Animal Sympathizers ‘Bite Back’

While animal experiments had some value in the management of infectious diseases at the turn of the century, they have made little contribution since.

An underlying problem is that it is difficult if not impossible to learn about a human disease by studying a non-human disease in an animal. For example, one reason that the age-adjusted mortality rate from cancer has been steadily increasing the past three decades is that much of the $1.5-billion annual cancer research budget is devoted to animal “models” of human cancer. However, injection of rapidly growing cancer cells into young, healthy animals causes very different cancers from the major human cancer killers, which are spontaneous, slow-growing tumors in elderly people.

We would like to think of researchers as selfless people determined to improve human health. However, animal research has been popular because in the publish-or-perish world of academic science, it is fast and easy to take an existing animal model, change a variable and produce a paper. Furthermore, people trained in animal research techniques do animal research for a living, and it would be difficult for them to learn an entirely new research methodology.

The development of modern research techniques--such as CAT scans, PET scans, needle biopsies and tissue cultures--permit safe, ethical study of human disease with human patients and tissues. Unfortunately, continued over-reliance on animal research wastes billions of tax dollars, yields misleading results, and diverts funds away from clinical research and public health projects that have more potential to benefit people.

STEPHEN KAUFMAN, MD, Vice Chair

Medical Research Modernization Committee

New York, N.Y.