• "The Science We Deserve" -- Dr. Robert Sharpe
• (Text of speech given at International Conference at Helsingborg, Sweden, on 10th August, 1996)

 

• The Pain and Suffering in Laboratories

 

• Throughout the world, laboratory animals are the unwilling victims of science. They are used to develop drugs and investigate disease, to test agricultural and consumer products, for military and space research, and for a multitude of other purposes. In Sweden alone, 629,586 animals were subjected to laboratory tests during 1994.

 

• Despite the widespread use of animals, there are powerful arguments against the practice. To begin with, animal research is virtually inseparable from suffering or death. This is partly to do with the experimenter's desire for a disposable species that can be manipulated as required and killed when convenient. It also arises from the way many tests are performed. In the field of toxicology, which accounts for approximately one fifth of all animal experiments, test chemicals are administered so that at least some dose levels induce harmful effects. For instance, in the LD50 test, animals are deliberately poisoned to death to measure the toxicity of the chemical. A more humane version of the LD50, known as the fixed dose procedure, does not require the animal to be killed. Nevertheless it still requires clear signs of poisoning before it is stopped.

 

• The LD50 is an acute toxicity test requiring a single dose. But even in more prolonged toxicity tests, in which substances are administered every day, the highest dose levels are again chosen to induce harmful effects. This is done so that doctors have some idea which parts of the body require special monitoring during human trials.

 

• Another major area where animals are deliberately harmed is the study of illness and injury. Here, symptoms of disease are induced to promote an 'animal model' of the condition. In cancer research for instance, radiation, chemicals or viruses are often used to produce tumors in laboratory animals. Researchers acknowledge that these creatures are likely to suffer pain and distress.

 

• Genetically Engineered Animals

 

• Animals increasingly suffer in genetics research. Techniques have been developed to alter an animal's genetic make-up producing new strains or species to be exploited by the agricultural, pharmaceutical and biomedical industries. One approach is to insert genes from one species into the embryos of another, the resulting creatures being known as 'transgenics'. Another methods is to disable or knock out one of the animal's own genes. Scientists refer to these creatures as 'knock-outs'.

 

• Genetically engineered animals suffer because scientists are unable to predict the results of their genetic manipulations. The infamous 'Beltsville' pigs were genetically engineered to carry human growth hormone genes but developed severe arthritis and were unable to stand. During later experiments by the USDA in Beltsville, growth hormone genes from cows were introduced into pigs in an attempt to increase growth rate and produce leaner flesh. However, the resulting transgenic pigs suffered protruding eyes, gastric ulcers, arthritis, dermatitis, heart problems, lameness, pneumonia and kidney disease. At the University of Cincinnati, research with transgenetic mice unexpectedly led to animals with brain damage, malformed faces, and no back legs. They all died within 24 hours.Even where there are no unexpected complications, genetically engineered animals suffer and die because in biomedical research they are designed to do so. An example is the so-called 'oncomouse', intended for use by cancer researchers. It is produced by inserting human cancer genes into the embryos of mice. The animals quickly develop fatal breast cancer. Another case is genetically engineered 'cystic fibrosis' mice. These animals become ill and die within 40 days.

 

• Animals may also suffer from the way they are kept or through poor experimental technique. And for many primates, there are the additional hazards of capture and transportation from the country of origin.

 

• Species Difference & False Sense of Security

 

• Apart from the plight of animals, there are also scientific objections to vivisection. This is because species differ in their response to drugs and disease. Consequently animal experiments are not a safe guide to the treatment and prevention of human illness. For instance, it is well known that oral contraceptives increase the risk of blood clots in women. These and other circulatory problems caused by the Pill, were not identified by animal experiments. In fact, in common laboratory species such as dogs and rats, oral contraceptives produced the opposite effect, making it more difficult for the blood to clot. Another example is the drug fialuridine which was intended for the treatment of hepatitis. However, in 1993 clinical trials of the drug were halted following deaths and serious complications among participants. The dangers were unexpected since the drug had seemed both safe and effective in laboratory animals. Fialuridine is not an isolated example since most of the harmful effects of drugs cannot be predicted by animal tests.

