Vivisection is not a reliable means of testing human drugs
Kathy Archibald is director of patient safety organisation Europeans for Medical Progress
Pro-vivisectionists - including Professors Colin Blakemore and Tipu Aziz - had a busy weekend, marching through Oxford and launching a booklet in London proclaiming the benefits of experiments on primates. These include, we are assured, treatments for stroke, Parkinson’s disease and polio, and anyone who disputes these claims is irrational and antiscience.
As a geneticist who has worked in pharmaceutical development, and who owes my life to much medical intervention, I share the conviction that medical research is vital. It is important to point out, however, that medical research and animal research are not one and the same thing, and that it is logical to support one and oppose the other.
With the controversy over construction of the Oxford animal lab, and the media frenzy over campaigns such as Pro-Test, there has never been a more urgent time to separate ethics from science and to ask the key question: does animal testing help medicine today or hinder it? Overwhelming evidence shows that animals are not reliable predictors of human reactions, as the recent clinical trial fiasco demonstrated so spectacularly.
The track record of primate research is abysmal: 80 AIDS vaccines have failed in human trials following success in primates; likewise 150 stroke treatments. Research on primates, including great apes, has failed to produce treatments for any of our leading killers, including heart disease, cancer and malaria. The polio vaccine was "long delayed by misleading experimental models of the disease in monkeys" according to its inventor, Dr Albert Sabin.
Professor Tipu Aziz has claimed that his surgical treatment for Parkinson’s disease arose from monkey experiments but, in truth, the technique was discovered in humans - as is the case with virtually all medical advances. All of the claims made in the booklet launched by Professors Blakemore, Aziz and others are contradicted in a recent scientific review which can be viewed at http://www.curedisease.net/reports/index.shtml.
Unlike the booklet, which provides no references to support its claims, the review contains almost 100 scientific references. As any science student knows, conclusions must be based on sound evidence. Scientific consensus changes as new evidence emerges.
In light of recent catastrophes such as Vioxx, the biggest drug disaster in history, which killed thousands despite 'proof of safety' in monkeys, many scientists are questioning our continued reliance on animal tests, now that superior, human-based methods are available.
To claim, as Professor Colin Blakemore does, that the TGN1412 fiasco makes testing on monkeys more important defies logic and contradicts experts in the field who say the monkey tests created a false sense of security and could never have predicted the catastrophe, while tests in human tissue could have done. It is time to re-examine the entrenched belief in the value of animal testing. The scientific community is as divided as the public.
The only way to settle the matter is through an independent and transparent scientific evaluation, which all sides should welcome if they have the courage of their convictions. The burden of proof is on provivisectionists to convince skeptics, who include 240 MPs and 83% of GPs: hardly an extremist minority. You can add your support at http://www.curedisease.net/edmform.shtml. Pro-Test is lobbying hard against an evaluation, which begs the question: what are they afraid of?
8th Jun 2006