Guardian Contributor Calls Vivisection a "Dead End"

by Stephanie Ernst · 2009-08-10 16:15:00 UTC
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Writers for the Guardian's "Comment Is Free" section are after my heart lately. Just a couple weeks ago, in "Animal Research On the Rise in the UK: A Guardian Writer Weighs In," I commented on and directed you to a thoughtful antivivisection piece by Guardian contributor Peter Tatchell.

And then this past Friday, Kathy Archibald published "The Dead End of Animal Research" there. In her take on a pro-animal research article published in the paper recently (the source for which, she points out, was "not a charity, as stated, and is funded by the pharmaceutical industry to lobby exclusively for animal research"), she gave examples of how animal-based research is bad science (and thus bad for us) as well as bad for the animals:

Cancer is a good example: former director of the US National Cancer Institute, Dr Richard Klausner lamented: "We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn't work in humans." Aids is another: while at least 80 vaccines work in animals, all 80 have failed in human trials. Similarly, every one of more than 150 stroke treatments successful in animals has failed in human testing. A study in the British Medical Journal (pdf) found that animal tests accurately predict human response less than 50% of the time.

What other area of science with such a poor track record would be promoted as indispensable? The truth is that animal research is a costly distraction from the real business of medical progress. Most medical breakthroughs are made in human studies, although animal research usually takes the credit. For example, deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease was pioneered in humans, not monkeys, as frequently claimed.

The key to curing human disease is to study human, rather than animal biology – as highlighted for me by my experience as a patient with a pancreatic tumour. During my treatment, researchers announced that the pancreas differs so dramatically between rodents and humans that research in animals is futile: future studies must be human-based.

You can continue reading the post in its entirety here.

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Photo uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Aaron Logan.

Stephanie Ernst wrote the original Animal Rights blog at Change.org until December 2009. She can now be found at Animal Rights & AntiOppression.
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