Rapid Responses to:
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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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Hardly the whole story?
- David Mitchell (Dr) (22 February 2002)
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Animal Experiments do not inform on human healthcare
- Gillian D Russell (25 February 2002)
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Re: Animal Experiments do not inform on human healthcare
- Sheila Edwards (28 February 2002)
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Fluid Resuscitation in Animals
- Alastair R. Michell (6 March 2002)
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David Mitchell (Dr) Herne Bay, Kent
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The article 'Does animal experimentation inform human healthcare? Observations from a systematic review of international animal experiments on fluid resuscitation' fails to mention the ethical consideration of animal experimentation, i.e, the simple question of what gives us the right to use animals for testing. Secondly, the authors fail to give due attention to the fact that profit-driven test results can be and are manipulated to suit the sponsor's requirements. There are also numerous other features they choose to ignore, e.g., how drugs which are deemed safe when administered to animals can and do result in severe ADRs, including death, when prescribed to humans. The 'warning' sections of the FDA and CSM websites clearly testify to this reality. Incidentally I write as one of the many type 1 diabetics who on being changed to animal-tested 'human insulin' lost all warnings of hypoglycaemias, and also began to suffer CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), resulting in the loss of my job and home. The list of complications I now suffer, which would not have manifested themselves in animals, is almost endless. If the article is an attempt to defend animal testing, then it fails - as all such attempts must do. David Mitchell. B.A.(Hons), MPhil, PhD. |
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Gillian D Russell, Retired Neuroradiographer. Consultant's wife HOME 12 Pinewood Avenue Aberdeen AB15 8NB
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In reply to the article ‘Does animal experimentation inform human healthcare’ (BMJ 23 February Pp474-476) I would like to make the following points. How can we predict from animal experiments? Are we like mice or rats (which often react in opposite ways to each other)? Are we more like dogs or rabbits? Regardless of whether the rats die or the dogs thrive it is always the first human volunteers to take the new drug/treatment who are the real guinea pigs. The problem of species differences was dramatically demonstrated when the government recently discovered (2001) that cow brains had been used for ‘BSE in sheep’ research, instead of sheep brains. The research was dismissed as the wrong species had been used. For over 200 years animals have been used in cancer research yet there are more cancers now than ever before with 1 in 3 people affected. There is also a modern epidemic of asthma, allergies, AIDS, Alzeimers, autism, diabetes, ME and degenerative diseases. Suspicion falls on the obsession with (usually animal tested) synthetic chemical based drugs, vaccines, cosmetics, food additives, pesticides and other synthetic environmental toxins. The ‘pill for every ill’ culture has failed miserably and the NHS cannot cope with the resulting tide of illness. In 1998 a survey found adverse drug reactions to be 4th in the list of causes of death – after heart attacks, cancers and strokes (1). Only when researchers use proper human based science can we have confidence that we are doing our utmost to ease human suffering from disease. Yours sincerely Gillian D Russell DCR
(1) Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) 14/4/98 |
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Sheila Edwards, retired teacher PO BOX 15825, DUBAI, UAE
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Experiments on animals waste time and money which could be much better spent.Funding the implementation and development of non-animal methods of research and testing, directly applicable to humans, would result in better therapies and more effective medications. Resources now being wasted on archaic and misleading animal studies should be redirected to health education, healthcare and preventive medicine. To even consider using non-human animals which are phylogenetically further removed from humans for research purposes has no basis in science. Animal experiments are scientifically invalid because of species differences. The effectiveness of treatments and the measurement of safety in humans does not correlate with the results of toxicity, carcinogenicity, mutagenicity and teratogenicity tests in animals.Therefore, no matter how few or how many animals are used or experiments performed, there can be no 'model' to compare with humans. Humans suffer from diseases that have uniquely human manifestations. The only people calling for more vivisection in the light of the knowledge that has come from the human genome project are those who will profit financially from more vivisection. |
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Alastair R. Michell, Professor of Comparative Medicine Univ of London, St Bartholomew's Hospital Med. School., Dept Pharmacology, Charterhouse Sq, EC1M6BQ
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The debate concerning whether or not we can 'learn from animals' is far more subtle than the responses to this article [and others] suggest. It depends on the problem and on which species, moreover the lessons of comparative medicine are most useful when the 'model' has sufficient similarities to suggest its relevance and enough differences to make it informative. Blanket assertions that we can not learn from animals are naive but equally, many generalisations about humans fall when we start to look at ethnic differences and, increasingly,genetic predisposition. In the speciific instance of this review of fluid resuscitation after haemorrhage there are some exceedingly odd features. First, it confounds therapy aimed to increase circulating volume [eg isotonic sodium-based solutions] with hypertonic sodium solutions whose benefit in shock probably rests on pharmacological properties other than their minuscule and transient impact on circulating volume. Second it contains no species routinely treated for haemorrhage by veterinary surgeons, probably because it cites no veterinary journals; treatment of haemorrhage in sheep is scarcely routine and in pigs it is exceedingly unusual. There is a substantial literature on the use of hypertonic saline and, of course various other fluids, to treat haemorrhage in other animals, notably cats, dogs and horses. Finally it makes the usual assumption that research in animals is synonymous with studies in laboratory animals, mainly rats. The transected tail model in rats is a particularly misleading one since the clean transection of the major artery is likely to predispose to re- bleeding problems once arterial pressure starts to rise. This may be relevant to some forms of clinical haemorrhage but I doubt if it is a good model for most. I would also doubt that studies with controls denied any fluid resuscitation after haemorrhage were any longer scientifically or ethically justifiable: the use of positive controls is appropriate. The greatest value of relevant research in appropriate species of animals is that comparative medicine is essential to remind us that humans are not unique; they are animals of a particularly interesting type. Only then can we start to think sensibly about questions such as how much salt mammals need and how much is detrimental, why some animals are more suceptible to extremely high blood pressure yet resistant to its damaging effects, and to capitalise on the fact that spontaneous tumours in animals, equivalent to those in humans, may be a most useful intermediate step in evaluating new treatments, between tumours induced in experimental rodents and those experienced by human patients. Awareness of such opportunities is all too low in the medical community but it will form the subject of an all day symposium at the Royal Society of Medicine [Comparative Medicine Section] later this year. |
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