are used in research each yr.
- Approximately 5 billion are consumed
for food annually.
- Approximately 1.1% of dogs and cats
from pounds and shelters, that would otherwise be euthanized, are used in
research. (Office of Technology Assessment Study "Alternatives to Animal Use
in Research, testing and Education, 1986")
- Fewer than one dog or cat is used for
research for every 50 destroyed by animal pounds.
- Rats, mice and other rodents make up
85-90% of all research animals.
- Only 1 to 1.5% of research animals
are dogs and cats.
- Only 0.5% are non-human primates.
- There has been a 40% decrease in the
numbers of animals used in biomedical research and testing in the US since
1968 National research Council National Academy of Sciences.
According to the USDA, approximately:
- 61% of animals used suffer no pain
- 31% have pain relieved with
anesthesia
- 6% experience pain, as alleviation
would compromise the validity of the data. Much of this work is directed at
an understanding of pain.
Note: These figures apply only to those
animals covered by the Animal Welfare act, which currently excludes rats and
mice. However Animal Use and Care Committees analyze every research project and
scrutinize the appropriate use of pain relieving drugs
Focus of Animal Rights
Nicoll and Russell, 1990 Endocrinology 127:
985-989 The authors looked at 4562 pages in 21 animal "right" books. Of these
37% (1680 pages) were devoted to the way people used animals. Analysis of those
pages revealed:
Biomedical research and education 1064 63.3%
Food 514 30.6%
Pets and pounds 39 2.3%
Hunting 38 2.3%
Fur 14 0.8%
Entertainment 10 0.6%
Compared to estimates of actual numbers of
animals used expressed as concern/#used (%pages/%animals)
Research and education 211.00
Killed in pounds 5.80
Fur 4.00
Hunting 0.88
Food 0.32
In the US there are approximately 400 AR
groups with revenues of $50 million.
PCRM
AMA House action 109 adopted June 1990
"Resolved that the American Medical
Association registers strong objection to the Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine for implying that physicians who support the use of animals
in biomedical research are irresponsible, for misrepresenting the critical role
animals play in research and teaching, and for obscuring the overwhelming
support for such research which exist among practicing physicians in the United
States."
Jerod Loeb AMA (JAMA 268(6)):
The resolution was "debated fully in a
referenced house committee hearing at which Dr Barnard was present..." The
committee recommended that the resolution be "included in the consent calendar
for approval by the House of Delegates", a procedure "traditionally reserved for
those resolutions that the reference committee believes has strong and obvious
support.."
PCRM's membership represents less than
0.5% of the total US physician population.
The AMA stated that PCRM was "blatantly
misleading Americans on a health matter and concealing its true purpose as an
animal 'rights' organization." The AMA further stated that PCRM's suggestion
(four new food groups) was "irresponsible and potentially dangerous to the
health and welfare of Americans."
PeTA
The Washington Times tried to stomp
on PETA in about 4-5 articles on the rabbit and rooster killings:
"The rabbits were part of a group that
PETA removed from a Montgomery County school last summer, and the roosters
had been confiscated from a private home in Washington where they were kept
for use in religious ceremonies. Ingrid Newkirk, director of PeTA, said her
group has never been opposed to the humane killing of animals and saw no
inconsistency between its opposition to euthanasia of the Silver Spring
monkeys and its own euthanasia of the rabbits and roosters.
"We will not overcrowd our animals,"
she said. "We really didn't have anything else to do. And so euthanasia was
carried out with a great deal of concern."
[...]
In a fund-raising solicitation that
PeTA sent out last year on behalf of its Aspen Hill sanctuary, it called the
facility a 'safe haven.'
[...]
Asked whether the letter gave the
impression that animals would be allowed to live at the sanctuary
permanently, Newkirk said, "The ones who are there will. When we receive 70
rabbits from one school, they are obviously in an interim situation." (April
13, 1991)
Last week, Gary Francione, professor
at an animal rights law clinic at Rutgers University in NJ, said he was
outraged by the killing of the rabbits and roosters. "It does not jibe with
animal rights that I teach, that I stand for," he said. With millions of
dollars at its disposal, PETA should have been able to provide or find
suitable housing for the animals, Mr. Francione said. "The amount of money
they would spend to fix up that sanctuary would be negligible [compared] to
the money they are spending on litigation, headquarters buildings, personnel
and other efforts." (April 29, 1991)
Organ transplants (1992)
- Kidney 10,108/yr. (dogs were used to
develop the technique) (23,505 await transplants)
20 yrs ago kidney disease killed
20,000 people/yr. in US. Now 70,000 patients a yr are on dialysis developed
using dogs. 7,000 a yr. receive kidney transplants.
- Liver: 3,056/yr. Pig livers are used
to filter blood while patients wait (2646 await transplants)
- Heart: 2,173/yr. Transgenic pigs
hearts are being studied to prevent rejections of xenografts clinical trials
underway (2,860 await transplants)
- Pancreas: 555/yr. Rats were used to
develop the technique that helps diabetics (140 await transplants)
- Lung: 535(?) The technique was
developed using dogs (1,062 await transplants)
Incidence of Neurological disorders in US
- Stroke: 1,200/yr.
- Migraines: 24 million people suffer.
- Alzheimer's and other dementia affect
1 out every 30 people
- Epilepsy: 2,500,000 people suffer
- Parkinson's: 500,000 suffer
- Spinal cord injury 10,000/yr.
Mortality figures for the 10 leading
causes of death in the US, 1990
- Heart disease: 720,058 (*200,000
lives are saved using coronary bypass surgery developed using
dogs...Artificial blood vessels were developed in baboons)
- Malignant Neoplasms: 144,088 (rodents
are used in evaluating cancer treatment (In the 1960s the cure rate for
children with acute leukemia was 4%. Today, because of animal research, the
cure rate exceeds 70%
- Cerebrovascular Disease: 144,088
(measurement of recovery from stroke is done in cats and monkeys)
- Accidents: 91,983
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease: (A transgenic mouse demonstrating cystic fibrosis was invaluable
for the development of gene therapy that may cure the disease)
- Pneumonia and Influenza: 79,513
(ferrets are used in study of these conditions)
- Diabetes: 47,664 (tissue transplants
from dogs and transgenic pigs may help alleviate the disease). Half a
million insulin-dependent diabetes survive today because of the discovery of
insulin (which used dogs) and current research with animals.
- Suicide: 30,906 (Rats are used to
assess the physiological basis of depression)
- Chronic liver disease: 25,815 (Organ
transplant and use of animal liver to filter blood help to alleviate the
condition: pigs)
- HIV: 15,188 (Feline Immunodeficiency
virus and Simian Immunodeficiency virus are studies to help researchers
assess the aspects of the HIV virus.)
Leading causes of death among children
ages 1 - 14 in US 1990
- Accidents
- Malignant Neoplasms
- Congenital anomalies
- homicide
- Heart disease
- Pneumonia and Influenza
- Suicide
- HIV
- Conditions originating in perinatal
period (SIDS etc....)
- Chronic pulmonary obstruction
Various stats on diseases
- 50 million Americans who would be at
risk of death from hypertension are alive because of medical discoveries
used to treat them -- discoveries relying on animal research
- Childhood diseases such as rubella
and whooping cough have virtually disappeared due to vaccines developed
through animal research
- In 1952 the were 58,000 cases of
polio in the US alone. In 1984 there were eight.
- Animal research was involved in the
discovery of penicillin and other antibiotics. Today death due to infection
is a rarity in the US and in many parts of the world.
- Development of the heart-lung
machine, using animals, has dramatically increased survival for those
undergoing heart surgery. Today 90% of all congenital heart cases are cured.
- Over 100,000 hip replacements are
done in the US each yr., a technique developed in dogs
- Drug addiction an animal model of
heroin use determined that drug levels tolerated in normal situations were
fatal when given in different surrounds.
Animal health
- Animals and humans have over 250
diseases in common.
- Cases where animal research helped
animals: rabies, canine parvo virus, distemper, feline leukemia virus,
cholera, parasites.
- Approx. 50% of dogs died from
distemper until the vaccine was developed.
Ingrid Newkirk
- "Animal Liberationists do not
separate out the human animal, so there is no rational basis for saying that
a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They're
all mammals." (Vogue Sept., 1998)
Note: there is a lot of controversy about the context of this quote. The
famous "A rat is a pig....has been used in a number of contexts and it
remains unclear whether, in fact, this is the correct one. Another (oft
suggested by AR advocates) is "When it comes to feeling pain... A rat is a
pig is a ...."
