The myths of animal experiments

Dr. Bernhard Rambeck

Experimenting with animals is nowadays increasingly rejected, mainly for moral and ethical, but also for scientific reasons. My field of work - epilepsy research - is a typical example of the tendencies and developments in modern medical research towards dispensing with traditional animal testing. Even a decade ago, it was claimed that epilepsy research could only be carried out using the intact brain of living animals. Today, experimental epilepsy research means largely neither human nor animal experiments but in vitro studies - that is research with nerve-cells or brain-tissue preparations.

In the eighties, scientists began to study the seizure-inhibiting or -precipitating effects of substances by using samples of mouse and rat brains or cultures of their neurons. Today, human tissue is increasingly used, obtained, for example, during operations to remove tumours or during other brain surgery. This procedure has the advantage that the results, unlike those from animal experiments, are really relevant and can be much better applied to man.

I could extensively report about the lack of success of animal experiments in epilepsy research, about the problems of carrying over results from animal experimentation to human epilepsies and about completely new diagnostic possibilities which were not developed by animal experiments, but I shall next consider the problem of animal research in general terms. I shall try to make clear that the common concept of the necessity for animal research is based on a series of myths, fairy tales and legends, which are, finally either totally false or at least have no valid basis.

Modern society must, in its own interests, begin to question these myths. It is not the question of having to live with a necessary evil. I believe that man has only a chance of survival in this world only if he succeeds in making peace with nature. Man has increasingly exploited, misused and raped nature. The consequences: our woods are to a considerable extent irreversibly damaged; oceans and seas are becoming ever more polluted; our natural environment is largely destroyed; climatic catastrophies of an unimaginable magnitude threaten our world; and poisons produced by man are eating holes in the protective ozone layer of our planet. If man does not learn to live peaceably with nature he will cease to exist.
Animal experiments do not contribute to living in peace with nature - they are a brutal declaration of war on nature. We exploit the weak, in this case animals, with brute force, supposedly for our advantage. The animal world can not be a push-button service for our so-called human sciences.

First of all, let it be made clear that we, the groups of doctors against animal experiments, do not wish to abolish either science or medicine, as it is sometimes maintained. Man needs them in our present time more urgently than ever before. But the medical sciences have landed up in a dead-end street. Medicine today has become an organiser of the symptoms of illness; it has forgotten that originally its most important aims were the prevention and healing of disease.

The cause of the tragedy of medical science is a mechanistic view of the world, in which concepts of body, mind and spirit have no further place, and man is nothing more than a sort of bio-machine or a somewhat highly evolved mammal. But as long as medical science studies man and his illnesses by always using an entirely inadequate animal model, medicine cannot recognise or study man's percularities and special features, especially the fine interplay between body, mind and spirit, the disturbance of which presents itself as illness.

A further clarification: We do not seek to replace animal experiments by experiments with humans, as we are often accused doing. The Doctors Against Animal Experiments reject animal experiments only because of their damaging effects on man; one of our most important demands is the protection of mankind from the risks of new and old chemicals or drugs which can certainly not be judged by animal research.

I want to analyse these myths of the pretended necessity of animal experimention.

First myth: »Medical knowledge is based on animal experiments«

It is often claimed that true medical science had its beginnings with the introduction of chemical drugs about a hundred years ago. But this is false.

There have at all times been excellent doctors who really could heal, and there have been throughout history famous medical schools where the art of healing really was taught. The pillars of classical medical knowledge were not animal experiments, although these were practised to some extent even a thousand years ago; but the foundation of such knowledge was the observation of healthy and sick men and animals. Other pillars of classical medicine were a knowledge of anatomy and an extensive experience of pain relieving drugs, anaesthetics and remedies produced predominantly on a herbal basis.

Even our recent medical knowledge is based to a considerable extent on clinical experience and not on animal experimentation, or at least animal testing is only used subsequently, to support confirmation of results. Not only have many successful therapeutic substances based on herbs been found without animal research, but so also have drugs as acetyl salicylic acid (known as aspirin, a fever relieving drug) and phenobarbital (known as luminal, an antiepileptic drug).

