Humans Are Not Animals

Almost 70% of Americans take some type of prescription or over the counter medicine in their life, whether it is for a simple headache or to help control symptoms of a disease. . These drugs are required by law to first go through animal trials and then they may move onto human trials. However, just because a certain drug passes an animal trial it is not guaranteed to be effective and safe in humans. Each year 92% of the drugs approved for testing in humans, due to the success in animal trials, fail to receive approval for human use, an increase from 86% in 1985. Although animal testing may have once been effective in some instances, in today’s society there are more effective alternatives which better resemble and model the human body.

The use of animal testing became extremely important to the citizens of the United States in the early twentieth century. Due to a plethora of deaths and poisonings the U.S Food and Drug Administration, FDA, began requiring animal tests for drugs that could potentially be harmful to determine the safety of said drugs. Animal testing is used for various reasons including testing drug safety and effectiveness as well as making medical advances. Before any testing begins, the researcher must find the perfect “specimen” or animal to be used in the testing. The “perfect specimen” is not necessarily the cheapest but the one that will accurately depict and relate back to what the researcher is looking for. For example, for drug effectiveness, one would want a specimen that acts like the human body does to accurately predict the way it reacts in humans. After the specimen is found, prior to any experimentation, an animal use protocol must be made and a veterinarian must be consulted during this process. An animal use protocol advises the researchers on how to accomplish their research goals while still implementing animal welfare practices. The actual experimentation process will vary based on what the researcher is researching. However, for drug effectiveness and safety, the animal will receive the drug is certain dosages, for prolonged periods of time, and all observations will be recorded. Also, to determine the lethal dose of a drug the animal will be given large amounts of the drug, much more than an average dosing, to determine how much it takes for the animal to die. Once the drug passes the effectiveness and safety animals trials and is deemed safe it then travels onto human trials. The drugs that have successfully gone through animal trials have led to many achievements and advancements .Several examples include the discovery of penicillin, blood transfusions, treatments for asthma and insulin; which are only a few. The discoveries made through animal testing have allowed people to live better lives as well as save lives.

Penicillin, Blood Transfusions, Treatments for Asthma, Insulin

All the achievements made though animal testing were only made through cruel and inhumane treatment of the animals involved. As a matter of fact, the animal welfare act, the law regulating and protecting laboratory animals allows animals to be burned, shocked, poisoned, isolated, starved etc. This law does not even protect the most common of lab animals, rats, mice and other rodents, thus almost anything can happen to these animals and it does not have to be approved, reported or regulated. Many have seen images of mauled and mutilated animals on the internet and social media. The images portray animals whom have had chemicals placed into their eyes, skins and various other body parts. These animals are all proof of the cruelty of these tests. The cruelty is not only in the testing but in the living conditions as well. Animals are kept in cages with little to no enrichment, so they are basically just sitting in a cage bored, and in a stressful environment. Just being in a laboratory is stressful for them as it is not their natural environment. Isolation and lack of enrichment or engaging in activities is another factor leading to stress. Isolation is particularly difficult for animals such as primates whom are accustomed to being with their family and engaging in certain activities together, like grooming. When placed under stress, animal’s bodies will react differently as there are various hormones produced. With all this cruelty and stress, there is no possible way for the results from the tests to be very accurate.

Over the years, there have been several instances where a drug was proven safe and effective in animal trials and then when it moved onto human trials it was proven otherwise. One specific example was with the drug TGN 1412, an experimental therapy to be used to “dampen” the immune response. This drug was tested on mice, rabbits, rats and monkeys, who best replicate the human body, and there were no effects. However, within minutes humans were in agony and some suffered permanent organ damage. Vioxx, a drug meant to aid with arthritis, was proven safe in animal studies. In humans, it led to an increase in cardiovascular events, such as heart attack and stroke. These events then led to the removal of the drug from the market in 2004 due to 60,000 deaths in the US alone. Lastly, Fialuridine, a medication developed for hepatitis B caused liver failure in seven out of ten people. Of those seven people, five died and two required liver transplants. The animal trials that occurred beforehand did not predict or show this effect at all. These are only just a few of the many times animal testing has failed to predict outcomes in human trials. Animal tests are “supposed” to prove the safety of a product prior to human uses but in these cases the animal trials showed no issues and in the end humans were hurt.

