Is animal research really necessary? Why some activists argue that instead of improving the human condition, experiments on animals often lead to erroneous conclusions with potentially harmful results

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 24, 2002 | by Brandon Spun

"One of my animals is sick. I think it's having respiratory problems," a researcher told John McArdle, hoping that he might know what to do. McArdle rushed over to the test subject, a common house cat, only to find that the kitty was not sick but purring. The researcher was unaware that cats do that.

Scientists historically have depended on animals to help them understand and explain the human condition. Around one-half of all grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) fund animal experiments. That means each year several billion dollars are allocated for what some scientists call a dangerous waste of time. But not everyone puts it this way.

In the years since that evening when two men raced across campus to save a purring kitten, McArdle has continued to see cases that demonstrate the gap between what experimental science is and what it should be. As director of the Alternatives Research and Development Foundation, he supports in-vitro biomedical research, or research that takes place in an artificial environment instead of in a living body. "The cat was an extreme case, but represents a problem," McArdle tells INSIGHT. He claims experiments regularly are conducted by unqualified personnel. "Many biomedical researchers never took evolution, ecology or comparative anatomy," he says. These classes, often electives at the graduate and undergraduate levels, are deemed unnecessary by some universities. "You produce a highly trained technician rather than a broadly trained biologist who can ask the right questions," McArdle says.

The right question may be: Can experiments on animals be relied upon to teach us about ourselves?

A legal drug doesn't exist--and hardly an illicit one--that hasn't been tested on animals. Does this make people any safer? Clioquinol, an antidiuretic, caused blindness and paralysis. Thalidomide, marketed for insomnia and morning sickness, caused severe birth defects. These drugs had been tested on animals.

Adrian R. Morrison, a researcher who has written on this subject for Scientific American, stands by the in-vivo methods, which take place in the living bodies of animals.

"Why don't they go on to say that twice the numbers of humans are tested on a drug as animals? Only after it is marketed to millions do we see the side effects of a drug," Morrison says. He admits one may miss something in the process. "But who will stand in front of the first mouse?" he asks, adding that thalidomide was not tested on pregnant animals until too late.

"The proper study of mankind is man," McArdle maintains. "Scientists are engaged in a phylogenetic fallacy--the belief that we [animals and humans] are so similar that we can make comparisons."

Is in-vivo research obsolete? When science first made experimental comparisons between man and beast it was at a functional level, but today's questions are more complicated.

If we are asking questions about our genetic makeup, how can we get answers from another species whose genes are the very thing that make them different? Do special disparities become more serious at a macro level? These are questions posed by modern animal-rights groups.

"People are afraid to die. We have an emotional need to believe in animal experimentation," says Ray Greek, director of Americans for Medical Advancement. His book, Specious Science, was published in May. "Animals may be 99.9 percent similar to humans, but it is not good enough. At the cellular level, .1 percent is a big deal." He claims using animal models is not only a waste of time but inherently harmful. "For 10 years, in-vivo methods misled AIDS researchers. No result obtained from primate studies can be seriously considered valid in humans as long as the observation has not been made in man also."

McArdle doesn't push the argument this far. He is, after all, still on speaking terms with such organizations as the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "What works depends on whether it is for testing, education or basic research," McArdle says. "It is not so simple to say in vivo is better."

Greek and McArdle do agree that animal models aren't perfect: Of 11,000 anticancer chemicals developed in mice, none help humans. While 5 milligrams of botulinum kills man, 10 grams has no effect on dogs or cats. Rodents live three years while humans average 72. The differences can be both unknown and very great, researchers say. Some animal tests indeed have led to erroneous conclusions: that smoking is noncarcinogenic and that benzene is safe, for instance. Animal activists say animal research delayed pacemakers and transplants and note that scientists have yet to infect another species with the human AIDS virus.

The basic claim of these critics is that animal research is bad science; that animals don't accurately represent humans, that naturally occurring diseases cannot be artificially induced and that one cannot safely assume a correlation between animal reaction to a drug and that of humans. They worry that where animal tests are the basis for approval, bad drugs may be approved and good drugs discounted. But how serious are these widely publicized concerns?