- "Even if animal research resulted in
cure for AIDS, we'd be against it." (Vogue Sept. 1989)
- "Even painless research is fascism,
supremacist, because the act of confinement is traumatizing in itself. " (Washingtonian
Aug., 1986)
- "Probably everything we do is a
publicity stunt. We are not here to gather members, to please, to placate,
to make friends. We're here to hold the radical line. " (USA Today
Sept. 3, 1991)
- "Six million Jews died in
concentration camps, but six million chickens will die this year in the
slaughterhouse." (Washington Post Nov. 13, 1983)
- "Humans have grown like a cancer.
We're the biggest blight on the face of the earth. " (Reader's Digest
June 1990)
- "I am not a morose person, but I
would rather not be here. I don't have any reverence for life, only for the
entities themselves. I would rather see a blank space where I am. This will
sound like fruitcake stuff again but at least I won't be harming anything."
(Washington Post Nov. 3, 1983)
- "Pet ownership is an absolutely
abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation." (Washingtonian
Aug. 1986)
- "'In the end I think it would be
lovely if we stopped this whole notion of pets altogether,' says Newkirk." (Newsday
, February 21, 1988)
- "You don't own a squirrel and
starlings to get enjoyment from them....One day we would like an end to pet
shops and breeding animals. [Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the
wild...They would have full lives, not waiting at home for someone to come
home in the evening and pet them and sit there and watch TV" (Where Would We
Be Without Animals? (Chicago Daily Herald , Mar. 1, 1990)
Alex Pacheco, Co-chair of PeTA
- "Arson, property destruction,
burglary and theft are `acceptable crimes' when used for the animals'
cause." Charleston W. Va. Gazette-Mail Jan. 15 1989)
- "We feel that animals have the same
rights as a retarded human child. (New York Times Jan. 14, 1989)
Chris DeRose, founder and director of
Last Chance for Animals
- "If the death of one rat cured all
diseases, it wouldn't make any difference to me." (Republished from the
Michigan Outdoors Fred Trost's Outdoors Club Outdoor Digest , pg.
37, August/September from the SOS Bureau Alert! )
PeTA director Dan Mathews on the ALF fire
bombing of Chicago stores
- "We understand what drives activists
to such drastic tactics. We don't condone them but we don't condemn them."
Advertising Age Dec. 6, 1993
Tom Regan, Prof. of Philosophy, NC State
University
- "Even granting that we [humans] face
greater harm than laboratory animals presently endure if... research on
these animals is stopped, the animal rights view will not be satisfied with
anything less than total abolition." (The Case For Animal Rights ,
1983)
- "If abandoning animal research means
that there are some things we cannot learn, then so be it.... We have no
basic right...not to be harmed by those natural diseases we are heir to." (The
Case for Animal Rights 1983)
- "It is not larger cleaner cages that
justice demands... but empty cages; not 'traditional' animal agriculture,
but a complete end to all commerce in the flesh of dead animals; not 'more
humane' hunting and trapping, but the total eradication of these barbaric
practices." (The Philosophy of Animal Rights , Culture and Animal
foundation)
- [When asked which he would save, a
dog or a baby, if a boat capsized in the ocean] "If it were a retarded baby
and a bright dog, I'd save the dog. " (Q&A session following speech, "Animal
Rights Human Wrongs", University of Wisconsin-Madison, Oct. 27, 1989)
- "But, I do want to say that by and
large that in the philosophy as is, the groundwork/grounding of the
environment is dramatically at odds with our philosophy." (The first A New
Generation For Animal Rights (ANGFAR) conference Rutgers University)
- "We are going to have serious
practical [problems?], because we have serious philosophy differences with
the environmental movement." (ANGFAR conference)
- "The philosophy that inspires the
environmental and conservation movement is a philosophy that places no
value, no independent value, on the individual animal." (ANGFAR conference)
Gary Francione and Tom Regan
- "Not only are the philosophies of
animal rights and animal welfare separated by irreconcilable differences,
and not only are the practical forms grounded in animal welfare morally at
odds with those sanctioned by the philosophy of animal rights, but also the
enactment of animal welfare measures actually impedes the achievements of
animal rights." ("A movement's means Creates its Ends " The Animal Agenda
Jan/Feb 1992 pg 40-42)
Tim Daley, British ALF leader
- " In a war you have to take up arms
and people will get killed, and I can support that kind of action by petrol
bombing and bombs under cars, and probably at a later stage, the shooting of
vivisectors on their doorsteps. It's a war and there's no other way you can
stop vivisectors." 1987 BCC interview Quoted in a Report to congress on
animal enterprise terrorism Aug. 1993 Dept. of Justice and USDA
Vivien Smith, who used the nom de guerre
Emma Peel (AKA The Witch) ALF's leading female activist
- "I would be overjoyed when the first
scientist is killed by a liberation activist." She was arrested as she drove
away from a battery farm in Kent in which she had placed incendiary devices.
She pleaded guilty at Maidstone Crown Court in June to attempted arson and
was sentenced to six years' imprisonment. (Times Newspapers Limited ,
November 7, 1992)
Kevin Beedy, Political Scientist
- "Terrorism carries no moral or
ethical connotations. It is simply the definition of particular type of
coercion... It is up to the animal rights spokespersons either to dismiss
the terrorist label as propaganda or make it a badge to be proud of wearing.
" ("The Politics of Animal Rights" The Animals Agenda Mar. 1990)
Sir George Duckett, Society for the
Abolition of vivisection
- "Medical science has arrived probably
at its extreme limits, and has nothing to learn and nothing can be gained by
repetition of experiments on living animals." (Statement made in 1875)
C. Everett Koop, former US. Surgeon
general
(Washington D.C. April 29, 1991)
- "I Care about animals. But I care
about people more. I am here to set the record straight. There is no
substitute for animal testing if we are to ensure the safety of all consumer
products, from personal care and household cleaning products to health care
and prescription drugs."
- "Any legislation that bans
animal-based research that ensures product safety is-quite literally-
hazardous to human health. Alternative tests at present are only adjunct
tests, tests which assist and further support the animal test, but do not
and cannot at this time completely eliminate the need for animal testing."
Sidney Green, Ph.D., Director, Division
of Toxicological Studies, FDA
- "While some companies now use in
vitro methods as a screening tool during product development, FDA feels
strongly that these tests cannot, and should not, be used as the sole basis
for determining whether or not a cosmetic product is safe for introduction
into interstate commerce.
The validation of alternative test methods will take many years of research
before sufficient data are available to determine whether or not the use of
the Draize test can be discontinued." (Letter to Congressman O'Connell
Mar.21, 1991)
Sir Peter Medawar, Nobel Laureate,
immunology 1960
- "Nothing but research on animals will
provide us with the knowledge that will make it possible for us, one day, to
dispense with the use of them all together."
Dr. Albert Sabin, developer of oral polio
vaccine
- "Without the use of animals and human
beings, it would have been impossible to acquire the important knowledge
needed to prevent much suffering and premature death not only among humans,
but also among animals" (Winston-Salem Journal March 20, 1992)
Charles Darwin
- "I know that physiology cannot
possibly progress except by means of experiments on living animals, and I
feel with the deepest conviction that he who retards the progress of
physiology commits a crime against mankind." (Life and Letters of Charles
Darwin 1959 Francis ed. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 382-383)
Dr. Michael E DeBakey,
Chancellor, Baylor College of Medicine
- "It is the American public who will
decide whether we must tell hundreds of victims of heart attacks, cancer,
AIDS, and other dreaded diseases that the rights of animals supersedes a
patient's right to relief from suffering and premature death. Let us hope
that they reach a decision that is based on facts, reason, and good will."
Dr. Alan Goldberg, director of the Center
for the Development of Alternatives to Animal Testing at Johns Hopkins
University
- "An integrated approach of clinical,
whole animal, and in vitro studies is currently the best approach to advance
science, develop new products and drugs, and treat, cure, or prevent
disease."
- "Animal experiments have contributed
greatly to the understanding, prevention and control of human illness.
Animal experiments will continue to contribute greatly to the understanding
and control of human illness."
National Research Council statement
[The Committee noted the need to increase
the funding for research using non- mammalian models. The report points out that
the NIH support for non animal research remained almost unchanged between 1977
and 1983---accounting for about 24% of all grants. During the same period,
support for research using mammals increased almost 10%---accounting for 47.9%
in 1983. Non mammalian vertebrates and invertebrates were constant at about 2%
each. The decrease came from a reduction in funds for projects using humans.
