Are animal experiments our salvation?

By Astrid Reinke, veterinary surgeon

6000 laboratory animals are tortured to death every day in Germany. After 150 years of medical practice based on animal research, two-thirds of our illnesses remain neither curable nor adequately treatable. Diseases of the heart and circulatory system cause almost 50% of all fatalities, cancer another 25%. Countless people suffer from rheumatism, arthritis and allergies. The number of German diabetes sufferers will soon reach 10 million. Many scientists claim: 'Without animal experiments we shall die from terrible diseases. But are we not possibly dying from terrible diseases precisely because of animal experiments?

Lack of evidence that animal experiments are useful or necessary

In 2004 a scientific study published in England showed grave shortcomings in animal experiments.

It established that therapies are used on people despite the bad results obtained in the animal laboratory, and therefore that the experimenters do not attach any importance to the experiments. One of the conclusions reached by the authors was that animal experiments are often badly planned and could endanger patients (1). Other investigations, too, criticise the animal research method as often unsuccessful (2). The animal researchers repeatedly report on successes, but any use for human beings is often not forthcoming. For more than two decades AIDS researchers experimenting on animals have been fobbing us off with announcements such as 'the vaccine will be there within two years' (3). But 40,000,000 people were infected with AIDS in the year 2004 - a sad record! Science and Government nevertheless stubbornly refuse to have independent investigations carried out into how useful animal experiments actually are.

A human being is not a mouse

Various animal species differ from one another with regard to body structure, organ functions and metabolism.

There are considerable differences in the limb mobility of dogs and cats, and in the composition of their diet, even though both species move on four legs and are by nature hunters. Certain anti-flea preparations for dogs kill cats, causing them to suffer terrible convulsions. Penicillin, which is beneficial to cats, is deadly for guinea-pigs, and so on. The differences between human beings and animals are even greater. Despite this fact, dogs' knees are broken in order to carry out experiments on the healing of bones (4). The examples of differences between humans and animals are endless - the form of locomotion, the pattern of sleep and wakefulness, eating and living habits, metabolic processes, life span, heart and breathing frequency, among many others. Animals can also not report on headaches, nausea or disturbances to vision. Considerable gaps in information are therefore unavoidable when one relies on animal experiments.

Other causes

Even men and women, children and adults, old and young people differ so much from each other that there can be fatal consequences if doctors do not take account of this fact. Psychological factors, too, can have a great influence on health and illness. Due to their state of anxiety and the unnatural conditions in which they are held, laboratory animals frequently show changed hormone levels which demonstrably affect the result of the experiment (5).

Above all, however, it is not possible to ascertain the origin of a disease, and hence any effective means of prevention, from animals which have been made ill artificially. A human being does not get cancer due to cancer cells being injected into his or her organs, so how can anyone be surprised when Dr Richard Klausner, Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the USA, sums up the situation as follows: 'We have been curing cancer in mice for decades, but it simply doesn't work with humans.' (6). People are not blind or brain-damaged because of having their eyes sewn up as an infant. And our rheumatism and arthritis are not the result of having bacteria injected into our limbs. Human ailments have quite different causes.

False conclusions with serious consequences

For many decades the dangers of asbestos were denied, because rats tolerate that substance 300 times better than humans (7). Its carcinogenic effects only came to light as a result of medical checks on asbestos workers. Pharmaceutical products that have been declared safe in animal experiments repeatedly produce unexpected side-effects in human beings. To quote just a few examples: Thalidomide, Lipobay, Vioxx and the Alzheimer's disease inoculation, which caused serious injuries to organs or fatalities. One half of all the recalls of pharmaceutical drugs are made within two years of the medicine receiving a licence, and one half of the special warnings as to use only appear after a further fiver years (8) -.long after the termination of the animal tests.

It is estimated that, in Germany alone, 210,000 hospital admissions and 58,000 fatalities per year are attributable to the side-effects of medical drugs. Before a medicine gains a licence it is tested extensively on animals and many animals have been poisoned with it. A certificate of efficacy and safety is drawn up on this basis. If injury is caused when the medicine is used on human patients, more animal experiments are carried out to establish how injurious the substance is. A current example of this is provided by the suspected carcinogenic effect of the neurodermatitis product Tacrolimus (9), initially heralded as practically free of side-effects.

