Pietro Croce, Vivisection or Science? An Investigation into Testing Drugs and Safeguarding Health

Islam & Science, Summer, 2005

Pietro Croce, Vivisection or Science? An Investigation into Testing Drugs and Safeguarding Health (London and New York: Zed Books, 1999), viii 209 pp, Pb, bibliography, index, ISBN 1 85649 733 X

This remarkable book packs a lot of intellectual punch in a relatively compact yet accessible volume, especially considering its focus on the scientific rather than the ethical aspects of vivisection. Here, the prominent Italian doctor, professor and medical researcher from Milan, Pietro Croce, tackles the problem of live animal experimentation (vivisection) from the scientific, methodological and medical rather than from the ethico-moral point of view. To quote from the back cover:

   He highlights the increasing dangers to human health
   resulting from the animal experimenter's [unexamined and
   unproven] assumption that the biological systems of humans
   and other species are sufficiently similar for valid biomedical
   comparison. And for the medical researcher, he provides an
   introduction to the range of alternative methods, including
   epidemiological research, computer simulation and in vitro
   techniques.

The book consists of a very brief one-page introduction which sets out his aim to reach both the medical professionals and the educated public by avoiding unnecessary technical jargon without however sacrificing "scientific rigor, so that those who possess a suitable scientific background will be helped to take their first steps, perhaps, towards a science that is in need of radical renewal" (p. vii).

The rest of the book is thereafter divided into two more or less equal parts of almost exactly the same number of pages. Part I in twelve chapters sets out with detailed argumentation and documentation the pseudoscientific nature of vivisection and animal experimentation in general. He supports his negative critique by drawing detailed attention to several cases in point such as the pseudo-scientific nature of most cancer research, birth defects due to thalidomide and the vivisective approach to surgical training. Part II presents the positive critique, namely by setting out some proven and promising methodological alternatives to vivisection such as, among others, the epidemiological method, computer simulation and in vitro techniques.

With respect to his negative critique, we may briefly outline here three of his cases in point, namely, cancer, thalidomide and surgical training. In the case of cancer, Professor Croce points out that "All vertebrates are susceptible to cancer," and so they can be used as "natural experimental models" by meticulous observation of how the disease develops in them spontaneously in the natural environment (p. 33). However, since that method is too slow and impractical due to the large number of animals (dogs, cats, mice or rabbits) that need to be involved, researchers create artificial models by "inoculating the chosen animal with cancer or causing the disease by various other means, chemical or physical" (p. 33). Needless to say, that is not how human beings normally catch cancer, so where is the analogical causal relevance?

However, a more serious problem lies in the fact that "The same cancer-causing substance gives different results, not only from species to species, but also from one strain to another of the same species" (p. 33). For example, chloroform causes liver cancer in female but not male mice; and though benzol and arsenic are carcinogenic in humans, they "are not so in any of the rodent species commonly used in experimental laboratories" (p. 34). This flawed science has resulted, for instance, in the drug diethylstilboestrol or stilboestrol, a synthetic ostrogen for checking cancer of the prostrate and preventing miscarriages but was found to cause transplacental cancer twenty years after the drug was first marketed (pp. 33-34).

A more infamous example is the drug thalidomide which was widely and aggressively marketed in the fifties and sixties as "a harmless tranquillizer particularly suitable for the pregnant woman" since it has been shown to be not teratogenic "after repeated and rigorous animal tests (p. 43)." But again unfortunately, what is not teratogenic (i.e., inducing malformations in the embryo) for animals may not necessarily be the case for humans, and the result were the thousands of malformed babies born to women who took the drug during pregnancy. As for surgical training, Professor Croce argues that "if anatomical variations in humans form one of the most insidious pitfalls for the surgeons, even for the most expert, is it superfluous to add that such anatomical variations cannot be learned on from animals?" (p. 65). He prefers more trustworthy alternatives such as training in pathological anatomy, (6) learning from experienced surgeons, three-dimensional computer imaging and teaching by means of computer assisted audio-visual methods which "put us in direct contact, so to speak, with the operating theatres of the greatest surgeons as they are in the very act of operating directly on humans...." (p. 67).