[Fiscal Year 1983 was the last year for which the Committee could obtain these
figures.] the Committee on Models in Biomedical Research, Board of Basic
Biology, Committee on Life Sciences, National Research Council
Models for Biomedical Research: A New
Perspective , National Academy Press, 1985 (189 pages).
"For many biomedical problems, there are
no adequate non mammalian models. In such cases, the NIH should continue to
support research using the best mammalian models. Efforts to find additional
models for normal function and for specific diseases should be continued,
although adequate alternatives to the use of mammals will not always be found.
This will be especially true for problems that involve complex systems such as
higher nervous function. The assumption that adequate alternatives to mammals
can always be found is incorrect and should not influence the distribution of
research resources..."
ALF Tim Daley, British ALF leader
- "In a war you have to take up arms
and people will get killed, and I can support that kind of action by petrol
bombing and bombs under cars, and probably at altar stage, the shooting of
vivisectors on their doorsteps. It's a war and there's no other way you can
stop vivisectors." 1987 BCC Interview Quoted in a Report to congress on
animal enterprise terrorism Aug. 1993, Dept. of Justice and USDA
England
- A car bomb intended for a veterinary
researcher exploded slightly injuring the target. A second bomb (intend to
detonate at the same time, exploded 5 days later when it fell off the car.
The intended victim was not hurt, but a 13 month old child was critically
injured. Car bombing: Salisbury and Bristol - 2 car bombs. England has
experienced 80 bombings in the last five years. (source: Science June
22, 1990
Report to Congress on the Extent and
Effects of Domestic and International Terrorism in Animal Enterprises
"Perhaps the most disturbing pattern to
emerge during the period in question (1977-1993) was that individuals and
there property were targeted with increasing frequency. In recent years
especially, animal rights extremist appear to have become more willing to
repeatedly and systematically victimize individuals and their personal
property, with varying degrees of harassment, intimidation, and property
defacement or destruction. Since 1977, 43, or almost 14% of all documented
incidents, involved the victimization of individuals or their personal
property. The victimized individuals were, primarily, research scientists
working in the field of biomedical research, using animals."
"It is important to note that acts
against individuals or their property were probably underestimated in the
data analyzed in this study. as it is assumed that for fear of retaliation
not all incidents are reported."
"All of the extremist acts that have
been directed against individual researchers have involved either threats
against their person or family members, or vandalism to their personal
property, or both. Of all the cases examined, 29 involved personal threats
ranging in severity from intimidation and harassment to letters promising
death or bodily injury."
"The following {the 313 incidents} is
a numerical analysis of that activity. The analysis is based on data
compiled by numerous law enforcement, government, professional/trade
associations, and private industry sources analyzed by the authors of this
study. IT SHOULD BE EMPHASIZED THAT THE DATA PRESENTED HERE IS BASED ON AN
AGGREGATION OF REPORTED OR DOCUMENTED CASES ONLY, and does not necessarily
represent the entire universe of extremist acts perpetrated on behalf of the
animal rights cause.
Vandalism: minor property damage 160 (51%)
Theft/release of animals 77 (25%)
THREATS AGAINST AN INDIVIDUAL 29 (9%)
Vandalism: major property damage 26 (8%)
Arson 21 (7%)
Bomb threats 16 (5%)
Firebombing 14 (4%)
Hoax bombings 9 (3%)
Other theft 5
Billboard destroyed/defaced 4
Bombing attempt 3
Non-threshing letters/telephone calls 2
Personal attack/assault 2
Arson attempt 1
Assassination attempt 1
According to Scotland Yard, thirteen
letter bombs were sent to businesses and individuals involved with animals
around Great Britain during Christmas week. Only two of the bombs went off
injuring five people. The victims suffered minor burns, bruising, shock and
temporary deafness. Four had to be hospitalized. The remaining 11 bombs were
defused by military bomb experts. Police said the injuries could have been
more serious, and that devices were designed to maim or kill. However, some
of the incendiary material in the devices did not ignite.
Scotland Yard initially believed the
bombings to be the work of the ALF. However, ALF spokesman Robin Webb stated
" it was almost certainly the work of the Justice Department [an AR activist
group]." Webb claimed to have received video tape from the Justice
Department showing the construction of the bombs. Last Oct. a farmer and a
cat breeder were injured by letter bombs for which the Justice Department
later claimed responsibility.
From US. Food and Drug Administration
Position Paper Animal Use in testing FDA Regulated Products. Oct. 7, 1992
"Current law administered by the FDA --
including the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act -- are intended to ensure
product safety and effectiveness, thereby protecting consumers' health....
Animal testing by manufacturers seeking to
market new products is often necessary to establish product safety....
FDA advocates the use of validated
non-whole animal techniques, which may include such screens and adjuncts as in
vitro (e.g. tissue culture) methodologies and biochemical assays. (It goes on to
give an example of one such assay, an alternative to the rabbit pyrogen test, as
an end product endotoxin test for injectable drugs) ...
At present many other procedures intended
to refine, reduce, and replace animal testing are still in relative early stages
of development. FDA encourages all efforts to develop and implement non-animal
models and believes these procedures will ultimately result in significant
reduction and refinement in animal testing.
With respect to cosmetic products, the FDC
Act does not specifically require that cosmetic manufactures test their products
for safety in the context of premarket approval by the Agency. However, the FDA
strongly urges cosmetic manufacturers to conduct toxicological or other tests
necessary to substantiate the safety of a particular product. If the safety of a
cosmetic product is not adequately substantiated, the product is considered
misbranded and may be subject to regulatory action unless the principle display
panel bears the statement, " Warning -- the safety of this product has not been
determined."
(It then goes on to mention that the FDA
does not require the LD-50 to establish levels of toxicity)
The Draize eye and skin irritancy tests
continue to be considered among the most reliable methods currently available
for evaluating the safety of a substance introduced into or around the eye or
placed on the skin. (Continuing: in vitro methods are useful as screening tools,
but do not necessarily demonstrate safety.)
In a similar statement from US Public
Health Service (of which the FDA is apart) entitled Public Health and the Role
of Animal Testing (Dec 1992)
"This statement has been prepared to
inform the general public about the need for animal testing to ensure the that
medications, vaccines, environmental chemicals, and a wide variety of consumer
products, including cosmetics, are safe for the public when used appropriately.
The PHS is concerned that animal activist organizations are trying to convince
the public incorrectly that product testing on animals is outdated and no longer
necessary."
(It gives examples of two ways in which a
company may be able to label its product as not tested on animals; "... by using
ingredients that historically are known to be safe or that have been previously
tested in animals and found to be non-toxic.")
[...]
{Re: alternatives}
"These non-animal research tools have
reduced our dependence on animals, but they cannot completely replace
experimental animals for the foreseeable future."
[...]
"The American people want assurance that
the products they use in recovery from illness and in daily living are safe; The
US. Congress has enacted laws that require the safety of products,..."
Research! America
A Louis Harris and Assoc. survey of 1254
adults. Figures for age, sex, race, religion and education were weighted were
necessary to bring them in line with their actual proportions in the population.
Asked which type of science research was
most valuable
Nov. 1994
Medical 66%
Environmental 18%
Energy 10%
Transportation 3
Defense 2
Space 2
Computer 2
Electronics 2
91% believe that this nation should spend
more on medical research to better diagnose, prevent and treat disease.
74% are willing to spend $1 more a week in
taxes
77% are willing to spend $1 more per week
in insurance premiums
75% are willing to spend $1 more per
prescription drug if assured that the money would be spent for additional
medical research
Research North Carolina by FGI of Chapel
Hill
When asked what percent of the health care
dollar should go to research, the mean response was 36%.
In actuality, only 3% of the health care
dollar is spent on research today.
Finance
Source: iiFAR
- Each $1 the government has invested
in medical research (of which only $0.04 went to animal research) returned
$413 in reduced medical cost and lost wages.
- Example: the direct cost in treating
Alzheimer's in 1984 was $40 billion dollars. $9 million were appropriated
for research.
- We spend approx. $3,000 per year per
healthy American for health care. By contrast the annual federal investment
in biomedical research is only $35 per person.
- In 1989 the NIH spent $9 billion on
research. Compare that to the cost of AIDS, Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes
and others.