The first modern anaesthetics, such as nitrous oxide (or laughing gas), opium, ether and chloroform were found at the beginning of the nineteenth century without any kind of animal research. Together with the recognised need for aseptic conditions, these led to enormous progress in surgery in the second half of the century, all without animal research. Most of the present surgical techniques were not developed from animal experimentation but were based on clinical experience.

Second myth: »Only animal experiments have made possible the fight against disease and thereby increased life expectancy«

This myth is part of the standard repertoire of those who support animal experiments, but it is false! The increase in life expectancy has, above all, been caused by the reduction in infectious diseases. The well known British doctor of social medicine, Professor McKneown, showed by extensive studies that the reduction of infectious illnesses, and hence of infant and child mortality, is due to improved sanitary conditions and hygiene, as well as to improved and sufficient nutrition and the limiting of the birth rate, and is not due to new drugs and vaccines. Correspondingly, there is very high infant and child mortality in the developing world, due to social problems, poverty and malnutrition and not to lack of drugs and vaccines.

If we consider the so-called diseases of civilisation - and they account for about 80 per cent of all deaths - we get the impression that modern medicine is rather powerless in its struggle. Half of the population dies from avoidable chronic cardiovascular diseases, and about a quarter dies from cancer - and this is an increasing tendency. Modern chemotherapy has hardly been able to touch these diseases; decades after the introduction of the first effective anticarcinogenic drug cyclophosphamide, only a few percent of all cases of cancer are more or less curable, and this only with considerable side effects and damage. If, in the United States, the number of deaths due to cardiovascular diseases decreases, this will be a result of the change in smoking habits but not of the introduction of new drugs. Only the research into the actual causes of diseases can influence common illnesses.

Furthermore, one has the impression that, on considering the real main causes of death for mankind today, medicine plays only a subordinate part, because medicine cannot influence the causes of death from smoking, alcoholism and incorrect nutrition in the industrialised world and from war, hunger and social problems in the developing world.

Third myth: »Medical research is not possible without animal experiments«

A few decades ago, the term 'alternative methods' was not known, and some years ago it was still pretended that the LD50 toxicity test and similar brutalities were absolutely necessary, scientists declared almost unanimously that animal experiments were unavoidable, since only the intact 'normal' animal could show the effects of drugs. In the meantime scientists have become more circumspect: the pharmaceutical industry constantly explains that many animal experiments have already been replaced and that the number of animals in experiments has now been greatly reduced and that toxicologists can very largely abandon LD50 toxicity tests. In many areas, alternative methods, such as in vitro systems with test-tube methods using cell cultures, microorganisms and so on, have been worked out.

Today, in nearly all fields of medicine, in vitro methods are being used in addition to animal experiments. In some areas scientists are still at the beginning; in others, as for example in AIDS research, in vitro methods have hitherto had almost the only successes. The possibilities of the in vitro system are innumerable. They include the study of pharmacological mechanisms, the evaluation of toxic risks, the genetic and teratogenic effects of chemical substances, the study of pathogenic mechanisms of viruses, the production of vaccines, its use in cancer therapy, the development of test models for immunological research and so forth.

This development shows that, under the pressure of public opinion, the abolition of animal experiments is possible and, furthermore, that many experiments which were recently declared to be an unavoidable part of modern medicine have nonetheless been replaced in a matter of a few years. I am absolutely convinced that the abolition of animal experiments is possible, and in the foreseeable future will be achieved, because medical science itself will recognise that animal experimentation leads to a dead end.

Forth myth: »Animal research is necessary because the important diseases are not yet curable«

The fact that the important illnesses cannot be cured, or even effectively influenced, by modern medicine shows how little animal experiments can contribute to the elimination of human diseases.