 

• Animals tests not only give a false sense of security, there is also the risk that worthwhile therapies may be lost or delayed through toxic effects that do not occur in human beings. Development of propranolol, the first widely used beta-blocking drug for heart disease and high blood pressure, was put in jeopardy when it caused rats to collapse and dogs to vomit severely. On the basis of animal tests, the transplant drug FK506 was feared too toxic for human use, and if it hadn't been given as a last chance option to patients in desperate plights, its life-saving qualities may never have been appreciated. And the discovery that tamoxifen caused cancer in rats would have halted development of this anti-cancer drug had the company ICI not already been reassured by its safety profile in human patients.Similar problems arise when animals are employed as "models" of disease. The use of monkeys to investigate malaria led to the suggestion that steroids would be helpful in treating patients who developed coma. However, human trials showed that steroids are actually dangerous, prolonging coma and increasing the risk of complications such as pneumonia, urinary tract infections and convulsions.

 

• In cancer research some of the animal tumors are so different that any coincidence with human findings must be fortuitous. A widely used animal model of breast cancer is the mouse in which disease is introduced by a virus. Yet even researchers who use this animal admit that "the mouse model . . . has important differences from breast cancer in women." The disease is not caused by a virus in people and whilst early pregnancy can reduce the risk of illness in women, the opposite is true in mice. And mouse breast tumors seldom spread whereas this is a characteristic of the human disease.

 

• Even the genetically engineered animals that scientists hope will more closely mimic human disease are proving unreliable. It has been found for instance, that cancer genes can behave very differently in mice and people.

 

• These examples show that vivisection is an illogical and unreliable system of research. The method is further undermined by the choice of species. All too often this depends on factors such as cost, breeding rate, ease of handling and tradition rather than whether the animals are likely to respond like people. An example is the use of rabbits for eye irritancy tests. It is known that rabbit eyes have important differences to human eyes but the test has traditionally relied on rabbits because they are cheap, readily available, easy to handle and have large eyes for asserting test results.

 

• The widespread use of rats in toxicity tests highlights the unscientific nature of vivisection. They are one of the main species used to predict the harmful effects of drugs and consumer products, and the assumption is that rats will respond like people. However, there is another major industry whose success relies on differences between rats and people. This involves the development of rodenticides. In this case companies hope to develop products which are toxic to rats but comparatively safe to other animals and people.

 

• Despite the ethical and scientific objections to animal experiments, vivisectors often claim there is no alternative. It has to be remembered that animal experimentation is only one method of research: there are others. One important approach to investigating disease is epidemiology. Here, researchers monitor different groups of people to discover the causes of ill health. Unlike animal experiments, epidemiology produces results of direct relevance to people. Careful detective work by epidemiologists showed how HIV is transmitted and how AIDS can be prevented. This information could not have come from animals since they do not develop the disease when inoculated with HIV.

 

• Tragically, there have been numerous occasions when animal experiments have cast doubt on human epidemiological findings. For instance, epidemiology first highlighted the cancer-causing effects of smoking and asbestos, and of x-rays on foetus but in each case animal experiments delayed progress by producing false results. The same was true for polio research. Epidemiological studies of over 1,000 Swedish cases correctly suggested that polio is an intestinal illness. But experiments with monkeys produced different results and delayed a proper understanding of the disease for over 25 years.

 

• Human Tissue

 

• Another important but underused approach is human tissue research. Tissues are obtained from surgical specimens, from biopsies, or after death, and can be used to investigate disease, develop drugs and produce biological products. There is increasing interest in the use of human tissue to assess the safety of medicines and other products. By producing results directly relevant to people, human tissue tests have the advantage that they can identify harmful effects missed by animal experiments. Although not yet widely used there are enough cases in the medical literature to show their value. The drugs chloramphenicol, phenylbutazone, valproic acid, mianserin and thalidomide all produced injuries which were not predicted by the original animal experiments but which were later identified in the test tube using human tissue.