- Regulations that resulted from 1985
amendments to the AWA, pursued by "animal rights' groups, cost research an
estimated $2 billion a year, or 17% of the total research budget (source FBR)
- For every $100 spent on mental
illness in the US, $0.20 is spent for animal research investigating the same
illness (Source NIMH)
Sources of funding for health research US
HHS, PHS, NIH 1992 NIH Data Book
Federal Government $11.978 billion 39%
Other Gov. Agencies $2.040 billion 7%
Private industry $15.562 billion 50%
Non-profit $1.284 billion 4%
Total $30.828 billion
Research models used in extramural
research supported by NIH in fiscal year 1991 (US Dept. HHS, PHS, NIH Biological
Models and Materials Program, NCRR, "Research Materials Used Data for FY 1992
% of projects % of research funding
Humans 33.1% 31.3%
Mammals 38.6% 42.0%
Non mammalian vertebrates 28.3% 26.7%
and non-animal methodologies
**AR comments are in italics.
In 1900 the life expectancy was about 47.
Many people died due to sewage and waste problems. By 1920 hygiene problems had
largely been addressed. The average life expectancy was 54.
The largest jump took place between the
20's and 60's -- 54 to 70. Medical advancement was tremendous during this
period: vaccines, surgical procedures, drug therapy, many of which were the
result of animal research. (Source: FBR)
In 1870, the leading cause of death was
tuberculosis. Of all the people born in developed countries like the US, a
quarter were dead be age 25, and about half died by the age of 50.
Today 97% of Americans live past the age
of 25, and over 90% live past the age of 50.
To de-emphasize the importance of medical
research using animals, antivivisectionists point to advances in sanitation as a
cause for our increased longevity. Little do they realize the role that animal
research has played in this advance as well.
Although Girolamo Fracastoro first proposed that "Contagion is an infection that
passes from one thing to another" in 1546, the Germ Theory of disease remained
unproved for centuries. Meanwhile, common beliefs attributed disease to demons
(McKenzie, The Major Achievements of Science Ames: Iowa State University
Press, 1988). As late as 1876, leading surgeons such as Theirsch presented a
sound case for those opposed to the Germ Theory (Lechevalier and Solotorovsky,
Three Centuries of Microbiology New York: Dover Publications, 1974). He
said, "It is still undecided whether putrefaction follows from bacteria or
whether bacteria simply appear where there is putrefaction." If not for the
pioneering animal work of Jenner, Koch and Pasteur, confirmation of the Germ
Theory of disease would have been delayed. As a result, the importance of
sanitation in the prevention of disease might not have been fully appreciated..
There were more than THREE HUNDRED years between the first proposal of the Germ
Theory of Disease and its unequivocal proof. If you would argue that an animal
experiment wasn't *really* necessary for this advance, where were those
non-animal advances then?
-Hulsey
The article by Bailar and Smith (NEJM May
8, 1986) that is often cited mentions in the abstract: "... we are losing the
war against cancer,... " However, the quote continues "...not withstanding
progress against several uncommon forms of the disease, improvements in
palliation, and extension of the productive yrs of life. "
FK506 showed serious side effects in
animals. If it wasn't given to a human as a last chance for life it would never
have been shown otherwise
"FK 506 had serious side effects in dogs,
but not so obvious in monkeys and not at all in baboons." Todo et al. Surgery
104:239-49 1988
In Freireich and Noreen's Milestones in
leukemia research and therapy: pg. X : "Many lifesaving advances in oncology
were researched and developed first in mice bearing transplantable leukemias and
then in human patients with leukemia."
The EAE model has played an important role
in the development of MS treatments from a class of immune compounds called
interferons (IFNs), named for their ability to interfere with the spread of
viral infections. Despite some conflicting evidence, one of the interferons,
IFN[gamma], was believed to be a potential alleviator of MS. This was based on
the abnormally low levels of this compound produced by cultured white blood
cells from MS patients (Vervliet et al.. 1983, 1984). However, instead of
testing this theory with the available animal model, IFN[gamma] was given to
human beings directly in a clinical trial. Symptoms were not alleviated. In
fact, nearly half of the patients in the trial got worse.
Later IFN[gamma] treatments were tested on
animals with EAE. The results of these tests were conflicting, such that some
IFN[gamma] treatments worsened symptoms while others alleviated them. Had these
experiments been done before clinical trials, the conflicting findings would
have prompted more animal studies. Investigators would not have begun clinical
trials and the MS patients worsened by the tests would have been spared.
Proper use of the EAE model may be leading
to a useful treatment for MS. EAE rats were treated with another interferon,
IFN[beta]. The results of these tests were unambiguously positive, leading to a
suppression of the disease course. Current clinical trials indicate that, as in
the animal model, IFN[beta] may provide [some benefit].
-Kitzmiller
Dr. Albert Sabin, developer of oral polio
vaccine (Winston-Salem Journal March 20, 1992)
"Without the use of animals and human
beings, it would have been impossible to acquire the important knowledge
needed to prevent much suffering and premature death not only among humans,
but also among animals"
Experimentation on monkeys was essential
to the development of Dr. Sabin's oral polio vaccine, which has virtually
eradicated poliomyelitis in the Western Hemisphere, saved over 500,000 lives,
and millions from the debilitating effects of polio (Source: Albert Sabin)
Hunt published his article in 1977 (in The
AV Magazine) giving the reported deaths from Polio in NY State from 1912 to
1962. He noted that the death rate went from 19.2 per 100,000 in 1916 and 1912
to 0.8 in 1917 and then fluctuated around a relatively small range from 1917 to
1962. He further argued that vaccination was introduced in 1953 and could not
have reduced the death rate in 1917 and that the death rate did not change much
after 1953. In other words, the death rate was unrelated to the use of the
vaccine. Of course, Hunt was and is wrong. I have never understood why Hunt
stopped the table of Statistics in 1962 when his article was published in 1977.
He could certainly have acquired the polio incidence and death stats for
1963-1976 if he wanted to. If he had, he would have demonstrated a steady
decline in death rate to zero and an even more impressive decline in the
incidence of polio infections after the vaccine was introduced. Polio is one
disease where hygiene and prevention cause the problem rather than prevents it.
This happens because polio is relatively benign (at least we do not diagnose
polio as a problem) in infants and an infection in infancy confers lifelong
immunity. If, through better hygiene, we reduce the exposure of infants to polio
virus, then one sows the seeds of potential epidemics in older children (in the
50's mothers would not allow their kids to go to swimming pools and other public
places in the summer - imagine an AIDS epidemic where one could catch AIDS from
people breathing on you or from wash water etc.!). The evidence that the polio
vaccine has virtually eradicated the disease is extraordinarily strong and can
only be countered by deliberately manipulating or denying the data.
Nonetheless, there are a number of
interesting features of the polio story for those who support the idea of
alternatives. For those interested in the issue, the book by J R Paul (1971) is
a definitive history of the search for a vaccine and the article by Marten in
Lab Animal volume 10(7), pages 20-25, 1981 is a good analysis of
alternatives and polio. One also may ask about the negative aspects of polio
vaccination. Every year a few children will suffer a bad reaction to the oral
vaccine that will leave them brain damaged or dead. Nonetheless, society has
determined that it is better to vaccinate everyone and accept these (random)
harms rather than vaccinate no one and have many more children suffer brain
damage and death from the disease itself. England went through a rather graphic
example of this in the 1970s. [The Salk-type vaccine, a killed-virus variety
which predated the oral Sabin modified-virus vaccine, has no significant side
effects and is equally effective, but must be injected and is thus far less
popular, though it has been used successfully as a standard in some Scandanavian
countries. (Vaccines , Mortimer and Plotkin; W. B. Saunders, 1995.) -
Rich Young]
A pediatrician started
raising alarms about the rate of side effects from the pertussis (whooping
cough) vaccine which are higher than for most of the other pediatric vaccines.
Parents began to opt out of using the vaccine because of the publicity and more
and more children were left unprotected. The incidence of whooping cough began
to rise and so did the rate of brain damage and death as a result of the
disease. Soon, many more children than had ever been harmed by the vaccine were
being harmed by the disease. So, the use of vaccines is not totally benign but,
from a public health viewpoint, they make eminently good sense. For the parents
of the few children who are harmed, there may be a different outlook and, in
this country, we still do not have a satisfactory mechanism to compensate
families as far as I am aware.
-Lynn Willis
The topic (Polio) is
discussed in Robert Sharpe's book "The Cruel Deception," page 37.... There is a
graph showing mean annual death rates for children under 15 for England and
Wales, beginning in 1910. Yes, it shows a gradual decline -- interrupted however
by sudden epidemics in 1947, 1949 and 1950. Immunization began in 1956, when
polio deaths had already dropped to low levels.
Sharpe may have some of
his facts right, but some are simply wrong. In any case, his interpretation of
most of the facts at issue here is skewed.
