USA, June 3, 2002: Scientists have long depended on animals to help them understand and explain the human condition. Nearly one-half of all grants awarded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) fund animal experiments. This amounts to several billion US dollars a year. This lengthy article offers debates of those who support in-vitro biomedical research, or research that takes place in an artificial environment, as well as those who favor in-vivo methods, research which take place in the living bodies of animals. Ray Greek, director of Americans for Medical Advancement, claims using animal models is not only a waste of time but inherently harmful. “For 10 years, in-vivo methods misled AIDS researchers. No result obtained from primate studies can be seriously considered valid in humans as long as the observation has not been made in man also.” The article further states that of 11,000 anticancer chemicals developed in mice, none helped humans and while 5 milligrams of botulinum kills man, 10 grams has no effect on dogs or cats. Some animal tests have lead to erroneous conclusions,for instance, that smoking is noncarcinogenic and that benzene is safe. Critics of in-vivo methods argue that animals don’t accurately represent humans, that naturally occurring diseases cannot be artificially induced and one cannot safely assume a correlation between animal reaction to a drug and that of humans. Alternative methods include autopsy and biopsy, physical models, genetic research and mathematical and computer modeling.
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