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Animals in Scientific Research
Medical Research - Diseases of the brain and nervous system
In this section we will examine 4 neurological diseases in depth:
1. Alzheimer’s
2. Parkinson’s Disease
3. Epilepsy
4. Multiple Sclerosis
From Drs. Ray and Jean Greek in their book, Specious Science (please refer to the book for source material).
Nothing is more devastating than a diagnosis of a progressive neurologic disease, since, whatever the condition is, it will worsen. The few treatments available usually treat the symptoms, but not the disease. The tragedy of neurologic disease is compounded by the fact that it attacks the very characteristics that make us who we are: our ability to think, remember, and move, and our personality.
The nervous system’s complexity and our still rudimentary knowledge of its function challenge scientists daily. As a result, we have few means to deal with neurologic deterioration as more and more people are affected by it. That number will continue to increase because science has arrested so many other diseases to which people would have succumbed in previous years.
Disorders of the nervous system have many origins: birth defects, poisoning, infection, metabolic defects, vascular disorders, inflammations, tumors, degeneration and injury. As is true in other medical disciplines, researchers continue to induce the symptoms of these disorders in animals, and then scrutinize animal brains and nervous systems in an attempt to fathom treatments and cures. Unfortunately, animal studies have done little to elucidate the underlying neurological mechanisms in humans. Human research however, has.
Logically, the practice of carefully scrutinizing the human who died from the actual disease is straightforward, informative, and reliable. Autopsy makes sense. Early autopsies characterized the anatomy of the brain and how that anatomy related to function. Gradually, scientists came to understand that the scope of conditions that could affect the brain was very broad. They could distinguish the cerebral abscesses, aneurysms, tumors, the changes of multiple sclerosis, congenital defects, and other lesions. Autopsies proved that brain damage on one side led to paralysis on the opposite side of the body.
Microscopes of ever-greater magnification enhanced the value of autopsy. Researchers were able to catalog symptoms and explain them in light of the pathologic changes seen in the nervous system. Scientists can now identify the causes of afflictions of an infinitesimal size, such as the newly discovered prions that bring on variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. German neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer, who first described the disease that bears his name, contributed significantly to the process of neurology because he standardized the way autopsies on the nervous system are conducted and developed dyes for staining nervous-system tissue.
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Please access the following files for further information on diseases of the brain. You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view these files.
Alzheimer’s
Parkinson’s Disease
Epilepsy
Multiple Sclerosis
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