Consider, for example,
Sharpe's focus on death rate statistics for smallpox diphtheria, whooping cough,
polio, etc. Such statistics deal only with part of the overall issue of how
these diseases relate to public health. Sharpe cites one authority on smallpox,
McKeown, who says (in his impressive book) that vaccination had little
*relative* impact on deaths caused by this disease since public health measures
had already brought about a decline in incidence. That's true, but other
historians, notably Paul Beeson, have in fact criticized McKeown for focusing
his view solely on mortality figures, ignoring the fact that most people who
came down with smallpox survived, albeit after great suffering and permanent
physical harm. Vaccination eliminated such problems as issues of significant
public concern by reducing the incidence of the disease virtually to zero.
Beeson also criticizes
McKeown for ignoring the abrupt steepening of the slopes of the mortality lines
for some of the diseases mentioned; the steepening coincided with the beginning
of vaccinations for the various diseases. Sharpe assumes that, left solely to
improved public health measures, the incidence of these diseases would have gone
to zero. History (as Beeson says) shows quite clearly that this didn't happen
with these diseases, and wouldn't have happened in any event. (I refer you to
the Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, Summer, 1977, pp 365-371, for Beeson's
critique of McKeown; indeed, there is a collection of critiques by several
authors in that issue).
Sharpe is certainly
entitled to hold his own views of history, and to write about them to his
heart's content. His book, however, cannot be considered either scholarly or
authoritative on this or other subjects. To Sharpe's credit, he gives us an
exhaustive list of references. That permits us to evaluate the historical record
for ourselves, but there's more to scholarly work than citing impressive lists
of references.
Even more impressive
are his graphs on immunizations for whooping cough, measles, diphtheria, and
other diseases which had reached near-zero [death] levels by the time
immunization was implemented.
I assume the reference is
to the graphs in Chapter 1. Please examine them again. The y-axis on ALL of them
contains NO numerical scale whatsoever. They are all simply labeled, "death
rate." Accordingly, the critical reader has no way of knowing where the curves
start and, more importantly, where they finish. Sharpe does tell us in the
narrative what the starting points were for the lines, and he gives us some
numbers corresponding to a few dates as each line descends, but in each case,
the scale he *appears* to be using is so compressed that potentially significant
changes in the slopes of the death rate lines cannot be discerned at the
critical times at issue, i.e., when vaccination came into widespread use.
A casual reader of these
graphs would probably assume that the point at which the x- and y- axes
intersect corresponds to a death rate of zero, but there's no way to know
whether this is in fact true from the manner in which the figures are presented
since no scale is provided. In any event, the primary focus of attention should
not be the entire death rate line but the point at which vaccination came into
effect (Beeson makes this quite clear in his critique of McKeown). Sharpe's
presentation of the data does not permit an evaluation of this important point.
This was precisely Beeson's criticism of McKeown's approach to this subject.
-Lynn Willis
Thalidomide was first discovered in 1954
in Germany. The German firm Chemie Gruenenthal quickly put the drug through its
usual battery of tests to look for possible pharmaceutical usefulness and found
that the drug had a remarkable combination of properties: when administered to
mice, the drug was a potent sedative with no apparent toxicity. In fact, in a
standard LD50 test, thalidomide caused no deaths with doses up to 5,000 mg/kg
(at least 1000 times the dose which provided effective sedation). Given the
predilection of people to OD on sedatives, the result was extremely significant,
so significant that the drug was immediately taken to clinical trials -- three
clinical papers were published in 1956, the same year that the results on mice
were published. By 1959, thalidomide was in common use as a sedative in Germany
and England. Over the next year, practitioners in several countries began using
thalidomide, and in 1960 an obstetrician in Australia made the fateful discovery
that thalidomide was also effective at relieving morning sickness in first
trimester women.
In 1961, two clinicians independently
voiced concern about the drug's possible teratogenic effects. That year,
thalidomide was taken back into the laboratory, and by 1962 it was shown that
thalidomide caused birth defects in several strains of rats and mice, as well as
rabbits. By the next year, similar results were in press for dogs and monkeys.
The drug was removed from the market beginning in 1961.
In England, part of the upshot was the
formation of the Dunlop Committee under the Health Minister. This committee had
three subcommittees for the assessment of drugs under consideration for
marketing. Most relevant to my concern is the first committee, which was devoted
solely to assuring that any new product had been suitably tested on animals
(including, of course, teratogenicity as well as toxicology) before being
approved for clinical trials.
In America, the pharmaceutical industry
was being pursued by the Senate Anti-Trust Committee at the time that
thalidomide's teratogenicity became clear. The bill which had initially been
penned to control the industry had been severely watered down by
behind-the-scenes negotiations, but news of the thalidomide disaster caused a
new rewrite of the Harris Bill (signed into law by JFK). The final bill mandated
(among other things) that the FDA should not allow any drug into clinical trials
which had not been adequately tested in animal models first.
As an interesting side note, it has turned
out to be the case that chronic administration of thalidomide can induce
peripheral neuropathy, a finding which, understandably, disappeared under the
reams of teratogenic literature.
The earliest citation I can find for the
belief that thalidomide's effects are unique to humans is the book by Richard
Ryder, Victims of Science , published in 1975. For those of you who
believed this story (as I did), we've been duped by a member of London's
National Antivivisection. I haven't provided references; for those who are
interested in further digging, the final chapter of Suffer the Children: The
Story of Thalidomide by the Insight Team of the Sunday Times of London
provides an excellent review of the subject.
-Steve Helms Tillery (Minnesota)
"The drug was introduced in 1957 after
tests on rats and other laboratory animals revealed no ill effects. Uncritical
acceptance of these tests was disastrous: more than 10,000 children were born
crippled or deformed.
"Better animal trials would not have saved
the day. Later tests on pregnant rats (the animal of choice for such tests)
(Casarett and Doull's Toxicology, 2nd edition, 1980) showed no detrimental
effects of thalidomide. Likewise for many other species:
"In approximately 10 strains of rats, 15
strains of mice, eleven breeds of rabbits, two breeds of dogs, three strains
of hamsters, eight species of primates and in other varied species as cats,
armadillos, guinea pigs, swine, and ferrets in which thalidomide has been
tested teratogenic effects have been induced only occasionally.(DF Hawkins'
Drugs and Pregnancy -- Human Teratogenesis and Related Problems, Churchill
Livingstone, 1983)
"The detrimental effects of the drug
appeared only in a few species -- and not in any species on which we would
normally conduct these tests." Tests for acute toxicity and sedative action were
performed beginning in 1955; however, none of these tests involved the
administration of thalidomide to pregnant animals and observation of the fetuses
or neonates for health or deformities. The animal tests were followed by small
clinical trials with about 300 human patients; these trials also neglected to
assess the effect of thalidomide on the fetus. After the human clinical trials,
the drug was initially marketed as Grippex starting in November 1956 and more
broadly marketed as Contregan starting in November 1957. Thus, thalidomide was
moved to market only after human clinical trials had taken place.(The original
animal and preclinical studies were published as companion papers in 1956:
Arzneimittel-forschung 6: 426-432. For a more recent review, see Lenz W
(1988) A short history of thalidomide embryopathy, Teratology 38:
203-215)
With respect to the later animal trials,
the statements simply misstate the historical record. Thalidomide has
detrimental effects on the fetuses of many species, but there is considerable
variability between species in the specific nature of those effects. The
continuation of the quote makes this quite clear:
"The inconsistency of the results with
thalidomide in animals and the relationship to dose level are shown in [the
following table]."(Schardein JL (1976) Drugs as Teratogens, CRC Press; MN
Runner (1967) Federation Proceedings, 26: 1131-1136.)
