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... an studies that hold the key to success, not animal studies. Human epidemiological studies have the power to save millions of lives, showing that major advances can be achieved without animal experiments. Moreover, animal tests have a dubious record in predicting useful drugs to combat the effects of a stroke. Animal researchers indicate that barbiturates could protect against the effects on the stroke, experiments on dogs, rabbits, and monkeys. In human stroke victims, however, barbiturates had little or no protective effect.
By comparison, the drug nifedipine can help people with a specific form of a stroke such as sub-arachnoids hemorrhage, but the animal data is conflicting and inconsistent. In application with cats and baboons, for instance, nifedipine produced no overall beneficial effect. Furthermore, as Dr. Sharpe states: the leading cause of deaths in patients suffering form sub arachnoid hemorrhage is cerebral vaso spasm, a condition in which the blood vessels in the brain constrict. Human cerebra blood vessels, obtained within twenty-hours of death, have been used to study the problem since little is known about the underlying processes. (Supress, 1998, p. 3). Researchers at the University of Gottingen stress the importance of human tissue since there are considerable advantage is the possible use of pathologically damaged vessels, for example, from atherosceletoric lesions, which are more difficult to obtain from animals.
The researchers conclude that much needed improvements in treatment can be expected from human tissue studies. (Supress, 1998 p. 3). The Medical Research Modernization Committee (MRMC) has reviewed scores of so-called animals models of human diseases and found that they have little or no relevance to human health. Dr. Kaufman explains further that what they found with the study of non-human diseases in non-human animals that it is a fundamentally unsound methodology. (Kaufman, 1998).
Despite animal researchers routinely take credit for virtually every medical advance; a growing number of medical historians are revealing that medical progress has rested on human clinical investigation, not animal research. The most valuable medical research tools are clinical tools, such as autopsies, thorough observation of patients conditions, tissue biopsies and epidemiology. (Kaufman, 1998) The use of animals for research and testing is only one of many investigative techniques available. Dr. Barnard believes that although animal experiments are sometimes intellectually attractive, they are poorly suited to addressing the urgent health problems of our era, such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, birth defects and AIDS.
In addition, animal experiments can mislead researchers or contribute to illness or deaths by failing to predict the toxic effects of drugs. The U. S. General Accounting Office reviewed 198 of the 209 new drugs marketed between years of 1976 and 1985 and found that 52 % had serious post approval risks not predicted by animal tests or limited human trials. These risks were defined as adverse side effects that could lead to disability, hospitalization or death.
Consequently, these drugs had to be relabeled with new warnings or withdrawn from the market. (Barnard, 1998). Human population studies of HIV infection elucidated how the virus was transmitted and helped guide intervention programs. Using human cells and serum in vitro studies allowed researchers to identify the AIDS virus and establish how it causes disease. Many animals have been used in AIDS research, but without much in the way of concrete results.
For example, the extensively reported monkey studies using the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIIV) under unnatural conditions suggested that oral sex presented a transmission risk. However, this study did not help extrapolate whether oral sex transmitted HIV in humans or not. (Barnard, 1998). Experimenters have been infecting chimps with the HIV virus since 1984. In spite of being infected with several different strains of the virus, none have become clinically ill. Experimenters designed treatments to specifically destroy the cells, which are thought to be most active in protecting the body from HIV infections. In addition to being co infected with other viruses, which were presumed to help HIV gain a foothold.
There are many physiologic and anatomic differences between humans and chimpanzees. These differences make them a poor model for humans. The differences in the chimpanzee and the human immune system are dramatic and emphasize the impracticality of using these animals as a model for human AIDS. (Teacher, 1998). To predict human causes for birth defects has relied heavily on animal experiment. Although, these have typically proved to be embarrassingly poor predictors of what can happen to humans. In nearly all-animal birth defects test, scientists are left scratching their heads as to whether humans are more similar the animals that develop birth defects or like those who do not.
The rates for most birth defects are needed to trace possible genetic and environmental factors associated with birth defects, just as population studies linked heart disease to cholesterol and lung cancer to smoking. (Barnard, 1998). The issue of what role, if any, animal experimentation played in past discoveries in not relevant to what is necessary now for research and safety testing. Prior to scientist developed the cell and tissue cultured common today, animals were routinely used to harbor infectious organisms. But there are few diseased for which this is the case-modern method for vaccine productions are safer and more efficient. Animal toxicity tests to determine the potency of drugs such as digitalis and insulin have largely been replaced with sophisticated laboratory tests that do not involve animals. (Barnard, 1998). The results of animal tests cant be applied to human beings due to biological, physiological and anatomical differences.
In my opinion, we cant rely on misleading and faulty information obtained from animal experiments. Animal experiments put human health in risk and danger. Animal experiments showed to be useless in the past, so why should we exploit the animals? Why should we make them suffer and cause unnecessary pain?
Good science and scientist is an alternative to animal research. References Barnard, Neal. D. , (1998). Animal Research Is Wasteful and Misleading. (On-line). Available: http: // web Kaufman, Stephen. R. , (1998).
Animal Tests Are Inapplicable. (On-line). Available: web Linder, Lorin, (1998). A Time To Re-Evaluate The Use Of Animals In Psychological Research. (On-line). Available: web Menace, Andre, (1998).
Animal Experimentation The Medico-Legal Alibi. (On-line). Available: web Supress, (1998). Desert Storm Syndrome. (On-line). Available: web Teacher, Wendy, (1998).
Tests Results That Dont Apply to Humans. (On-line). Available: web Experimentation Issues / chimps . html
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Research essay sample on Birth Defects Animal Experiments