 

• Scientific Attitudes

 

• The development and adoption of non-animal techniques depends very much on attitudes within the scientific community. Those whose daily work involves the infliction of suffering and death must inevitably become hardened and desensitized. As a result animals are regarded as just another laboratory tool. Because experimenters do not feel strongly about the unnecessary loss of life, some tests continue long after non-animal replacements have been developed. An example is the use of guinea pigs for diagnosing tuberculosis. In 1972 Britain's TB Reference Laboratory reported that a test-tube technique could be used as an alternative but 14 years later the London Hospital was still routinely using guinea pigs for the purpose. Another case is the testing of hormones like insulin and somatatropin which has traditionally employed animals. In Europe and Japan animal tests are no longer required and have been deleted from official guidelines. However, in the United States the use of animals to test these hormones continues even though it can no longer be considered 'necessary'.

 

• In contrast, progress is rapid when scientists and industry are sufficiently motivated to avoid using animals. For instance, public pressure has persuaded many companies to adopt more ethical test procedures with the result that consumer product testing has fallen substantially. In Britain, the use of animals to test the safely of cosmetics, toiletries and household products fell by 90% between 1977 and 1994.

 

• The Draize Campaign

 

• The Draize Campaign, which focussed on the use of rabbits for eye irritancy testing, again stresses the importance of attitudes. Since 1944 the Draize test has been employed to assess the irritancy of a wide variety of chemicals including pesticides and consumer products. Usually no pain relief is given and the test often proceeds for 7 days during which the eyes are monitored for signs of damage. It had long been recognized that the rabbit eye is a poor model for the human eye and eventually researchers announced that the traditional Draize test "has essentially no power to predict the results of accidental human eye exposure." Despite the problem, toxicologists could only suggest using different species. Only during the 1980s, when animal protection groups throughout the world focussed attention on the test, did attitudes finally start to change. The campaign highlighted the cruelty and scientific invalidity of the test and persuaded companies to invest in research to find a humane alternative.

 

• Since then dozens of test-tube alternatives have been developed and some are now routinely used. One of the most successful is EYTEX which is available in the form of a kit and can take as little as one hour to perform. EYTEX uses a mixture of plant proteins and can rapidly identify moderate or severe eye irritants. Another alternative, devised by the Californian company Advanced Tissue Sciences, uses a human tissue system which models the outer layer of the cornea. It can distinguish between innocuous, mild and strong eye irritants.

 

• The Draize campaign has not yet been completed because some animals are still used. Nevertheless it has already led to a substantial fall in the number of rabbits subjected to eye irritancy tests. Above all it has demonstrated what can be achieved when science and industry are sufficiently motivated. This suggests that two key factors are necessary to stop animal experiments. One is an informed public that finds the abuse and exploitation of animals unacceptable. After all, it was public opinion that persuaded many cosmetic companies to stop using animals. The second requirement is a new generation of scientists who no longer regard animals as the disposable tools of research.

 

• Animal protection groups have the power to create these changes and many organizations are now putting great emphasis on education. Already the campaigns are paying dividends. In America for instance, animal laboratories are no longer required by any civilian medical school for teaching purposes. In some of the medical schools the use of animals is now optional: in others the procedures have been discarded altogether. In Britain, dissection is no longer required by any school examining board and has actually been banned in Argentina. And a recent survey of computer-based alternatives in undergraduate teaching found that in 15 out of 20 university departments, students had objected to using animals. The survey acknowledged that "Although there has always been some degree of student objection to using animals, it has never been so apparent as in recent years." These are important trends because the students of today are the scientists of the future.

 

• In conclusion, there are powerful ethical and scientific objections to animal experiments. We need to use these arguments to educate each new generation of scientists. Our aim is very simple. It is to close down the animal laboratories and create a completely ethical system of scientific research and health care.

 

• The International Association Against Painful Experiments on Animals (IAAPEA) has member societies in many countries, including India, Canada and America. The IAAPEA has Consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The author of article above, Dr. Robert Sharpe (UK) is IAAPEA's Scientific Director. Please send your support and donations to P.O. Box 215, St. Albans, Herts, AL3 4RD, England. For more information, you may dial 01144 1727 835386.