The table found in Runner, 1967 clearly
indicates that there is a dose of thalidomide producing effects in all of the
species listed, including rats. The assertion that the detrimental effects of
thalidomide was not seen in the animals "on which we would normally conduct"
such tests is simply incorrect. The source quoted with respect to rats being the
animal of choice (Casarett and Doull's Toxicology, 2nd edition, 1980) does not
state that rats are the animal of choice, but rather that, "The teratogenic
potential of drugs and chemicals has been primarily tested in mice, rabbits, and
rats, although primates have occasionally been used," and points out some
advantages of mice, rabbits, and rats for testing. This is particularly
significant since one of the first animal experiments looking for problems with
pregnancies and thalidomide used rabbits, and reported deformities "remarkably
similar to those seen in humans" (Somers GF (1962) Thalidomide and congenital
abnormalities, Lancet, i: 912-913)
-Tillery and Steinmetz
Morphine sedates humans but stimulates
cats; (1) aspirin causes birth defects in rats and mice, poisons cats, and has
no effects whatsoever in horses;(2) penicillin kills guinea pigs and
hamsters;(3) the widely used industrial chemical benzene causes leukemia in
humans but not in any laboratory animal,(4) insulin produces deformities in some
laboratory animals;(5) nitrophenol produces cataracts in humans, ducks, and
chickens, but not other animals;(6) fenclozic acid (an anti- arthritic drug)
produced no effects on more than thirteen species, but immediately caused liver
toxicity in human subjects. More generally, `all known chemical carcinogens in
man, with the possible exception of arsenic, are carcinogenic in some species
but not in all laboratory animals.'(7)"
In this section we examine each of these
claims in detail. We have found that only three of these assertions are
factually correct.
- Tillery and Steinmetz
Opren passed all animal tests, yet
there were more than 3500 documented cases of severe reaction and 61 deaths in
Britain alone."( British Medical Journal, 14 August, 1982: 459-460) This
claim was somewhat difficult for us to assess. The reference provided discusses
the efficacy of Benoxaprofen in both animals and humans, the toxicity in humans,
and decries the marketing techniques employed to sell the drug. It does not
discuss the results of safety testing in animals. Sharpe made a similar claim,
but he provided references to BBC and Granada Television programs, as well as a
publication from Dista Products Ltd. (the U.K. distributor of Opren).(Sharpe, R
(1986). The Cruel Deception:) The television programs are unavailable to us, but
Medawar has also cited the BBC's program on Opren (British Medical Journal, 14
August, 1982: 459-460). He portrayed the BBC program as revealing suppression
and secrecy on the part of the distributors of Benoxaprofen, rather than a proof
that the drug had been successfully tested on animals. One quote which he took
from Panorama makes the point clearly (this statement is attributed to an MD who
was serving for the FDA when Benoxaprofen came under investigation).:
"I remember a study involving chickens.
It was a carcinogenesis study -- a study to determine whether or not the
drug caused cancer. The report to FDA said the test drug caused cancer no
more often than placebo, or a sugar pill -- and in fact that was true. What
they failed to tell us was that half the chickens died of heart failure.
That's putting your best foot forward."
"Morphine sedates humans but stimulates
cats;".(8)
The opiates have a long history of use as
analgesics (i.e. for the relief of pain), not sedatives. Irrespective of the
effect on arousal, the analgesic effects of the opiates on cats, mice, rats,
dogs, horses, etc., are just as potent as they are in humans. However, just to
keep to a consistent tone, we will examine Brodie's comments on morphine and
species specific humans. When we read Brodie's paper, we were left with the
message that most of the effects which are species specific are related to
differences in drug metabolism. Viewed in this way, most of the inter species
differences are essentially quantitative: i.e. related to the duration of drug
action. On the other hand, qualitative differences, such as those noted for
morphine above are relatively rare. In the following comments, Brodie also noted
that many of the species differences have an analogue in the individual
differences between humans:
"Numerous difficulties are met in
applying data obtained from animals to man. One of the most important of
these is the factor of species differences in the metabolism of drugs. But
an additional factor...is individual variability in the rates of drug
metabolism in man."
[...]
"Various species of animals react
differently to the same drug. Some of these differences are qualitative;
[e.g. morphine]. Fortunately for drug development programs, most of the
differences between species a great influence on dosage regimens. For
example, the plasma half-life of salicylate is 38, 8, 6, 1 and 0.8 hours in
cats, dogs, swine, horses, and goats, respectively. The half-life of a
comparable dose in man is about 5 hours. *It is obvious that, if you use the
human dosage interval in cats, you will poison the cats. Conversely, this
regimen would not be adequate to treat fever in horses*." (emphasis added)
These statements mirror Brodie's comments
that most of the species variability in drug action is confined to differences
in the duration of action.
Aspirin causes birth defects in rats
and mice, poisons cats, and has no effects whatsoever in horses. LE Davis (1979)
Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Associations, vol. 175, pp. 1014-1015
In the case of aspirin, the plasma
half-life of the drug varies with species. Because of this, it is important to
give consideration to the appropriate therapeutic regimen for treatment. Nowhere
did Davis say that "aspirin poisons cats, and has no effect whatsoever in
horses."
In addition, from Brodie B (1962),
Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, vol. 3, pp. 374-380.
"Various species of animals react
differently to the same drug. Some of these differences are qualitative;
[e.g. morphine]. Fortunately for drug development programs, most of the
differences between species have a great influence on dosage regimens. For
example, the plasma half-life of salicylate is 38, 8, 6, 1 and 0.8 hours in
cats, dogs, swine, horses, and goats, respectively. The half-life of a
comparable dose in man is about 5 hours. *It is obvious that, if you use the
human dosage interval in cats, you will poison the cats. Conversely, this
regimen would not be adequate to treat fever in horses*." (emphasis added)
As regards the effect of aspirin on the
fetus, it is true that aspirin causes birth defects in a number of animals. Its
possible impact on the human fetus is much less clear. In part this is because
very few women either go nine months without taking aspirin or taking aspirin
continually. However, Schardein's Chemically Induced Birth Defects presents both
clinical and epidemiological evidence implicating aspirin in human birth
defects. Schardein may not have found these data compelling in view of the long
history of aspirin use.
...penicillin kills guinea pigs and
hamsters
A good overview of the facts about
penicillin in regard to animal research can be found in a paper by Botting, (J
Botting, Research Defense Society Newsletter, June 1991) which stated that the
effect of penicillin on hamsters "is an illusion described in a paper by
Schneierson and Perlman." Scrutiny of Schneierson and Perlman's data indicates
that the LD50 (dose at which 50% of the animals died) for penicillin in hamsters
is somewhere between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Units per kilogram of body weight
(Units is a standardized dosage measure for penicillin). The therapeutic dose
range for adult humans is 80,000 - 200,000 Units/kg.(9) Schneierson and
Perlman's data showed that penicillin overdoses kill hamsters.
The effect of penicillin on guinea pigs
starts out with a similar problem, but then gets very interesting. The original
work on the toxicity of penicillin to guinea pigs was a 1943 paper by Hamre et
al., which stated that when "treated with the same dose of penicillin per kg. as
that given to man, guinea pigs did not die and, in fact, failed to show any
signs of toxicity." Again, it would appear that at a dosage useful for the
treatment of infection, penicillin is perfectly harmless to guinea pigs. The
interesting element of this story is the mechanism of penicillin's eventual
toxicity to this species. It has been shown that penicillin at high doses kills
guinea pigs indirectly. The gut flora of guinea pigs are almost exclusively gram
positive (which is the type of bacteria against which penicillin is most
effective). When treated with penicillin, the guinea pig's gut flora are killed
off and replaced by gram negative organisms, particularly E. coli. This results
in a condition very similar to the pseudomembranous colitis which can lead to
superinfection and death among patients treated with broad spectrum antibiotics
(LS Goodman, A Gilman (1980), The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, 6th
ed., Macmillan, New York). Rather than misleading the medical community into
regarding penicillin primarily as a toxin, the unique nature of the guinea pig's
susceptibility to the drug makes it a remarkably good model for a serious
condition which occurs in humans.
There is one other interesting element to
the tale of penicillin and animal research which is often neglected by
anti-vivisectionist writers. It can be argued that the importance of penicillin
as an antibiotic went unrecognized for a decade because Fleming, who discovered
penicillin, did not perform a standard animal experiment. Instead, relying on
the results of in vitro experiments, he misinterpreted the mechanism of
penicillin's action and concluded that it would only be useful as a topical
antibiotic. It was a decade later, when Florey and Chain tested penicillin on
mice that had been artificially infected, that the importance of penicillin as a
general antibiotic was discovered.(10)
Benzene causes leukemia in humans but
not in any laboratory animal
The International Agency for Research on
Cancer (IARC) puts together workgroups that assess the evidence for and against
carcinogenicity of various chemicals. In 1982, one of the review panels found
that the data regarding benzene's role in causing leukemia in humans was
sufficient to conclude that inhaled benzene was carcinogenic. The same review
panel was unconvinced by the data acquired in animal studies. A subsequent
review panel reached a different conclusion, finding that benzene did indeed
cause various cancers in mice and rats, including leukemia.(No leukemia in
animals: IARC Supplement 4, 1982, page 56. Position reversed: IARC Supplement 7,
1987, page 120.) It would appear that this statement is simply out of date.
