Progress in non-animal scientific research methodologies?

Question

Dr. Andrew Rowan a few decades ago wrote a history of the search for nonanimal research methods in the natural, medical, and social sciences, _Of Mice, Models, and Men_. The literature and organizations have proliferated, but largely the work is done in the area of animal welfare, not animal rights.

"Bad faith" abounds, I would argue, when we are not aggressively seeking to replace the use of animals and animal models in all areas of inquiry (basic research) and testing (as in all areas of feeding, clothing, entertainment, etc.).

Welfarism may have a time, but the moral obligations of accepting such a "welfarist" position are very great!

Answer 1

I would argue that while the replacement of animal subjects by tissue cultures, computer modelling and other non-animal research is possible in many instances, particularly in the early stages of research, complete replacement will never be either possible nor permissible.

It is probably true that at the present time animals are being sacrificed in areas of research when tissues or computer modelling could easily be substituted. No doubt the primary reason why this has not occurred in financial - drugs research, for example, is both highly competitive and expensive and no company is likely to be willing to incur additional costs unless their competitors are also doing so.

The areas where such non-animal substitutions (in the drugs field at least) is likely to be most beneficial is in the inital stages of drug development where potentially useful compounds are screened for beneficial effects.

As the potential drug progresses through the development stages towards clinical trials, it will become increasingly necessary to use more and more complex systems to test it on - leading ultimately to testing on live animals. Living animals are highly complex and the effects of drugs are not always entirely predictible as a result. For example, a drug may have a beneficial effect on high blood pressure or cancer but may have totally unexpected effects on brain tissue. This would not necessarily show up on tissues or computer modelling because its actions may take place via the stimulation of, say, a hormone release in two further apparently unrelated organs.

The recent disasterous medical trial in the UK where several volunteer subjects were seriously harmed by a drug which had progressed all the way to testing on healthy humans indicates that even if tissue and computer modelling is perfected, no patient (or doctor of a patient) in their right mind would recommend the use of a drug which has never been tested on a live animal, let alone human. If anything, the recent past with drugs such as the one recently trialled and thalidomide seem to indicate that more animal testing is needed.

In such circumstanes there are already strict rules (in the UK, at least) governing the use of animals in testing:
They must be well fed and looked after (this is essential in any event otherwise stress or disease would distort the test results);
they must be treated humanely with the minimum of distress comensurate to the procedures needed for the test;
No more animals must be expended than is necessary to obtain meaningful results;
experiments where the results are known and accepted facts are not permitted to be gratuitously repeated;
all scientists involved are subject to licensing and random unannounced inspection to ensure that the above are carried out.

The animals used are bred specifically for the purpose and would not otherwise even be alive. The ultimate alternative to animal testing is of course to experiment on humans - for this I would recommend that we start with the members of the Animal Liberation Front who always seem to be willing to put animals before human decency.

In the meantime, anyone objecting to testing on animals should in all cases refuse all drugs, cosmetics and surgical procedures because almost without exception these have been developed or tested on animals and to accept them would be highly hypocritical.

Answer 2

Animal studies are neccessary because the current tools we have are not adequate to tell us whether what the response to a whole organism is to drug/mutation/...

People are working on non-animal methods, including generating human skin, livers etc for drug testing but the main problem is that the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.

How will I know if a drug (or some metabolite made in the liver) for alzheimers causes dangerous increases in blood pressure, increased risk of auto-immune disease such as MS etc. by gidingmy drug to brain cells ?

I freely admit that animal's are not humans and some drugs will be safe in animals and still be dangerous in humans, but its much, much better than just relying on cell culture (which is my area of research expertise) or computer models (which I admitedly know little about).

While I agree with much of the previous answer I must correct one statement:

"It is probably true that at the present time animals are being sacrificed in areas of research when tissues or computer modelling could easily be substituted. No doubt the primary reason why this has not occurred in financial - drugs research, for example, is both highly competitive and expensive and no company is likely to be willing to incur additional costs"

ANIMAL STUDIES COST MUCH MUCH MORE THAN CELL CULTURE STUDIES.

I can use 100ng of a protein in a cell culture experiment, while to do a similar study in an animal I'd need to use 1,000 times more in a single animal. Also the data I get is much simpler to interpret and generally much less variable so I can use much fewer replicates (n=4 for cell culture n=8 or 10 for animal study).



NOTE - In Canada you cannot conduct an animal study if suitable non-animal methods exist.