Animal Advocates Can Do Better than to Focus Primarily on Animal Experimentation for Medical Science
It’s not strategic
The vast majority of the population, yours truly included, welcomes scientific progress and in particular in the field of medicine. We are happy to see breakthroughs against cancers and we welcome better treatment and vaccines to keep us healthy. (At this stage, if you’re one of those very, very few folks who don’t understand the benefits of vaccination, I urge you to watch these two excellent, polite and educational videos: Why are there Dangerous Ingredients in Vaccines? and The Science of Anti-Vaccination.)
Therefore, you’re not going to kick goals by complaining about medical progress or by doing something which, in the eyes of your audience, might be detrimental. People are going to care about their loved ones and will support ways to help care for them, protect them and save them.
It’s not as important
Take a look at the numbers. Does it make sense to focus on an area where significantly fewer animals are being mistreated and killed? The figures speak for themselves, here.
It’s not logical
Animal experiments save animals too. Plenty of the medicines, including vaccines, are commonly used to help non-human animals and save lives. It’s not impossible that there may be more animals killed and mistreated in labs than there are animals saved thanks to animal experiments but we can’t pretend it’s all black and white — in any case, I do not have the numbers on this.
I am having a hard time supporting organisations that take a hard stance against all animal experiments regardless of the outcome. I am in favour of financing and developing alternatives to animal experiments in every field. I am strongly in favour of stopping all unnecessary animal experiments now. What percentage of animal experiments can be replaced and are unnecessary? I cannot pretend to know.
It’s not sound
What is the scientific consensus on animal experimentation? Until you can demonstrate that the scientific consensus is that animal experimentation is not needed, then you may not pretend that we can entirely do without.
It is common for activists who primarily focus their advocacy against animal experiments to rely on conspiracy theories (against “Big Pharma” and what not). I suggest that we should stick to facts and figures.
Of course, it may be worth noting here that it’s pharmaceutical companies themselves who actually fund the majority of research into alternatives.
People who want to feel special have been found to be attracted to conspiracy theories (What Makes Conspiracy Theories so Appealing? Psychology Today). Well, you care about animals. You’re special already, don’t go looking for unsubstantiated claims and don’t cherry pick studies to comfort your confirmation bias and promote your ideology.
Whatever one’s reasons to oppose and focus on animal experiments may be, I urge you to stay clear of pseudoscience. (What is pseudoscience? Scientific American)
Just because someone can use Google and name a dozen research papers to make a point does not mean that their way of demonstrating their point is logical, valid or science based.
Throughout the 20th century, research that used live animals has led to many medical advances and treatments for human diseases, such as: organ transplant techniques and anti-transplant rejection medications (Carrel A (1912) Surg. Gynec. Obst. 14: p. 246 ; Williamson C (1926) J. Urol. 16: p. 231 ; Woodruff H & Burg R (1986) in Discoveries in Pharmacology vol 3, ed Parnham & Bruinvels, Elsevier, Amsterdam ; Moore F (1964) Give and Take: the Development of Tissue Transplantation. Saunders, New York), the heart-lung machine (Gibbon JH (1937) Arch. Surg. 34, 1105), antibiotics like penicillin (Fleming A (1929) Brit J Exper Path 10, 226), and whooping cough vaccine (Medical Research Council (1956) Br. Med. J. 2: p. 454).
Presently, animal experimentation continues to be used in research that aims to solve medical problems including Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury and many more conditions in which there is no useful in vitro model system available. (Geula, C; Wu C-K, Saroff D; Lorenzo, A; Yuan, M; Yankner, BA; Yankner, Bruce A. (1998). “Aging renders the brain vulnerable to amyloid β protein neurotoxicity”. Nature Medicine. 4 (7): 827–31. PMID 9662375. doi:10.1038/nm0798–827. Jameson, BA; McDonnell, JM; Marini, JC; Korngold, R (1994). “A rationally designed CD4 analogue inhibits experimental allergic encephalomyelitis”. Nature. 368 (6473): 744–6. Bibcode:1994Natur.368..744J. PMID 8152486. doi:10.1038/368744a0. Lyuksyutova, AL; Lu C-C, Milanesio N; Milanesio, N; King, LA; Guo, N; Wang, Y; Nathans, J; Tessier-Lavigne, M; et al. (2003). “Anterior-posterior guidance of commissural axons by Wnt-Frizzled signaling”. Science. 302 (5652): 1984–8. Bibcode:2003Sci…302.1984L. PMID 14671310. doi:10.1126/science.1089610.)
Support research into alternatives
I looked at a few organisations promoting alternatives to animal experiments and unfortunately found many of them to be ideology based rather than science based and they were making claims about opposing all and any animal experiments, no matter the outcome. They’re not going to seduce this utilitarian. (Crash Course Philosophy: Utilitarianism — Peter Singer on Positive Utilitarianism)
In Australia, I appreciate the work of Medical Advances Without Animals Trust. In the UK, the animal alternative research funding body is Animal-free Research UK. If there is no alternative available, animal-derived reagents can be used. The National Center for the Replacement, Refinement, and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) is more broad (and arguably realistic), as it focuses on transitioning and validating in vitro/ex vivo alternatives. They publish all of their calls for proposals on their website. It was set up by the government and draws funding from different sources
Now, I would rather support effective charities (see my donation log).
Important note: Advocates who actually do work in medical research and have the opportunity to influence this area most certainly do well focussing on this - in fact I believe that positive changes will come from within the scientific community.
I certainly can appreciate the benefits of saving millions of animals by helping stop animal experiments every time it is possible but for all the reasons explained above, I do not believe that this should be a priority for animal advocates.
Post-Scriptum — Dr. Elisabeth Ormandy, Executive Director, Animals in Science Policy Institute wrote a response to my article, it can be found here.