Insulin produces deformities in some
laboratory animals;"
In order for this to be an example where
medicine was misled by animal studies, it would have to be the case that some
laboratory animals are sensitive to insulin in a way which differs from human
sensitivity. The literature on this topic does not provide for this conclusion
in any certain manner. Normal animals, if treated with insulin during pregnancy,
are likely to produced deformed offspring. In all likelihood this is also true
for humans. Almost any significant manipulation of blood sugar level in a
pregnant animal (or human) can result in birth defects. This includes both
elevation and depression of blood sugar level. The effect of insulin is to lower
blood sugar level. Just as deleterious is the effect of withholding insulin from
insulin-dependent diabetic animals (including humans), as it can also result in
deformed offspring.
Reines has Published a pamphlet suggesting
that Banting and Bests Nobel prize winning work discovering insulin did not rely
on the use of dogs. He often cites the work of Michael Bliss in this pamphlet
("The Discovery of Insulin") The following is a memo written by Dr Bliss to
Brandon Reines:
"Mr. Brandon Reines has published a
booklet entitled The Truth Behind the Discovery of Insulin, which purports
to convey findings about insulin and animal research drawn from my 1983
book, The Discovery of Insulin. Reines' interpretation of my work is
thoroughly distorted, wrong-headed, and silly. I informed him of this
several years ago when I first read his mindless writing on the subject. I
utterly repudiate his misunderstanding of my work. The discovery of insulin
in the early 1920s stands as one of the outstanding examples in medical
history of the successful use of animal experimentation to improve the human
condition. Insulin would not have been isolated, at Toronto or anywhere
else, without the sacrifice of thousands of dogs. These deaths made it
possible for millions of humans to live"
Signed: Michael Bliss M.A., Ph.D.,
F.R.S.C.
Dinitrophenol produces cataracts in
humans, ducks and chickens, but not other animals;
Unfortunately, other published papers have
revealed that DNP induced cataracts can be observed in mouse, guinea pig, and
rabbit.(Mice: JW Bettman (1946), American Journal of Ophthalmology, 29, page
1388; Guinea pigs: S Ogino, K Yasukura (1975), op cit., 43, page 936; Rabbits:
PJ Gehring and JF Buerge (1969), Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, 14, page
475)
Fenclozic acid (an anti-arthritic drug)
produced no effects on more than thirteen species, but causes liver toxicity in
human subjects.
The statement is generally correct except
for the number of species in which fenclozic acid was tested: not thirteen but
ten. The difficulty with using fenclozic acid as an example is that, in our
view, this is a case where limited clinical testing of a chemical proved
remarkably effective. The drug passed the pre-clinical phase with no difficulty,
meaning that no ill effects were noted in normal human volunteers. In the
clinical trials, however, jaundice was noted in about ten percent of the
patients treated with the drug.
The chemical was withdrawn from all
subjects, and those who had developed jaundice quickly recovered. Fenclozic acid
was not marketed as an anti-arthritic drug, and its injurious effects extended
no further than those few subjects.
Had more rigorous testing been standard
practice, aspirin and penicillin would never have been marketed. They would have
failed in animal trials."
By modern drug testing standards, aspirin
may well have failed animal tests. The trouble with this example is, perhaps it
should. As recounted already, the clinical experience with aspirin has led some
to suggest that the easy availability of aspirin should be reconsidered. In
fact, most hospitals now provide either acetaminophen or ibuprofen for minor
pain rather than aspirin. This is not because aspirin is less effective, but
rather because the side effects of aspirin can be quite severe (e.g. tinnitus,
gastric irritation, platelet suppression, etc., not to mention the possible
association between aspirin and Reye's syndrome). Thus, with respect to aspirin,
animal testing would not have prevented the introduction of some incredibly safe
drug, rather it would have prevented the introduction of a somewhat dangerous
one if alternatives had been available; no serious harm there.
As far as penicillin is concerned, we
agree with Botting who concluded "it is inconceivable that a patient on the
verge of death from severe septicemia would be denied administration of a drug
that had been shown to prevent death in similarly infected mice, simply because
at doses higher than those required for therapeutic benefit it was toxic for a
single species."
Literature Cited:
- NI Sax (1981) Cancer Causing
Chemicals.
- No leukemia in animals: IARC
Supplement 4, 1982, page 56. Position reversed: IARC Supplement 7, 1987,
page 120.
- L Friedman (1969) Toxicology and
Applied Pharmacology, vol. 16, pp. 498-506.
- Schardein (1985), Chemically Induced
Birth Defects, M. Dekker, New York.
- G Zbinden (1963) Advances in
Pharmacology, vol.2, pp. 1-112.
- Mice: JW Bettman (1946), American
Journal of Ophthalmology, 29, page 1388; Guinea pigs: S Ogino, K Yasukura
(1975), op cit., 43, page 936; Rabbits: PJ Gehring and JF Buerge (1969),
Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, 14, page 475.
- SJ Alcock (1971) Proceedings of the
European Society for the Study of Drug Toxicity, vol. 12, pp. 184-190.
- Brodie B (1962), Clinical
Pharmacology and Therapeutics, vol. 3, pp. 374-380.
- LE Davis (1979) Journal of the
American Veterinary Medical Associations, vol. 175, pp. 1014-1015.
- Florey 1946 Experientia, 2: 160-171,
British Medical Bulletin, 4: 248-258.
An article by Neal D. Barnard, M.D. that
was published in PCRM Update () Begins as follows:
In the early 1960's, the tobacco lobby
used all the political and scientific clout it could muster against health
warnings about smoking. And one piece of evidence particularly helped their
case: animal experiments did not show that inhaled tobacco smoke caused
cancer. In study after study, animals forced to inhale smoke did not get
cancer. As Clarence C. Little wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine,
June 15, 1961, "There have been many such experiments here and abroad, and
none have been able to produce carcinoma of the lung in animals."Dr. Little
worked for the Tobacco Industry Research Committee and for Jackson
Laboratory, a large-scale animal breeder. He used the results of animal
experiments to argue that lung cancer is not linked to tobacco. Rather lung
cancer is a challenge, an unsolved problem. Its etiology will probably long
be an open question."While Little's conclusion served both of his employers,
it was no help for human health. Indeed, in another editorial published at
about the same time, Dr. Donald B. Effler of the Cleveland Clinic argued
that animal experiments offered little support for the smoking-cancer link,
and that a smoker who does not yet have a chronic cough "assumes little risk
to his health."[1]
It is funny that Dr Barnard didn't mention
yet another editorial that appeared "about the same time". In fact, it appears
just in front of Dr. Little's article in the same issue of the New Engl. J.
Med. I suppose Dr. Barnard is a busy man and missed it.
In this article NEJM June 15, 1961 vol.
264 p 1235 Dr. E Wynder explains that it is difficult to induce lung cancer in
animals because "... it has so far not been possible to introduce a sufficient
amount of cigarette smoke into the lungs of these animals if the are merely
placed in smoke filled cages. Unless one can find an animal that will inhale
cigarettes as man does, it may be impossible to duplicate the human
findings."However, Dr Wynder points out the "Cigarette smoke condensate (give to
mice 'within the dose relation for man') has been prove to be carcinogenic to
mouse epidermis, rabbit epidermis and the hilus of rats."
Barnard's article continues:
Research on stroke provides another
example. For years, experimenters s have used animal experiments to create
brain damage that simulates the effects of a human stroke. They then test
out various experimental drugs to see whether they reduce the damage to the
brain. But a review in the journal Stroke, published by the American
Heart Association in January, 1990, reported that, of 25 different
treatments that worked in rodents, not a single one worked in human
patients. As the Stroke editorial lamented, such animal experiments were not
only failing to advance science, they were actually impeding progress:
"Each time one of these potential
treatments is observed to be effective based upon animal research, it
propagates numerous further animal and human studies consuming enormous
amounts of time and effort to prove that the observation has little or
no relevance to human disease or that it may have been an artifact of
the animal model itself." [4]
Perhaps if Dr. Barnard would tell the
readers of the focus of the paper rather than pulling quotes out of context,
they would understand the quote. The paper is directed at developing better
models to study stroke, not at discrediting animal models in general.
Barnard also stated:
Are animal experiments that lead
researchers astray simply rare? A Stroke editorial stated that "the
answers to many of our questions regarding the underlying pathophysiology
and treatment of stroke do not lie with continued attempts to model the
human situation perfectly in animals, but rather with the development of
techniques to enable the study of more basic metabolism, pathophysiology,
and anatomical imaging entail in living humans."