Various severe disturbances, from cancer to all the possible chronic and degenerative changes, can without doubt forcibly be achieved in the animal model; but they have nothing in common with the diseases of man, which are caused by different multiple factors and, above all, by disturbances of the fine interplay between body and mind.

As long as conventional medicine does not recognise that animal research is not only not necessary but, on the contrary, represents a complete block because of the totally different psychosomatic conditions involved, any real progress in medicine is unlikely. This is scandalous, since today's medicine could, right from the start, be in the position, due to its authority and influence, to prevent most of the apparently incurable illnesses of civilisation.

After the decrease of infectious diseases in industrialised countries, the present physical and psychosomatic diseases appear to be connected with factors which can, in principle, be influenced. These factors are smoking, alcohol, incorrect nutrition (with too much meat and fat), lack of exercise, stress and so on. In addition to these, there are factors which could largely be controlled by society, such as toxic substances in the air and in water and dangers due to radiation.

The logical consequence of the fact that most of the important illnesses are not curable can not be a further extension of animal experiments; it should rather be the investment of considerable effort towards prevention, control and research into the causes of these illnesses. For example, three extensive studies in Germany with vegetarians and meat-eating control groups have demonstrated that healthier nutrition, without meat, considerably reduces cancer risk, decreases the probability of cardiovascular diseases and increases life expectancy.

Medical science is desperately looking for animal models for the diseases of modern civilisation. But why do we need models, when the causes of present-day illnesses are so obvious and, above all, could so easily be influenced by reasonable health policies?

Fifth myth: »Animal experiments are necessary in the struggle against new threatening diseases«

This myth ignores two basic points. First, the origin of the typical new and threatening illness of AIDS is still not definitely clear, but it appears increasingly plausible that this disease originated in experimental laboratories. Sceptical scientists hypothesise, especially in the field of cancer research with retroviruses, a possible origin of the human pathogenic HIV.
But another point is perhaps even more important: AIDS research is a classical example of modern research to which animal experimentation has made virtually no contributed.

Relevant progress in AIDS research is not based on animal experiments but on knowledge of infectious diseases, clinical observation of patients and in vitro studies using cell cultures.

Sixth myth: »Risk from new drugs, chemicals and vaccines can only be judged by animal experiments«

Many important drugs were found and applied to man before the era of extensive animal research - with adequate precautions, naturally. On the other hand, animal experiments have been carried out for decades in order to judge the risks of new chemicals and drugs, and for decades there have been numerous examples of animal experiments whose results have not proved reliable.

The many drugs, which in spite of excessive animal research, have led to severe damage and even death in man, and have been withdrawn on the insistence of the drug administration authorities, are proof of this. Of course after such a catastrophe it is maintained that inadequate or incorrect animal experiments were carried out. But it is essential that the drug-user should be protected beforhand, since scientists can only afterwards tell which are the so-called 'correct' animal experiments. Scientists could test thalidomide (or contergan) on as many rats or mice as they wished; the teratogenic effect is, apart from man, observed only in the New Zealand rabbit or in baboons.

One more example: about one-third of all patients with diseases of the kidneys, and who have to be dialysed or who have to wait for a kidney transplant, have had their kidney function destroyed by pain-killer substances considered to be safe on the grounds of animal research. We must not forget that the final risk posed by chemicals and drugs is always taken by man himself; but, in as much as animal experiments give a false sense of security, man is led to an incautious use of new substances, and the risks increase thereby.

Seventh myth: »Animal experiments cause no damage to man«

Medical research and science based on animal experimentation play a major role in the problem of today's medicine, in that it is in every respect producing one of the worst crisis in its history. We have drugs which can, in animal models, eliminate various intentionally produced defects; but most of these drugs cannot cure the patients - or they definitely harm them - because a chemically or surgically induced disturbance is quite different from a human disease, which may be induced by psychosomatic interactions and caused by multiple factors. Apart from this, an ill human being, in all his/her individuality and complexity, nearly always reacts quite differently from a healthy animal.

