http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/billofhealth/2013/01/14/guest-post-on-animal-research-inadequate-laws-dont-but-research-alternatives-will-protect-animals-in-labs/.
The New England Anti-Vivisection Society has a new post up at Harvard
Law School's Bill of Health blog:
Inadequate laws don't - but
research alternatives will - protect animals in labs
By Theodora Capaldo
When the New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS) launched Project
R&R: Release & Restitution for Chimpanzees in U.S. Laboratories in 2006,
1,300 chimpanzees languished in U.S. laboratories. The campaign was a
focused effort to end invasive and harmful research on the first non-human
species in the U.S. Today, more and more chimpanzees are being transferred
to sanctuary as momentum for the ethical and scientific cases against using
them in biomedical research continues to grow. Though the Great Ape
Protection and Cost Savings Act was one of many bills to not pass in the
112th Congress, policy is taking shape that reflects an end to holding and
using chimpanzees in US labs. This month an NIH-convened council is expected
to release its report on current and future chimpanzee use in NIH-supported
research. The report will address how the NIH will realize its commitment to
follow the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences'
recommendations from an expert paneled and lengthy assessment of the need
for chimpanzees. The IOM report could not find any area of current
biomedical research where the use of chimpanzees is critical and concluded
that any possible future use must meet strict criteria. As to future need,
the IOM noted that it could not conclude whether there would or would not be
such future need.
Given the weight of scientific evidence,
legislative and government support, and public opinion, chimpanzees who have
been subjected to years of trauma, confinement, and research will one day
soon have the chance to live the remainder of their lives in sanctuaries.
They will be "released" and provided the "restitution" that only a sanctuary
of high standards is capable of providing. The plight of chimpanzees in US
labs highlights the suffering of all animals in laboratories. The scientific
arguments highlight that even a species as closely related to humans as
chimpanzees is a poor, limited, and even dangerous model by which to study
human health and the inferiority of all animal research compared to modern
methods. Chimpanzees are a keystone species by which myriad issues regarding
the use of animals in research can be measured. Survivors in sanctuary bear
witness to the degree of harm and suffering caused to them and are another
indictment of the lack of effective laws and enforcement of those laws for
animals in labs.
In short, there are no effective laws protecting
animals in laboratories. The Animal Welfare Act (AWA), the only U.S. federal
law governing animals' "welfare," provides minimal protections for less than
10% of animals used in laboratories. It excludes rats, mice, birds, fish,
reptiles, amphibians, and farmed animals in research.
For the few
animals it covers, the regulations only address housing, feeding, handling,
and veterinary care -- and even these inadequately. Confinement in small,
barren cages is common and animals live under constant stress and boredom as
testified to in the animals' behaviors: dogs curled up in the back of a
cage; alarm calls from chimpanzees as workers prepare for a "knockdown"
(anesthesia by dart gun); and monkeys driven literally insane by routine lab
stressors. Though highly social species like primates are supposed to be
given contact with their own species, such contact can be satisfied via the
ability to just see or hear another individual. For some experiments it is
legal to isolate them entirely. Consequently, stereotypic behaviors,
self-mutilation, withdrawal, anorexia, and other signs of severe
psychological stress are prevalent and go uncorrected. Only an estimated 125
US Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors enforce regulations at over
12,000 research, exhibition, breeding, or animal dealer facilities, hardly
allowing for adequate inspection or enforcement of the AWA. When the USDA
finds facilities in non-compliance with law, they often do not issue
penalties. When they do, they are small and inconsequential, especially in
comparison to the profits gleaned from animal use both in federal grant
dollars and private contracts with pharmaceutical companies, etc.
The
AWA cannot prohibit any protocol approved by an Institutional Animal Care
and Use Committee (IACUC), whose members are appointed by the facility
itself and largely composed of animal researchers and others associated with
the research institution, regardless of the pain or distress it causes. Pain
medicine, food, and water can be withheld; an animal can be kept in
isolation or restraining devices; or infected with diseases, poisoned,
burned, shocked, paralyzed, and subjected to other invasive procedures. The
public sees disturbing undercover photos and videos and wonders why the USDA
does not take action. Quite simply: because it is legal to cause severe
suffering and death to animals in laboratories.
Animals in labs
suffer tremendously in the name of science. However, systematic analysis of
biomedical literature shows that animals have given us inadequate or
erroneous information in human disease and toxicology and that in many cases
medical breakthroughs were delayed by dependence on animal models. If you
flipped a coin to guess how a human will respond to a certain drug or
chemical, for example, your prediction would be as accurate as if you tested
it on a nonhuman animal. While humans and other animals are similar on the
gross anatomical level, we differ at the cellular and molecular levels where
disease occurs and medications act.
According to Neil Wilcox, former
senior science policy officer with the FDA, "The technology that is emerging
today looks at the cellular, subcellular, molecular, and genetic level,
examining the effect of a particular chemical on a part of a molecule, a
gene, or an enzyme. We're asking questions about the specific mechanism that
causes the effect."[i] Animals cannot answer these questions -- they only
give us guesses. Science is not -- or at least should not be -- about
guessing; it is about prediction (validity) and consistency of results
(reliability).
Even in a species' whose DNA is nearly identical to
humans, the chimpanzee, gene variations and expression result in vast
important differences that render even the chimpanzee an "unnecessary" model
to study human health and disease. Species differences exist in the process
by which a drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and eliminated, and
in the causes, progression, and outcome of diseases. As a result, for
example, a mouse may develop cancer in the same location as a human, but
they are not the same cancers. According to Dr. Richard Klausner, former
Director of the National Cancer Institute, "We have cured cancer in mice for
decades -- and it simply didn't work in humans." Breakthroughs in cancer
treatment can be attributed, in large part, to early detection from
sophisticated imaging technology.
Non-animal methods are superior on
all fronts: they are more efficient, accurate, and cost-effective than
animal experiments. Using human cell cultures to test toxicity yields 76-84%
accurate prediction, illuminates specific organ damage, and other more
meaningful results than animal tests which hover around 46-50% accuracy,
literally no better than a coin flip. The inadequacy of the AWA and its
enforcement as well as unnecessary, inferior, and cruel animal use must be
addressed in a civilized and scientifically-advanced country such as ours.
We are hopefully moving toward more honest science where the economic gains
that fuel the use and abuse of animals will be replaced by the better and
more humane science of "alternatives."
[i] Rudacille, D. 2000. The
Scalpel and the Butterfly: The Conflict Between Animal Research and Animal
Protection. USA: University of California Press.
Nate Leskovic
Communications Manager
Neavs
www.neavs.org
www.releasechimps.org
