SPECIOUS SCIENCE How Genetics and Evolution Reveal Why Medical Research on Animals Harms Humans
Continuum 2002   288 pages, $26.95 referenced, index 
by C. Ray Greek, MD and Jean Swingle Greek, DVM
 
  After reading the authors' Sacred Cows and Golden Geese, The Human cost of  Experiments on Animals anyone would have thought  that they had made the  ultimate case against animal experimentation and that there was no need to say more.  In Specious Science they demonstrate that the deeper and more extensively anyone digs into the medical literature, the more scientific evidence s/he can unearth demonstrating  that  animal experimentation is not only unnecessary but can be misleading  and even dangerous when its findings are applied to human conditions. 

    As stated in the preface the authors' goal
"is to examine the animal model purely from a scientific viewpoint and reveal it for what it is--an unequivocal failure that works to the detriment, not the benefit, of human health."   At the end of  the second chapter they promise to show "how using animal models in predicting human outcomes of disease delays medical progress by providing false and misleading data--and has actually cost people their lives.  We will also show where the great discoveries of medicine really did come from and where they are coming from today." 

    They proceed to do just that in clear, precise language, informative both for other scientists and lay people.  They support every phase of their thesis with statements from other scientists, some from animal experiment conductors honest enough to acknowledge a particular shortcoming of the method they otherwise endorse.  The authors' bringing together of such an extensive variety of comments from both past and present demonstrates how much the scientific anti-vivisection movement has grown from a few lone voices in the last century to a worldwide host of adherents today.               

    Scientific anti-vivisection opposes animal experiments purely on the grounds that it is bad science because differences between species render results obtained on one species unreliable for another.  The U.S. now has three doctors' organizations opposing animal experimentation on the grounds that animal experimentation does not benefit, and can be harmful for humans.  There are similar organizations in Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan and Switzerland as well as Europeans for Animal Advancement.  These doctors, some of whom are jeopardizing their opportunities for professional advancement by expressing their opinions on animal experiments, are still a tiny segment of the medical profession, but their collective voice is growing stronger as their research, not  least  the painstaking work of  the Greeks, unearths errors occasioned by the unscientific application of results obtained on animals to human conditions.

    The Greeks dismiss the "no good ever" doctrine (i.e. not a single drop of information useful for human conditions has ever been obtained from animal experimentation) as irrelevant because "We do not believe that there are no medical conditions in which an animal could provide an adequate research or clinical analogue to a human." but totally reject the use of animals "be-cause we cannot know which animal is like humans until we know how humans react to the drug, surgery and so forth."

   The authors expand the revelations of other writers on the financial, political and career interests that perpetuate the continued use of  animal models as opposed to working  with the many modern scientific research techniques now available.  They demonstrate how animal models ignore the evolution of separate species.  They painstakingly pick apart the reasoning of those who argue the case for using animal models.  Just about every page has useful ammunition for people who oppose vivisection for whatever reason enabling them to meet vivisectors on own their shaky scientific ground.

    The authors have in fact offered to debate defenders of animal experiments in a public forum, but there have been no takers.  On at least one occasion, Ray Greek was given the opportunity to deliver a lecture when his opponent failed to show up (CivAb winter 1998-99).  On other occasions, organizations wishing to give both sides the opportunity to argue their case, were unable to find a proponent of animal experimentation willing to debate the authors. 

    Both of the authors' books, Specious Science and Sacred Cows and Golden Geese, can put weapons in the hands of those who are unable to stomach reading or speaking about the pain and suffering inflicted on animals under the false assumption that knowledge thus gained can relieve human suffering.  Rather than dwell upon the plight of the animals used for experiments, they tear down the false assumptions and explain why the experiments do not advance human medicine and, in some cases, retard promising developments.

    It would be a big step toward a more perfect world of these books were to become required reading for all biology students as well as  their teachers and professors. -br

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