The fact that animal experiments can be interpreted one way today, and another way tomorrow, depending on what one wants to prove, conceals an enormous risk potential.

Prevention instead of treatment

It makes more sense to prevent illness than to treat it. Everyone knows that overweight, smoking and lack of movement are linked with heart problems. So why do we humans nevertheless bring about our own undoing? One main reason is the firm belief that infirmity and death might overtake other people but they won't touch us. But the permanent self-harm caused by fat, meat, nicotine, alcohol, lack of movement, etc. demands tribute from everyone's body. A second reason comes into play at this point: the system of medicine which is one-sidedly directed towards repair and spare parts, together with the medicines industry, is content to give the impression that virtually every malady is curable and that ruined organs are exchangeable.

Looked at superficially, it may appear tempting to consume to excess and have repairs done when complications arise. But heart and circulation problems alone, together with cancer, account for 610,000 deaths per annum in Germany. Although laboratory animals are not responsible for our illnesses, and their suffering has not been able to save us, they continue to be tortured by the million. Despite all this, 60% to 80% of our illnesses can be neither treated nor healed adequately (10). How little success Science has to show for the immeasurable suffering that it causes! Two-thirds of the cancer cases could already be prevented simply by not smoking and healthy eating. The picture is similar with regard to heart conditions.

Tax money squandered

Researchers stir up fear of terrible illnesses and in the same breath promise salvation to us if only they are given enough money and laboratory animals. Fear feeds people's gullibility. A drowning man will certainly seize the hand that is held out to him - even if it belongs to a man-eater. The government willingly supports animal research with tax funds. The new animal research laboratory in Würzburg, for instance, will cost 31 million Euros, the one in Mainz 29 million and the one in Erlangen 25 million, just to mention three examples among an endless chain of animal experimentation projects. And these are merely the construction costs for the buildings, the outlay on the day-to-day operation and the experiments will come on top of these figures. It is not without reason that job advertisements for animal experimenters commonly call for 'experience in procuring research funds.' It should be noted that only 2.8 million Euros were allotted to the search for methods not involving animal experimentation in the whole of Germany in the year 2004 - one-tenth of the construction costs for the new animal laboratory at Mainz University.

Habit rather than progress?

Animal experimenters use our taxes on a research method which is not only extremely cruel but which has not once even been proven to be of use. On the contrary, it has demonstrably led to disasters and repeatedly ends in a dead end. People tend to stick to established habits, even when these are harmful to them. Although methods already exist that are considerably better than experimenting on animals, the potential offered by modern, animal-free research methods is nothing like fully exploited. There is little hope of animal experimenters voluntarily blocking the rich flow of research funds. The government sees no reason to raise the issue of the costs incurred by animal experiments as an objection to the profits they create. And so this economic sector, so lucrative for highly influential vested interest groups, continues to be promoted to the detriment of our fellow creatures, at the expense of the taxpayer and at the cost of patients' health.

Professor Schwarz of the College of Medicine in Hanover states: 'We need a structural reform which places the emphasis on prevention instead of concentrating on reparative medicine. We must actively invest in health, because we simply cannot finance repair operations for ever' (10). One problem is that the medicines industry, through whose hands most of the money flows, does not live from the healthy but from the sick. We would do well to reflect on the medicines system, on our own possibilities to practice prevention, on the use and dangers of animal experiments and on the opportunities offered by non-animal research, while we are still healthy and independent. In this way we can ourselves have a decisive influence on our health, and should firmly demand that the decision-takers in government move away from animal experimentation to a system of medicine that is beneficial to both humans and animals.

References:

(1) BMJ Vol. 328-28.02.2004, pp.514-517
(2) Altex 18, 3/01; Brain study challenges multiple sclerosis theory, New Scientist 28 February 2004, p.17
(3) Der Spiegel 50/1995, pp.206-212
(4) Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma, 2003, 17(2), pp.113-118
(5) ContemporaryTopics in Laboratory Animal Science, December 2004
(6) The Times, 30.07.02
(7) Ann. Occup. Hyg. 1995: 39, 715-725
(8) JAMA 2002: 287, 2215-20
(9) Süddeutsche Zeitung, 18.2.2005
(10) http://www.br-online.de/umwelt-gesundheit/thema/vorsorge/auswege.xml