A Good Example of Why Animal Research is Important

Botox has been out for a long time, but it might need another look as to its safety thanks to a study done in rats on a related substance. From the story:

Botulinum neurotoxin type A, sold as Allergan Inc.'s Botox remedy for wrinkles, can move from its injection site to the brain, a study shows.

Scientists injected rats' whisker muscles with botulism toxin. Tests of the rodents' brain tissue found that botulism had been transported to the brain stems, the researchers said in the Journal of Neuroscience published April 2.

Botox is Allergan's biggest product, with $1.21 billion in sales last year. The drug, approved in 1989, became fashionable among aging celebrities seeking to smooth facial wrinkles and is used to treat some neurological disorders. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating whether patients contracted botulism, a muscle-weakening illness, from Botox and Myobloc, a product from Solstice Neurosciences Inc.

Animal rights advocates often say that animal work does not provide benefits because there isn't a direct correlation between how an animal reacts to that of a human. But that isn't the point since animal studies are not expected to show direct correlations but propensities. Thus, studies like this are important because they show a possible problem that can't be studied in humans in the same way. For example, based on this, scientists may wish to test it in monkeys, which are more similar. And indeed, some of that work has already been done:

Myobloc is botulinum neurotoxin type B, a different type of botulinum than studied, said Edgar Salazar-Grueso, chief medical officer of Solstice Neurosciences, in a telephone interview today.
"We are aware from monkey studies already published that toxin A migrates more than B,'' Salazar said. "Monkeys are more like humans than rodents, so these findings we're observing are consistent.''

Rats and monkeys are dying to keep people from suffering severe potential health consequences. This is the kind of thing animal rightists want to shut down. But these studies need living organisms to produce results. That means either animals or humans, and you can't do it to us because the subjects have to be killed so their brains can be studied. At least, that is what people who don't believe in animal rights believe. Ingrid Newkirk, on the other hand, believes that a rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy.

Scientists Use Fish to Observe Cancer Develop in Real Time

No doubt the ALF will want to make up some Molotov cocktails and start threatening to murder scientists' children: Biotechnologists have engineered transparent fish to observe how cancer grows and spreads. From the story:

A transparent zebrafish has been engineered to allow scientists to watch how cancers develop and behave inside the body in real time. Each internal organ of the fish and its bones can be seen clearly throughout its life. Observations have shown already that the spread of cancer cells is not random--they home in on a particular area.

Researchers who bred the transparent fish at the Children’s Hospital, Boston, in the United States, were able to watch as melanoma cells left the abdominal cavity and made directly for the skin, where the disease took hold. Before the innovation, scientists were reliant on getting a snapshot of the spread by dissecting specimens.

Richard White, the lead researcher in the project, reported in the journal Cell Stem Cell, said that cancer changed so rapidly in the body that dissection was "bound to miss something", but the transparent fish allowed the whole process to be witnessed.

I'm sure Ingrid Newkirk is rending her garments: Oh, the cruelty to a sentient being! Oh, the evil! Oh, the tremendous good that can come from this for the alleviation of terrible human suffering.

The Need to Use Animals in Research

The attackers of animal research take two paths toward attempting to end it--one of which I respect but with which I profoundly disagree--and the other which I neither respect nor accept. The argument that I think is wrong but respect (epitoimzed by Gary Francione), admits that scientific research with animals can benefit people--although the extent of benefit is generally downplayed. Their argument is primarily ethical; that regardless of the scientific knowledge obtained, or indeed, potential medical treatments derived, it is morally wrong to use a sentient being as an instrumentality in research.

Others claim that animal research offers no benefits to humans, and indeed is harmful. This criticism is patently false and anti-empirical as well as (in my view) wrongheaded from an ethical perspective. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine--a PETA creature--is an example of this approach, as are the assertions of the violence justifier against researchers Jerry Vlasak.

