Animals in Science
Animals are used to study a disease or condition for the benefit of the same species
From Jean Greek, DVM writing in Specious Science:
As a veterinarian who is opposed to animal experimentation, I am frequently told that animals benefit from experiments done on animals. Even if this were so, I fail to see how tormenting a “lab” dog for the benefit of my “companion” dog would be appropriate. Putting more value on certain animal lives is no different than the grievous ethical lapse that resulted in such blights on medical history such as occurred with the Tuskegee study. In the 1950’s in rural Alabama, a group of doctors decided that “mankind” would be best served by allowing a group of poor, African-American men to go untreated for syphilis. They felt justified that the good that they were doing outweighed the harm they caused.
Besides, the men who died from this hideous disease were not ones that society deemed very important. Surely, no one would question the immorality of using these men as uninformed test subjects for the rest of us. Why should my beloved pet cat be allowed to enroll her less fortunate cousins in a feline variation of the Tuskegee experiment, even if she might benefit?
Furthermore, the argument that animals benefit from laboratory experiments on other animals is a distractor. The National Institutes for Health is not doling out its billions for Fluffy’s benefit. The monies spent on research that is intended to benefit animals is miniscule when compared to the monies poured into research for that is intended to serve mankind’s interest. Particularly when one removes the research dollars that “help” animals grow more rapidly into chicken sandwiches or pork chops, very little effort and very few dollars go into medical research to help animals.
Because there is a legal mandate that all new human drugs be tested in animals, it is not surprising that many people have the mistaken idea that veterinarians use this data and apply the information to their animal patients. There are a number of reasons that this does not occur. The test species is often not one that is seen commonly in clinical practice. These days the test species may very well be an animal such as a genetically modified mouse that does not even exist in nature. Animals used to screen for toxic reactions are given artificially high doses over very short time periods. Data gleaned from such studies is rarely published in veterinary journals and even if it was would not help much in a clinical setting where I am giving a lower therapeutic dose over a much longer time period. The animals used in such studies never have a natural version of the disease being treated. Therefore it is not apparent if animals would even benefit from the drug being studied. Finally, much of the animal experimentation is proprietary. That is, even if I thought the information might be beneficial to my animal patients, I may not be able to access it.
In the real world of veterinary medicine, the opposite is more typical. I hear of a drug that has been used in the human variant of the disease that I am treating and then try it in my patients. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Sometimes my patients require much higher doses, such as occurs with antihistamines. Sometimes they don’t tolerate the medication even at very low doses, such as with acetaminophen. Accutane can be very toxic to human livers. Dog livers love it, but you have to monitor for toxic effects to the eyes. This does not occur in man.
The converse is also true. Dr. Steven A. Goldman of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York said in Science News, "even where things work wonderfully in animal models, it's not uncommon to fail in human trials."
An example of how research to benefit animals should be conducted comes from Purdue University. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) was highlighted in the movie As Good As It Gets starring Jack Nicholson. People suffering from OCD demonstrate repetitive behavior such as locking their door seven times before they go to bed, always sitting in the same place in a restaurant, and so forth. Dogs also seem to suffer from something similar in that some may chase their tails or demonstrate some other repetitive behavior.
According to New Scientist, “Andrew Luescher of Purdue University in West Lafayette in Indiana is recruiting affected dogs to test whether drugs used to treat humans with OCD will work on them. He also plans to use brain imaging techniques to diagnose the condition.” By studying these dogs, with the consent of their humans, we will be able to learn more about the disease and test, under very controlled conditions, if a specific drug helps.
This is typical. It does not require that animals be specifically bred with a disorder nor does it require that the animals be housed in confining cages, on cement all day, without love and affection. Just as in human research, animals can be studied as they present to the vet with a disorder. This is how most human research is conducted. We do not need to create babies with heart disease; we study those unfortunate enough to have been born that way in hopes of learning something that will help them and others that come after them. The same can be, and is done in vet medicine. This is true for operations, for drugs, and other therapies.
Another fallacy purported by the vested interest groups to defend animal models is refuted by the fact that a drug that works well in humans and becomes profitable to the company will then become available and cheaper for veterinary community to prescribe. For most human drugs, the veterinary market is the tiniest economic blip. Prices are set in response to the human demand. If there is a veterinary demand, monies earned from that are merely icing on the cake.
Animals and humans do have things in common; hearts, brains, lungs, bones and so forth. It should not come as a surprise that these organs get sick nor that some animals can take the same drugs as humans. The reason animal testing does not work is not that animals and humans are totally different. However, species will vary in their responses to drugs and disease. You cannot know if an animal responds like a human until a drug has been used in both that species and in man. In one case a drug may kill humans and dogs but cure rats, cats and monkeys while in another situation a drug may cure the human but kill the monkey, rats and dog and a third drug may affect the species even differently from the first two.
Neither do animals need to be killed in order for vet students to learn to practice medicine. Physicians don’t kill humans to learn operations or anatomy. Neither do students at the Western School of Veterinary Medicine. Animals that have died of natural causes are donated for the students to learn on, as has long been the case at medical schools. Students are taught surgery by performing necessary surgeries on actual patients under the watchful eyes of their teachers. This is exactly what is done in medical schools.
The next time a supporter of animal experimentation assures you that animals benefit from animal experiments, tell him not to do the animals any more favors.
Furthermore, a Bulldog is not a Great Dane. Just as we saw in Personalized Medicine, individuals of the same species vary. Studying beagles to understand cancer in dogs is fallacious. The best way to study cancer in Dalmatians is to study naturally occurring cancer in Dalmatians, not Poodles, not Dobermans, not Great Pyrenees.
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