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Letter in Seattle Post Intelligencer, August 8, 2002 http://www.seattlepi.com
MEDICAL RESEARCH
Animals make bad drug test models for humans.
It's true. The use of animals in research is laden with emotion ("Medical
researchers unfairly targeted," July 26), so it's best to be guided by what
science has shown us.
No matter how sophisticated our methods of animal study become, they still
continue to fail because of profound interspecies variations in anatomy,
physiology and biochemistry.
Even common painkillers cause birth defects in rats and mice and renal
failure and death in cats. Premarin and the fen-phen weight-loss combination
both looked safe in animals, only to prove surprisingly dangerous in humans.
To think these are exceptions to the rule is to turn a blind eye to the fact
that properly prescribed prescription drugs remain the fourth leading cause
of death in the United States. If animal tests were accurate predictors of
how drugs will affect humans, the number of these fatalities would be much,
much lower.
Medical research is simply stuck in a bureaucratic rut, continuing the way
it did when we had far fewer options. With great precision, we can now study
human cells and tissues, document autopsy findings, analyze the results of
epidemiological studies and carry out large-scale clinical studies using
human subjects.
And, let's not forget: The diseases killing most North Americans -- heart
disease, stroke and cancer -- require not a miracle drug, but more effective
strategies to help patients break the habits (especially smoking and poor
diets) that cause these problems in the first place.
Neal Barnard, M.D.
President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Letter in The Ottawa Citizen, June 11, 2002
Re: 'Animal-rights zealots are threat to medicine', June 6.
Dr. Robert O. Bailey's assertion that animal research is equivalent to"human-life-saving medical research" is nothing more than wishful thinking.
As a former representative to the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC) and
a participant on a number of its assessments of animal-research laboratories, I know the reality. As documented in CCAC statistics, only 15 to 21 per cent of the animals killed each year in Canadian laboratories are used in studies that "relate to human or animal disease or disorders." The majority of animal research falls into the category of "curiosity-driven" experiments, which admittedly have little or nothing to do with curing diseases.
As for the "professional monitoring" to which Dr. Bailey refers, CCAC assessments are carried out only once every three to five years. In addition, no experimental procedure is actually off-limits in Canada, no matter how painful or invasive it is. Although the CCAC clearly states that subjecting animals to "inescapable severe pain or deprivation" is considered "highly questionable or unacceptable," more than 58,000 animals were subjected to such procedures in 1999 alone. This suggests that many
researchers and labs are in blatant violation of CCAC standards.
It should come as little surprise that an industry that disregards its own minimal standards would also consider the beheading of animals using a guillotine to be an "acceptable" method of "euthanasia." Other common methods include neck-breaking and asphyxiation with carbon dioxide gas.
Having witnessed firsthand the ugly reality of animal experimentation in Canada, I can understand why researchers are prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to keep the details of their activities hidden from public scrutiny. If Canadians were to wake up one day and realize that hundreds of millions of their hard-earned tax dollars were being used to fund cruel and marginal animal experiments, how long would it take before public support --and funding -- dried up for good?
Troy Seidle, Kitchener
"When I was a medical student, one of my teachers--a senior surgeon--nudged my elbow. 'You see all this?' he asked, indicating the costly equipment and highly trained medical team surrounding the patient. 'Impressive, isn't it? But you know what? It is all a sign of our failure. It means we failed to prevent the problem in the first place. Now we need a whole medical army to try and save this patient. It shouldn't have come to this.'
He went on to explain that, had we--doctors, nurses, and health care providers
in general--really helped patients follow healthier lifestyles, most operations would never be needed. Most prescriptions would remain unwritten. Most doctors' appointments would be unnecessary. Prevention isn't perfect, by any means. But it is by far our most effective medical tool." Neal Barnard, MD, President of Physicians for Responsible Medicine in The Heimlich Institute's Caring World
v 3 no 2, Winter 2001-02
"Since WWII, the leaders and the membership of that (the medical) community have transformed it from the servant practitioners of the healing arts to laboratory researchers or technicians for sophisticated machines, all fervently chasing grant dollars. And the principal output of the vast, vast majority of such publicly funded research is often only a 'paper' presented to colleagues in jargon, indecipherable to even the best-read citizens. In the tiny percentage (<1%) of the research which bears on potential cures of human disease, the immediate coloration of patents and profits overshadows concerns about healing of the whole person." Prof. Rustum Roy, Pennsylvania. State U., U. of Arizona, Arizona State University., ibid
"I believe that more than 90 percent of Modern Medicine could disappear from the face of the earth--doctors, hospitals, drugs, and equipment--and the effect on our health would be immediate and beneficial." Robert Mendelsohn, MD, Professor of Preventive Medicine and Community Health, Chairman Medical Licensing Committee for the State of Illinois, Confessions of a Medical Heretic p.xi
"As a general rule, prescription drugs cause imbalances in the body ranging from depletion of vitamins and minerals, to constipation and lowered immune function. -Earl L Mindel, RPh, PhD, Prescriiption Alternatives , p.vii
Doctors and government promote this mechanical notion of health. Its trinity is Diagnostics, Pharmaceuticals, and Surgery. Omitted from the conception is prevention, and its associated conception of health as natural therapy actively lived. Prevention is not funded by medical insurance. Doctors have no time to instruct patients on how to live healthily. They write a contract with patients that reads: "You smash, we repair". No thought is given by doctors, patients, or governments to the cumulative effects of injecting millions with medical drugs. --Prof. Hiram Caton
"It is not generally realized that to abolish (through the use of drugs) the signs and symptoms of a disease, even of the very disease for which the patient comes to be treated, is not equivalent to curing the patient. It may, indeed leave him not only uncured, but in a worse state of health than before.
"The process is analogous to the lopping of the visible branches of a weed, leaving the roots to grow stronger. It must constantly be borne in mind that each disease, acute or chronic, that attacks a patient, is not a separate entity, it is a manifestation, differing from time to time in name and appearance, of a persisting basic disease, which is not reached by the above-mentioned form of treatment The use of synthetic drugs).
Nor can it be reached without treating the patient as a whole. We come, then, to the fundamental technical error of vivisectional medicine-the treatment of the disease instead of the patient.
The fact that the diseases so investigated in the animal are artificially induced, renders it still more improbable that any real cure can be discovered by such means."
--H. Fergie Woods, MD, member of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians, June 1950.
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