Lethal Laws: Animal Testing, Human Health and Environmental Policy by Alix Fano, Zed Books, London, 1997 (242 pages, indexed) To be released in the U.S. December 22 and available from Civitas ($20)

        Testing cosmetics household products, and industrial chemicals on animals confined in laboratories has long been opposed by humanitarians and more recently by animal advocates.  These folks are understandably upset by the knowledge that millions of dogs, cats, rodents, birds, fish, pigs, primates and other non-human animals are being poisoned to death to assess chemical toxicity.  The animals are subjected to having test substances forced down their throats and into their eyes, pumped directly into their stomachs, or rubbed into their abraded skin.  The objective of one series of tests, the LD50 and LC50, is to determine the dose of a chemical that causes half of a group of test animals to die.
         Sometimes, humanitarians point to the irrationality of dosing animals with substances such as insecticides and toilet bowl cleaners, or the foolishness of forcing them to ingest so much of a benign substance, such as a lip salve, that they die of ruptured stomachs rather than any toxic effect of the product.  For the most part, however, they concentrate on the suffering of the animals.  Scientists dismiss these humanitarian  objections with authoritative pronouncements that they need to test on the whole animal in order to obtain valid results, and that it is preferable to use animals rather than people.
         While it is easy to brush off humanitarian arguments, these scientists would have a difficult time trying to dismiss the overwhelming scientific evidence against animal testing brought forth by Ms. Fano in her scholarly book.  She has combed the medical literature for opinions expressed by scientists who have said or implied that using other species as stand-ins for humans is bad science because of the many physiological differences between species and the problems of inter-species extrapolation.  Moreover, animal testing is cumbersome and expensive.  To test all of 80,000+ untested chemicals would take over 1,000 years and cost over $375 billion.  Animal testing could never deal with this backlog to say nothing of the 1,500 new chemicals and household products introduced annually.
        Ms. Fano demonstrates that, even when chemicals and chemical products such as hair dyes, acne creams, food additives, fiberglass, solvents, and over-the-counter laxatives, are found to cause cancer and other harmful effects in animals, they are marketed anyway.  Countless poisons deemed "safe" based on animal tests are readily available to consumers and widely used by industry.  In addition, government agencies use the results of animal tests to develop national air and water quality standards, and to determine how much residual pesticide may safely be allowed in both raw and processed foods.  Ms. Fano explains how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for example, used the results of research on trout conducted at the University of Wyoming to formulate national sulfur dioxide emission standards.  She also demonstrates that the enforcement of animal-derived safety standards is weak, pollution prevention is minimal, and legislation is continually modified to favor polluters.  Animal testing is exposed as a component of a regulatory system that has lost sight of its mandate to protect human health.
        In the September 21, 1990 issue of the journal Science, establishment scientist Philip H. Abel wrote: "The standard carcinogen tests that use rodents are an obsolescent relic of the ignorance of past decades." Ms. Fano uses this statement to head an entire chapter devoted to descriptions of superior non-animal methods that could be used to speed up and drastically reduce the cost of testing and at the same time produce more reliable results.
         This author has a remarkable aptitude for lining up facts so that they flow in a constant stream, carrying the reader through the labyrinths of government regulations and politics; arguments for and against using other species to model human toxicity; the "numbers game" by which results obtained from other species are manipulated to predict effects on humans, and the ultimate effects of this system on health, society, and the environment.
        This is such an authoritative book (with a comprehensive index and no less than 54 of its 242 pages devoted to references in fine print) that this reviewer predicts it will (or should) become required reading for all college courses dealing with environmental concerns and public health.  The more casual reader should not be intimidated, however.  The material is presented clearly in an accomplished, reader-friendly style.  It should be of special interest to anyone who, like the author, has lost close family members and friends to cancer and wants to see its causes removed.
        Ms. Fano concludes by calling for an alliance between animal, health, and environmental advocates to insist that modern scientific methods replace outmoded animal tests to more effectively guard against the release of poisons into the environment upon which our health depends.  -br.

"A thoroughly documented, scientific indictment of the current addiction to animal testing. It makes a compelling case for companies to wake up to the non-animal technologies that already exist." - David Phillips,  Executive Director, Earth Island Institute

"Cogently argued and well researched, Ms. Fano's analysis is a 'must read' for anyone involved in environmental policy or public health." -Andrew Kimbrell, author of The Human Body Shop

"A grand synthesis of ideas and science that critically reviews a central dogma in toxicological research.  At a time when there is criticism of animal toxicological studies from several directions, Ms. Fano has broken new ground...Her book may prove to be the best intellectual treatise for the critical position she puts forward." - Sheldon Krimsky, Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy, Tufts University

"A powerful, well documented indictment of how violence against animals has become a basis of scientific research and how this violence eventually harms the human species.  It helps reawaken the ancient idea that other species are not merely objects for human experimentation, they are members of the Earth Family." - Vandana Shiva, author of Staying Alive.

"A scientific and well documented critique of current animal-based methodologies still being used today as the baseline standard in toxicity testing.  Recent developments in the field of molecular toxicology, coupled with advances in in vitro techniques, have clearly surpassed the traditional animal tests in all respects.  Lethal Laws should give added impetus to those health agencies in search of the scientific data necessary to overcome the barriers to regulatory acceptance of these new methods." -Andre Menache, BVSc, MRCVS, President of Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible Medicine.

(Continued on page 44)