Poor Dr. Barnard. He must have been in
such a hurry he forgot to include he line that appears before this one in the
article, which reads:
"There is also no current alternative to
animal studies of safety and effect in screening agents that may benefit
patients with stroke."
He must have also missed the fact that the
author believes that "the use of animals will continue to contribute
SUBSTANTIALLY to research in stroke or the foreseeable future". [emphasis added]
-Popken
Taub's monkey research involved severing
afferent nerves in one arm, and training the monkey to use the affected limb.
Animal activists suggested that this research had no "clinical value, "but
Taub's yet unpublished results suggest otherwise (Taub et al. Archives of
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, in press). Taub has recently applied
the findings he obtained using monkeys to benefit humans in a clinical setting.
Twenty-five percent of Dr. Taub's stroke patients have regained the use of their
paralyzed arm, and attained functional independence in 14 tasks such as feeding
and dressing themselves.
Taub was ultimately exonerated of all
cruelty charges, and is now at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is
applying the techniques he developed using monkeys (that PETA labeled as
useless) to rehabilitate human stroke victims.
PETA co-founder Alex Pacheco infiltrated
the Silver Spring laboratory of Dr. Edward Taub under the pretense that he was
interested in research. He never told Taub that he was an anti-vivisectionist.
While Taub was on a three-week vacation, Pacheco initiated a media circus in a
vain attempt to prove that Taub's research was cruel. Pacheco worked in Taub's
lab for six months, during which time he *never* questioned the facilities or
procedures. Later, he testified that he felt that the animals were "suffering"
during this period. After the police raid, the monkeys were delivered to the
house of a local PETA member, Lori Lehner. When it became apparent that the
judge would order the return of Taub's monkeys, they were "stolen" from Ms.
Lehner's house. Ingrid [Newkirk] and her gang swore that they had no knowledge
of, or involvement with, this event, but the judge apparently did not believe
them. When Ingrid and two other PETA officials were threatened with $10,000
fines and jail, the monkeys were "miraculously" relocated.
The only *incontrovertible* act of animal
abuse in this case was perpetrated by the "unknown" antivivisectionists who
transported the monkeys by truck from Maryland to Florida. Blood samples taken
immediately after the police raid indicated normal leukocyte counts. After Dr.
Taub was exonerated of cruelty charges, and the court ordered the return of his
animals, elevated white blood cell counts indicated they had been subjected to
severe stress. When Taub's lawyers filed cruelty charges related to this event,
district attorney Roger Galvin used his "prosecutorial discretion" to ignore the
charges. According to Taub, Galvin is now an executive of an organization called
"Lawyers for Animal Rights."
Although they previously had commendable
attendance records (missing only 1 of 423 workdays), the two caretakers in
charge of Taub's animals missed 7 of 15 workdays during his absence. This
included three consecutive days before the police raid. Regardless of why this
unlikely event might have happened, the inescapable fact is that Pacheco was, in
Taub's absence, authorized and obligated to report or otherwise correct these
conditions. He did not. After collaborating closely with local police
authorities to convince them that "cruel" conditions were extant, he was absent
from the laboratory on the day the police raid took place as though to suggest
his non-involvement. At Taub's trial, Pacheco testified that [it was] during
this time [that] he snapped photographs depicting unsanitary conditions.
Veterinarians who routinely entered Taub's animal facility testified that they
*never* saw conditions remotely resembling the ones depicted in Pacheco's
pictures.
Taub had two trials. The first had no jury
and the second did. Of 119 charges leveled against Taub (seven charges each for
17 monkeys), 113 were dismissed by the Judge (Stanley Klaven, IMS). Klaven found
Taub guilty of six counts based on his opinion that Taub had provided inadequate
veterinary care for six of the monkeys, and that they had been thereby harmed.
Taub's appeal was held amidst a great
amount of pretrial publicity, much of which was instigated by PETA. Requests for
a change of venue and sequestering of the obviously contaminated jury were
denied. The jury found Taub guilty of one of the remaining six charges, based on
the veterinary *opinions* presented that one of the monkeys (Nero) had a case of
osteomyelitis, a life-threatening bone infection.
According to Taub, the prosecutor, Roger
Galvin, had in his possession a pathology report resulting from an examination
of Nero's amputated arm. This report clearly states that there was no evidence
of osteomyelitis. Mr. Galvin withheld this evidence from the court. Taub's
conviction on this sole remaining count centered on his decision not to apply
bandages to the deafferented limbs of one monkey. Five veterinarians, with
expertise in caring for animals with deafferented limbs agreed with Taub. Two
veterinarians, without such experience, held that Taub had been negligent in
withholding bandages. For some reason, the appeals court sided with the minority
opinion, and found Taub guilty of one count of cruelty. Taub acknowledges that
monkeys with deafferented limbs were sometimes self-mutilating. His funding
agency, NIH, was aware of this also, and it did not prevent them from funding
this work. After this fiasco, the NIH used this, and other reasons beyond Taub's
control (such as the inadequacy of the air-handling equipment in the lab) to
withdraw funding. This was, in my opinion, a political decision, and not
indicative of any fault on Taub's part.
The sole remaining charge, for which Taub
was convicted, centered on the advisability of placing bandages on the monkey's
self-inflicted wounds. Taub simply followed the advice of the veterinarians that
were hired to care for the monkeys.
The Appeals Court of Maryland ruled that
Article 27, Section 59 of the Maryland Code (the anti-cruelty statute) was
inapplicable to Taub. The court did not consider the constitutionality of
Section 59, preemption of Section 59 by the AWA, and certain alleged errors in
the trial court's evidentiary rulings. In reviewing the statute, the court noted
that the Maryland legislature was consistently concerned with the punishment of
acts causing unnecessary or unjustifiable pain or suffering. It concluded that
Taub's research constituted "certain normal human activities to which the
infliction of pain to an animal is purely incidental and unavoidable."
PETA's spin doctors have consistently
asserted that Taub was exonerated on "jurisdictional technicality." That Taub's
research was already regulated by a Federal program was one aspect of the
inapplicability issue that was considered by the court, but was not the entire
reason for the reversal, as anyone who reads the decision can see.
The benefits of research with the Silver
Spring monleys are evidenced by this research publication in the prestigious
journal Science : AU Pons-T-P. Garraghty-P-E. Ommaya-A-K. Kaas-J-H.
Taub-E. Mishkin-M.
TI Massive cortical reorganization after sensory deafferentation in adult
macaques.
SO Science. 1991 Jun 28. 252(5014). P 1857-60.
AB After limited sensory deafferentations in adult primates, somatosensory
cortical maps reorganize over a distance of 1 to 2 millimeters mediolaterally,
that is, in the dimension along which different body parts are represented. This
amount of reorganization was considered to be an upper limit imposed by the size
of the projection zones of individual thalamocortical axons, which typically
also extend a mediolateral distance of 1 to 2 millimeters. However, after
extensive long-term deafferentations in adult primates, changes in cortical maps
were found to be an order of magnitude greater than those previously described.
These results show the need for a reevaluation of both the upper limit of
cortical reorganization in adult primates and the mechanisms responsible for it.
Long-term observations of the Silver
Spring monkeys have resulted in the discovery that, after injury, cortical
neurons in primate brains have a capacity to reorganize or remap that is
ten-fold greater than previously thought. Is this not a "medical" advance?
-Hulsey
An example of the potential value of
"alternatives" is the Brown and Goldstein winning of the 1985 prize for studies
of cholesterol metabolism. Other citations have been for foundational work in
immunology using monoclonal antibodies and for work on cell growth.
The Goldstein and Brown award for
elucidating the pathway of cholesterol metabolism as an example of the use of
alternatives in Nobel Prize work. It is true that much of the work done by
Goldstein and Brown used human cell cultures (from normal humans and from
patients with familial hypercholesterolemia) and compared the differences
between the normal and diseased cells to work out the defect and then were able
to describe the overall pathway of cholesterol metabolism in the body. However,
there were some research questions that they could not work out in cell culture
because cholesterol flows in the body require a dynamic interaction between
blood cholesterol and the liver. So, for these questions, they turned to the
Watanabe rabbit, a strain of rabbits discovered by a Japanese researchers, that
happens to have virtually the same defect as humans with familial
hypercholesterolemia. Therefore, their Nobel prize work involved a great deal of
cell culture (alternatives) and some animal research indicating that Lynn is
right in claiming that one can claim neither that all health benefits come from
animal research nor that no health benefits come from animal research.
-Hulsey
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