Through the use of alternatives, the 3R’s concept is executed. The 3R’s concept stands for reduce, refine and replace the use of animals in research. Reduce obviously means decrease the number of animals required or used in testing. Refine is not so straight forward, as it aims to lessen or eliminate the pain or distress of the animals used. Lastly, the goal of replace is to substitute traditional animal systems with non-animal alternative systems. All the alternatives to animal testing work toward one or more of these goals. When these goals are achieved humans and animals alike benefit.

Reduce, Refine, Replace

There are ways to use animals or even humans to test the safety and effectiveness of drugs without physically harming the actual being. In vitro testing takes cells or tissues from the patient which can then be tested on in a laboratory setting. The tissues and cells are allowed to “grow” within a test tube and then tested on. Researchers began using in vitro testing in the early 1970s to determine the safety of particular substances. The cells and tissues still allow the researcher to see how the body reacts without the whole “being” thus no human or animal is harmed. Also, the cells received, when allowed to grow, can actually create a human organ. The results from these tests are received quickly and therefore information can be learned much faster than in animal trials which can take months of exposure. During in vitro testing, the cells and tissue can be manipulated with genes being inserted or deleted, just as in animal testing. However, human tissue could be used, not animal, which would better predict and recreate a human reaction. In vitro testing has been able to provide fast, inexpensive, and accurate research opportunities.

An alternative similar to in vitro testing is microfluidic chip testing, also known as “organs-on-chips”. Microfluidic chip testing is a fairly new concept, only being developed within the past few years to decade. These small, compact chips contain various tissue samples from different parts of the body which are linked by microchannels. Through these channels a blood substitute flows mimicking the pathways in the body and mimicking what occurs in the body on a micro scale. Since the chips are see-through it is possible to see everything that occurs as it happens. More complex information can be collected through microfluidic chips than in in vitro testing. This is due to the fact that it allows one to study the biology of cells within a system as if it was occurring in the body. It also allows accurate and controlled drug flow to help achieve more precise observations. Microfluidic chip testing has allowed researchers to mimic entire body systems at a low cost. This method of testing enhances the drug development process as well as providing a less expensive means of research. Microfluidic chips give researchers the opportunity to look at the reactions within a body without having an actually body and at a very small and convenient scale.

Technological advancements have allowed research to take place without any use of animals or humans but through a computer. Computer modeling, or in silico, is any biological experiment on or in a computer. The term or expression in silico was not in use, in the general public, until 1989. The main reason for the development of this technology was for the pharmaceutical industry. In silico modeling can demonstrate how substances, specifically drugs, will interact with receptors on cells through the use of molecular modeling. Along with models, there are also quantitative structure-activity relationships, QSARS, which make estimates of the substances chance of being hazardous. Other various methods include pharmacophores, homology models, and network analysis tools. These estimates are made by looking at the similarity to existing substances and current knowledge of the human body. This alternative does not completely guarantee what would happen but neither does animal testing as seen many times. The estimates made by in silico are most likely more accurate than the results found from testing. Through the use of in silico testing predictions can be made which will help understand and determine what would occur in humans. If through the predictions a drug is deemed unsafe or ineffective then there would be no reason to waste the money and animals testing it.

What is a better way to test drugs effects on humans than actually using humans? People can volunteer to go through drug testing. Some people may even get paid to undergo clinical trials, depending on the case and researcher/company. However, there is a specific technique used known as microdosing. Microdosing occurs when a very minimal dose of the drug being tested is administered to humans. No adverse effects or reactions should occur since it is such a small dose. After it is administered the drug is carefully watched as it goes through the body via imaging techniques. In today’s society, the use of imaging techniques for health reasons is not uncommon. MRIs, CAT scans, ultrasounds and X-RAYS are used on a daily basis. From these techniques an abundance of information can be collected, such as how the body absorbs, distributes and metabolizes the drug. This method is most beneficial in determining if a drug is worth more research. Microdosing does not prove safety or effectives but if at a small dose the drug does not produce the desired effect then no further testing would need to occur. Therefore, it would eliminate the pointless animal testing that occurs since it is already known it is ineffective.

In today’s society we have the technology and knowledge to create advancements onto these alternatives to make them even better then animal tests. It is clear to see that animal tests are not as effective as they could be and why waste money on something that is not effective all the time? Many of the alternatives to animal testing are not highly expensive but actually low cost. Each year the NIH, national institutes of health, spend almost half of their funding on animal experiments, which is approximately 14.5 billion tax dollars yearly. Since the alternatives are cheaper, that money could be used to implement more experiments. Now one must ask oneself which they would rather their money to go to: ineffective, cruel animal tests or more effective, cheaper non-animal alternatives? The answer is clear as animals are simply not humans.