I. Work in pairs.
1. How valid is it to use animals for testing drugs that might one day be used with humans? Justify your answer.
2. What animals do you think are suitable for testing, if it is the case. Why?
II. Read the information below and decide if they are good enough reasons to ban animal testing.
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine states animal testing is wasteful, ineffective, and unrelated to human disease, not to mention
unethical. Many other highly regarded schools, etc have stopped animal testing realizing that the tests are just not reliable.
http://www.pcrm.org/
Decide if the justifications pro animal testing are valid. Each student reads one of the augmentations against animal testing and the argumentation that contradicts it. Finally the class decides if the augmentation is valid or not.
Justify your answer.
http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animal-testing-bad-science.aspx
1.
"Every major medical advance is attributable to experiments on animals."
This is simply not true. An article published in the esteemed Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine has even evaluated this very claim and concluded that it was not supported by any evidence. Most animal experiments are not relevant to human health, they do not contribute meaningfully to medical advances and many are undertaken simply of out curiosity and do not even pretend to hold promise for curing illnesses. The only reason people are under the misconception that animal experiments help humans is because the media, experimenters, universities and lobbying groups exaggerate the potential of animal experiments to lead to new cures and the role they have played in past medical advances. Read More
Researchers from the Yale School of Medicine and several British universities published a paper in the
British Medical Journal titled "Where Is the Evidence That Animal Research Benefits Humans?" The researchers systematically examined animal studies and concluded that
little evidence exists to support the idea that animal experimentation has benefited humans.
In fact, many of the most important advances in health are attributable to
human studies, including the discovery of the relationships between cholesterol and heart disease and smoking and cancer, the development of X-rays, and the isolation of the AIDS virus.
Between 1900 and 2000, life expectancy in the United States increased from 47 to 77 years. Although animal experimenters take credit for the greatly improved life expectancy rate, medical historians report that improved nutrition, sanitation, and other behavioral and environmental factors—rather than anything learned from animal experiments—are responsible for the fact that people are living longer lives.
Vioxx, Phenactin, E-Ferol, Oraflex, Zomax, Suprol, Selacryn and many other drugs have had to be pulled from the market in recent years because of adverse reactions suffered by people taking these drugs. Despite rigorous animal tests, prescription drugs kill 100,000 people each year, making them our nation's fourth-biggest killer.
Fortunately, there are modern in vitro (test tube) and safe human-based methods available to accurately test the safety and effectiveness of a drug on the human body.
Sir Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, remarked, "How fortunate we didn't have these animal tests in the 1940s, for penicillin would probably have never been granted a license, and probably the whole field of antibiotics might never have been realized."Modern non-animal research methods are faster, cheaper and more relevant to humans than cruel and irrelevant animal tests.
Sophisticated human cell- and tissue-based research methods allow researchers to test the safety and effectiveness of new drugs, vaccines and chemical compounds. The Hurel biochip uses living human cells to detect the effects of a drug or chemical on multiple interacting organs, VaxDesign’s Modular Immune In vitro Construct (MIMIC) system uses human cells to create a working dime-sized human immune system for testing vaccines and Harvard researchers have developed a human tissue-based “lung-on-a-chip” that can ‘breathe’ and be used to estimate the effects of inhaled chemicals on the human respiratory system. Human tissue-based methods are also used to test the potential toxicity of chemicals and for things like burn, allergy, asthma and cancer research.
Clinical research on humans also provides great insights into the effects of drugs and how the human body works. A research method called microdosing can provide information on the safety of an experimental drug and how it is metabolized in the body by administering an extremely small one-time dose that is well below the threshold necessary for any potential pharmacologic effect to take place. Researchers can study the working human brain using advanced imaging techniques and can even take measurements down to the single neuron.
Richard Klausner, former head of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), has observed, "The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades and it simply didn't work in humans." Studies have found that chemicals that cause cancer in rats only caused cancer in mice 46 percent of the time. If extrapolating from rats to mice is so problematic, how can we extrapolate results from mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, cats, dogs, monkeys, and other animals to humans?
The NCI now uses human cancer cells, taken by biopsy during surgery, to perform first-stage testing for new anti-cancer drugs, sparing the 1 million mice the agency previously used annually and giving us all a much better shot at combating cancer.
Furthermore, according to the World Health Organization, cancer is largely preventable, yet most cancer-focused health organizations spend a pittance on prevention programs, such as public education.
Epidemiological and clinical studies have determined that most cancers are caused by smoking and eating high-fat foods, foods high in animal protein, and foods containing artificial colors and other harmful additives. We can beat cancer by attending to this human-derived, human-relevant data and implementing creative methods to encourage healthier lifestyle choices.
More human lives could be saved and more suffering could be spared by educating people about the importance of avoiding fat and cholesterol, quitting smoking, reducing alcohol and other drug consumption, exercising regularly, and cleaning up their environment than by all the animal tests in the world.
A 2009 survey by researchers at Newcastle University found that mice and rats who underwent painful, invasive procedures such as skull surgeries, burn experiments and spinal surgeries were provided with post-procedural pain relief only about 20 percent of the time.
In addition to the actual pain of experiments, an honest view of the situation for animals in laboratories should take into account the totality of the suffering imposed on them, including the stress of capture, transportation, and handling; the housing in confined and unnatural conditions; the deprivation that constitutes standard husbandry procedures; and the physical and psychological stress experienced by animals used for breeding, who suffer through cycles of impregnation only to have their young torn away from them, sometimes immediately at birth.
Animals in laboratories endure lives of deprivation, isolation, stress, trauma, and depression even before they are enrolled in any sort of protocol. This fact is especially apparent when one considers the specialized needs of each species. In nature, many primates, including rhesus macaques and baboons, stay for many years or for life with their families and troops. They spend hours together every day, grooming each other, foraging, playing, and making nests for sleeping each night. But in laboratories, primates are often caged alone. Laboratories typically do not allow social interactions, provide family groups or companions, or offer grooming possibilities, nests, or surfaces softer than metal.
Indeed, in many laboratories, animals are handled roughly—even for routine monitoring procedures that fall outside the realm of an experimental protocol—and this only heightens the animals' fear and stress. Video footage from inside laboratories shows that many animals cower in fear every time someone walks by their cages.
A 2004 article in
Nature magazine indicated that mice housed in standard laboratory cages suffer from "impaired brain development, abnormal repetitive behaviours (stereotypies) and an anxious behavioural profile." This appalling level of suffering results simply from standard housing conditions—
before the animal undergoes any sort of procedure.
A November 2004 article in
Contemporary Topics in Laboratory Animal Science examined 80 published papers and concluded that “
significant fear, stress, and possibly distress are predictable consequences of routine laboratory procedures” including seemingly benign practices such as blood collection and handling.
In the United Kingdom , it's against the law for medical (and veterinary) students to practice surgery on animals.