But animals are required for science to advance. Here is an example that came across the transom today, a summary of advances published in a science journal, of the attempt to find a vaccine for bird flu:

A vaccine against the most common and deadliest strain of avian flu, H5N1, has been engineered and tested by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Vaccine Research and Rockville, Maryland-based Novavax. According to a study published by the journal PLoS ONE, the vaccine produced a strong immune response in mice and protected them from death following infection with the H5N1 virus. The vaccine is being tested in humans in an early-phase clinical trial. Recent outbreaks of avian flu around the world have prompted health officials to warn of its continued threat to global health and potential to trigger a flu pandemic. Unlike other avian flu vaccines, which are partially developed from live viruses, the vaccine uses a virus-like particle that is recognized by the immune system as a real virus but lacks genetic information to reproduce, making it a potentially safer alternative for a human vaccine. Given the evolving nature of H5N1, the vaccine was engineered to encode genes for three influenza viral proteins to offer enhanced protection against possible new strains of the virus. The researchers said that mice immunized twice with the vaccine developed protective antibodies against H5N1 and were protected from disease and death when directly exposed to the virus. The study was funded by Novavax.

Does this mean this experimental vaccine will necessarily work? Of course not. But the use of the mice was an essential part of the process of getting to human trials.

I think this issue is so important that I intend to spend one entire chapter in my forthcoming book describing why animals are so important to scientific and medical research. From a scientific perspective, their benefit is really uncontrovertible. That doesn't end the ethical argument, of course. But good ethical analysis requires accurate data, which is what I hope to provide and which too often the animal rights ideologues refuse to admit.

Organ Transplant Breakthrough Again Proves Need for Animal Research

The wonderful adult stem cell advance that has liberated some organ transplant patients from anti-rejection drugs--which I posted about here--is yet another illustration of the ongoing need to use animals in medical research. From the story:

[Dr. David] Sachs first tried this approach successfully on mice, pigs, then monkeys. In 1998, he won approval to try his treatment on a select group of Mass. General patients with severe kidney failure, all of whom were offered matching kidneys from close relatives. When these six patients did well, Sachs moved on to the most ambitious test of his method, trying it out on patients with mismatched donors.

Consider what this means: mice, pigs, and monkeys had healthy organs removed and received organs from other animals euthanized for the purpose. As unpleasant as this is to contemplate, these preparations for human trials were absolutely necessary to test the concept and perfect techniques before attempting it on humans. The only other options would either be to use profoundly disabled people or not develop the treatment at all.

Animal rights advocates like Gary Francione would say, "Then don't develop the technique," based on an ethical belief that humans don't have the right to treat other sentient beings in such an instrumental manner. I disagree, but at least that is an honest argument. However, dishonest animal rights activists continue to claim that animal research offers no human benefit. This experimental success demonstrates that assertion to be unadulterated bull manure.

More Proof That Animal Research Works

Most animal rights activists deny the many benefits--both scientific and medical--that we derive from doing animal research. This position is empirically untenable. Case in point: The recent experiment in which scientists created a beating heart from adult stem cells--which I blogged about the other day.

That experiment also vividly illustrates the importance of animal research. From a story about the experiment in the Associated Press:

[Dr. Doris] Taylor [the scientist who performed the experiment] said in a telephone interview that her team began by trying to determine if it were possible to transplant rat heart cells. They took the hearts from eight newborn rats and removed all the cells. Left behind was a gelatin-like matrix shaped like a heart and containing conduits where the blood vessels had been.

Scientists then injected cells back into this scaffold--muscle cells and endothelial cells, which line blood vessels. The muscle cells covered the matrix walls and lined up together, while the endothelial cells found their way inside to coat the blood vessels, she said. Then the hearts were stimulated electrically. "By two days, we saw tiny, microscopic contractions, and by seven to eight days, there were contractions large enough to see with the naked eye," she said.

This could not be done without killing the newborn rats--unless, I suppose, researchers instead one newborn or disabled humans. Thus, we can see that animal research does provide tremendous benefit. Some animal rights advocates, like Gary Francione, will acknowledge this. Their point is that even with the benefit, we shouldn't do it. That is a moral argument with which I disagree, but it is based in integrity.

But to say animal research provides no value is dishonest. And that, alas, is where most animal rights advocates--such as Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine--rest their factually untenable case.