The absolute helplessness of today's medicine in the face of the shocking cancer mortality rate; its continuing powerlessness in respect of cardiovascular diseases; its distressing failure in the area of chronic illnesses, from arthritis through allergies, asthma, auto-immune diseases, multiple sclerosis and up to diseases of the gastrointestinal tract and the nervous system - all this is no accidental event, nor is it a particular curse or fate. Here, the logical consequences of a one-sided orientation on a wrong-model system are apparent - a model system which has been developed and tested on the base of animal experiments but which can have only minor importance for man.

It sounds paradoxical, but animal experiments stabilise today's illnesses, because the hope of finding drugs by animal testing destroys the motivation of self-iniative and for a basic change in our way of life. As long as we hold on to the hope of new drugs against cancer, cardiovascular diseases and so on, not only we ourselves, but also our health systems, are inadequately motivated to come to terms with the causes (such as smoking, alcohol, wrong nutrition, and stress) of these illnesses.

Eighth myth: »The animal does not suffer from experimentation«

One of the most evil claims in connection with animal experiments is the playing down of the suffering of the lab animals. The suffering of the lab animal has already begun long before the experiment, as it has been bred, kept and transported under entirely abnormal conditions.
There is no painless animal research! How shall toxicological experiments, in which the animal is poisoned, sometimes more sometimes less quickly, be carried out without pain and agony? Animal experiments in the area of toxicology, cancer research, surgery and radiation research amongst others, are not conceivable without considerable suffering on the part of the affected animals. Even today animal research caused enormous suffering, which usually does not end until death.

Ninth myth: »Only experts are able to judge the necessity, significance and importance of animal experiments«

The view that the layman, because of his lack of specialist knowledge, cannot discuss animal experimentation explains why experimenters could for decades practice animal experiments relatively undisturbed. Even today politicians, lawyers, theologians, philosophers, but above all the average population, have either no idea or a completely wrong one of the suffering and agony which the animals undergo in the field of animal experimentation.

But the barriers of silence have for the last few decades been increasingly broken down by the mass media. Furthermore, essential changes have recently been accomplished. Animal rights and animal welfare groups are more and more supported by experts critical of the system, and there are now national and international medical associations which reject animal research.

Tenth myth: »The abolition of animal experiments is not possible«

This myth, which is repeated again and again by the defenders of animal research, is one of the pillars of the conservation of the animal experimental system. The belief that animal experiments can at most be reduced to a 'necessary extent' but never totally abolished, leads to fruitless discussions about the extent and degree of the replaceable or dispensable animal experiments and detracts from the basic problems of animal-research system.

The movement against vivisection is increasingly becoming a part of the ecological movement, which is concerned with the terrible damage which man in his arrogance has caused. Antivivisectionists, together with other ecological groups, strive against the unlimited exploitation of nature and understand our eco-system as a very easily disturbed and in many ways interconnected system. It is of the highest significance that the motivation of critics of the animal experiments has changed. Whereas the animal itself, and the pitiless treatment of it, was earlier the focus of attention, antivivisectionists now underline the fact that man damages himself above by the heedless exploitation of animals.

A medical system which is based on animal exploitation, with all its consequences, means that man is more and more removed from his declared and wished-for aim - namely the comprehensive healing of body and soul.

Is the abolition of animal experimentation possible? I do not only believe it, I know it! Either man succeeds in creating a new consciousness of the multiple network existing within nature and then dispenses voluntarily with vivisection, gene technology, the use of nuclear power and other destructive technologies, because of its enormous capacity for inflicting damage and danger, or nature abolishes man, together with his animal experiments.
Mankind still has the choice! Man still has the possibility of stopping the unlimited exploitation of our planet, with all its living beings, and of abolishing vivisection in his own interest.
In conclusion: I am strongly convinced that animal experimentation is not only a cruel and thus unethical method, but also an unscientific method, which, in the interests of man and animals, must be abolished as quickly as possible and replaced by reasonable, scienticically valid und humane methods.