08.25.06

A righteous man regards the life of his animal, But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel

Posted in Health-related--Natural Alternative Treatments, Uncategorized at 9:37 am by Administrator

Every so often I like to browse through the library and pick up a book that looks interesting. One of the books I happened to pick is called Classic Cases in Medical Ethics by Gregory E. Pence. There are several cases he discusses, which makes one really think, gee, who is right and who is wrong? Or wonder what I would have done in that situation. I think I’d like to explore some of the cases he brings up, but for today, the one I’m currently reading is on the use of animals in medical experimentation. That’s something I’ve hardly ever given much thought to until now. First of all, I had no idea of the magnitude of animal usage in the development of medicine. I just thought that it’s necessary for the advancement of medicine and study of how the body works. After all, isn’t it better to test on animals first before humans? But upon reading Pence’s book, he writes that, “In one year, 1983, a single institution, the Charles River Breeding Laboratories (called the ‘General Motors’ of the American animal breeding industry), produced 10 million animals destined to be research subjects.” Wow, “research” subjects. . . does that mean that that figure doesn’t even include the ones used for making drugs like serums and hormone replacements? And what would that mean to be a research subject? I start to think about the research subjects during the Nazi Holocaust, but that’s another topic for another day! But is there any similarity to how we currently treat animals? Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not an animal rights fanatic, I do enjoy my steaks, but I do wonder about the extent to which animals are used in experimentation. Is it necessary to experiment on 10 million animals a year? Certainly not all experiments are the same or equal in value, but consider one such experiment conducted in the 80s using primates to study head injuries. Thomas Gennarelli used primates to study head injuries by conducting head-smashing experiments. Pence quoted the argument of Nedim Buyukmichi, an activist and veterinarian, that “Gennarelli’s studies were too inconsistent to result in a reproducible model of head injuries and too limited in scope to adequately mimic injuries sustained by human victims of accidents: After 15 years and $11 million to $13 million, essentially nothing has come out of this research that hasn’t already been known from studies of human head trauma.” Whether there was any value to his study is up for debate.

This research was being conducted at the University of Pennsylvania. I’m amazed that this kind of thing happens right under our noses, right in our Universities, using American tax dollars. Pence went on to write that, “Interestingly–even amazingly–in all the commentary on Gennarelli’s studies, no one on either side has specifically attacked or defended the hypothesis of his research. The explanation may be that it is unclear whether Gennarelli actually had a hypothesis; he seems to have had no goal other than creating one exact injury in one baboon after another.”

I have to stop and ask myself does this matter? We kill animals every day to eat. But this is not the same. Animals killed for food is part of the cycle of nature. It is not the act of systemic torture routinely performed in the name of science by burning, injecting cancers and toxins, severing nerves, limbs, and organs, and bashing of skulls. I am reminded of a verse in Proverbs (12:10), “A righteous man regards the life of his animal, But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” What does this say about our society or the use of animal experimentation for medical research? How accountable are we to this? I suppose I am a bit horrified in two parts–1. the knowledge of how some animals are treated and experimented on is shocking, and 2. I’ve read studies which had used animal subjects for which the resultant information I was very interested. Example is the study Francis Pottenger did on his cats by removing their adrenal glands in order to study the effects of the body without the adrenal glands. Similarly from some of the attrocities carried out during the Holocaust, some scientific knowledge was gained using human studies to learn about hypothermia. Hans Selye also gained knowledge on the effects of stress on the body with the use of rodents. Alexis Carrel used dogs to learn how to perform anastomosis–stitching arteries and veins end to end. Carrel developed a triangular method which he made small stitches on three points around the vessel. His method made possible the ability to reattach limbs of animals that had been experimentally severed. But do the ends justify the means? Was the knowledge gained worth the suffering of those people or the thousands of animals currently being used as guinea pigs?

Are we, as a society, going about it the wrong way to learn about health and healing? After all human physiology and animal physiology have their differences. An example is given by Russell Blaylock, M.D. regarding the effects on MPTP on humans and various animals. When MPTP is taken by humans, it causes a sudden onset of Parkinson’s-like disease which is permanent. However, according to Blaylock, “when MPTP is given to rodents, very little happens. Most of the animals recover completely from the initial effects. This may be because their brains clear the substance very rapidly, whereas monkeys retain it for weeks. Beagle dogs and cats recover after initial toxicity. There is considerable variablitity in the sensitivity of animals of the same species, age, and sex to the same dose of MPTP.” So again, how necessary is animal testing if the effects on animals and humans aren’t even always the same? Can animal experimentation be done humanely? Is there such a thing?

I don’t have the answers, but I do feel that some reform is needed. And I do feel that many animals have suffered needlessly in the name of science.

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