Beyond animal testing

Vegetarian Times, Oct, 1998 by Kelly James-Enger

As a rule, I buy "cruelty-free" products. Are consumers like me having an impact on whether companies use animals for testing and research?

Absolutely. But there's still a long way to go. Public interest in animal welfare began to grow in the mid-1970s when consumers became aware of the scope of animal testing and learned about procedures, such as the Draize test, in which cosmetics are forced into rabbits' eyes to determine if the products are harmful. The negative publicity and consumer pressure surrounding these practices prompted many cosmetic companies to stop testing their products on animals and begin labeling their wares as "cruelty-free." Over the last 25 years, the number of animals used in scientific research has declined by approximately 50 percent, according to Andrew Rowan, senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United States based in Washington, D.C. Even so, an estimated 18 million animals are still used for research each year. Roughly 90 percent are mice and rats; dogs, cats, primates, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits and other animals make up the remaining 10 percent, according to Steven Ragland, director of Research for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that, among other things, promotes alternatives to animal research.

One reason it has been difficult to halt animal research altogether is that many scientists still believe it serves a valuable purpose. Proponents argue that animal research facilitates medical breakthroughs, thereby saving human lives. It also determines whether products are safe for human use. "Anybody who accepts the notion that disease is caused by a disturbance of anatomy or physiology is going to agree that animal research is necessary," says Adrian Morrison, a professor of behavioral neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinarian Medicine in Philadelphia. "A careful reading of the historical record reveals that it's been absolutely indispensable for discovering and understanding basic biological processes."

Ragland, and many others like him, say that's just not true. Using animals to predict how humans will respond to drugs or other medical treatments is "bad science," he says. "Humans and animals differ too much to make animal research useful." He points out that even animals whose DNA is similar to humans aren't reliable test subjects because they may not react as a human. For example, thousands of chimpanzees were bred in the 1980s for AIDS research because, with 98 percent of the same DNA that humans have, they are our closest genetic relatives. However, researchers discovered that, unlike people, chimpanzees don't develop AIDS when they are infected with the HIV virus.

An even more recent example is the once popular diet drug fenfluramine-phentermine (known as fenphen). Animal testing showed it to have no serious side effects. In humans, however, the drug caused several high-profile cases of heart-valve defects, prompting its withdrawal from the market. Reliance on animal studies, Ragland argues, leads to a false sense of security.

Animal-welfare advocates add that any of the experiments using animals rehash what's already been proven. "There's a huge amount of animal research that cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be regarded as necessary," says Gary Francione, an animal-rights attorney and co-director of the Animal Rights Law Center at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. "In 1998, we're still doing maternal deprivation studies with animals [where young animals are removed from their mothers to determine the effects of such removal]. The results have already been proven many times over."

The only legal protection afforded animals comes from the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, which is largely viewed as ineffective and unenforceable. To start, the law does not cover the majority of test animals--rats and mice. It mandates minimum living standards for test animals, but not the living conditions or procedures they endure during experiments. If U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors find violations during their random inspections, all they can do is assess monetary penalties. However, by and large, the law relies on researchers to report on their own compliance. "The act is worthless," rails Francione. "We have no effective mechanism in place to regulate animal research."

Over the last 20 years activists have made more headway in the scientific community, pushing for research methods that do not involve animals. And researchers are supporting the development of alternatives to animal studies that are both effective and less expensive. For instance, the Washington, D.C.-based Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, one of the founders of Johns Hopkins University's Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, has donated $3 million to the center since 1980.

Among the techniques being explored is "rational drug design," also known as molecular mapping, which analyzes the chemical compositions of drugs to predict how they will react when given to people. The newly formed English pharmaceutical company, Thermogene, has stated its commitment to rely solely on rational drug design and other nonanimal research techniques to develop its new drugs. Data mining, where researchers comb through drug information databases searching for previously undiscovered applications for pharmaceuticals that have already been studied, is also proving useful. And computer simulations are now being used to duplicate how drugs might affect a person's respiratory or circulatory system. "Alternatives are moving rapidly forward as people realize potential benefits, but they will have to be validated within the scientific community to be accepted by researchers," says John McCardle, the director of the Alternatives Research and Development Foundation in Eden Prairie, Minn.