Nexus - 0802 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Cost THE HUMAN ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS There is strong scientific evidence that animal-based testing is grossly inaccurate in evaluating how a drug or product will affect humans, and Is a grave risk to the health and safety of people and animals alike. raphic pictures of cats with electrodes clamped to their heads, or monkeys strapped to chairs with their brains cut open, their eyes filled with pain and ter- ror, are enough to upset momentarily even the most hardened person. But most of us put these images out of our mind and accept the situation, because we're told by the government and medical establishment that such experiments are for our own good. They insist that without these procedures there will never be cures for the world's diseases, and that those who oppose animal experiments are extremists holding back "progress". Yet, despite the supposed stringency of animal tests on drugs deemed safe for human consumption and released onto the market, two million Americans become seriously ill and approximately 100,000 people die every year because of reactions to medicines they were prescribed.' This figure exceeds the number of deaths from all illegal drugs com- bined, at an annual cost to the public of more than US$136 billion in health care expenses.’ In England, an estimated 70,000 deaths and cases of severe disability occur each year because of adverse reactions to prescription drugs, making this the third most common cause of death (after heart attack and stroke).’ The drug company Ciba-Geigy has estimated that only five per cent of chemicals found safe and effective in animal tests actually reach the market as prescription drugs.* Even so, during 1976 to 1985 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 209 new compounds—102 of which were either withdrawn or relabelled because of severe unpre- dicted side-effects including heart attacks, kidney failure, liver failure and stroke.* The animal rights movement has lobbied for years against animal experimentation on moral and ethical grounds, but the scientific evidence against vivisection is far stronger. Researchers who put their careers on the line and publicly admit that animal-based models are inaccurate for evaluating the effects of drugs in humans are encouraged or forced to be silent in a billion-dollar industry. Two such researchers are Dr Ray Greek, an American anaesthesiologist, and his wife, Jean Swingle Greek, a veterinary dermatologist. Both are ex-vivisectors who have stud- ied medical and scientific literature which is largely unavailable and inscrutable to the public. Using the industry's own data, they expose in their new book, Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Cost of Animal Experimentation, how we are kept in the dark about the dangers to our health from animal experiments. WHY ANIMAL MODELS ARE NOT PREDICTIVE pen up a rat, a dog, a pig and a human and you will find much the same terrain, but with differences. But it is precisely these differences which have an impact when it comes to assimilating drugs. For example, rats, the species most commonly used in vivi- section, have no gall bladder and excrete bile very effectively. "Many drugs are excreted via bile, so this affects the half-life of the drug," explain Ray and Jean Greek. "Drugs bind to rat plasma much less efficiently. Rats always breathe through the nose. Because some chemicals are absorbed in the nose, some are filtered. So rats get a different mix of substances entering their systems. Also, they are nocturnal. Their gut flora are in a different location. Their skin has different absorptive properties than that of humans. Any one of these discrepancies will alter drug metabolism." These differences are only on a gross level. Medications act on a microscopic level, initiating or interrupting chemical reactions that are far too small for the human eye to observe. E-mail: info@katrinafox.com Website: www.katrinafox.com NEXUS - 27 THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE AGAINST VIVISECTION by Katrina Fox © 2000 FEBRUARY — MARCH 2001