Animal Testing in Medical Research

Animal Testing in Medical ResearchHK

Table of contentsHistoryMedical researchUse of animals in research TodayHow it helps usDifferent animals usedWhy we use animals in researchCan it be justified, why is it wrongPros/consAlternativesRegulationsFuture Outlook

From The beginningIs defined as the use of non-human animals in experimentation, for the better of human kind, and health, but is controversial because of the negative effects on animals and their well beingThe use of animals in scientific research has a long history, dating back to the fourth century BCE Aristotle is one of the first known to have performed experiments on living animals. In the second century a Roman physician named Galen dissected goats and pigs, a practice which later earned him the title the father of vivisection.Literally, "vivisection" means the "cutting up" of a living animalAristotle was one of first people ever recorded to use live animals in testing on the animal itself not for medical research.There has been recorded the use of animals in research as far back as the Greek writings.150 years ago it became known as science.One of the first discoveries was the functioning of the cardio vascular and nervous systems and Stephen Hales used a horse to demonstrate the measurement of blood pressure, and Antoine Lavoisier used a calorimeter and a guinea pig to demonstrate that respiration was a type of combustion.William Harvey was famous for accurately describing how blood circulates around the body and the part the heart plays in this.He was able to disprove Galen's theory that the body made new blood as it used up the old. He proved that the heart was a pump that forced the blood around the body through arteries and that the blood was returned to the heart through the veins.In 1628 Harvey wrote a book- Anatomical Essay on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals.

Medical Research1950s kidney transplants-(dogs and pigs)Replacement heart valvesPolio vaccine-(mice)Hip replacement surgery1960sHeart bypass operations Drugs to treat mental illness

1970sDrugs to treat stomach ulcers, asthma and leukemia-(mice)1980sDrugs to control transplant rejection-(Mice)Life support systems for premature babies1990sCloning of Dolly

Life support system for pre-mature babies In 1891, George Fell, an American surgeon, forced respiration to treat victims of accidental morphine poisoning or drowning. Nine years later, Matas used positive-pressure ventilation through a tube in the larynx for operations on the open thorax. was followed, in 1907, by a technique developed in France, whereby air containing anaesthetic gas was blown into the lungs of the patient on inhaling.Ferdinand Sauerbruch, originally, had the idea of blowing air into the lungs to keep them inflated when opening the thorax ( positive-pressure ventilation or insufflation -) but in his animal experiments he found that the technique was actually harmful and concluded that positive-pressure ventilation should not be used to deliver anaesthesia to human patients. He conducted dozens of animal experiments - opening the chest and placing an animal in a specially designed chamber, which had most of the air drawn out to lower the pressure. The lungs of the animal were effectively held in an inflated state by negative air pressure. From these animal experiments, Sauerbruch concluded that negative-pressure cabinets were the final solution to the problem of the open thorax. After Sauerbruch`s animal experiments, Samuel J Meltzer, in 1910, revived the technique of insufflation - in which air is continually blown into the lungs - in his own animal experiments. He is said to have found that the results of which indicated that the method could be a safe way of keeping the lungs inflated during surgery.

Use of animals in research todayCancer research and diagnosis, breast cancer:UCLA studies utilizing mice were the basis for human clinical trials in patients with metastatic breast cancer.

led to the breakthrough breast cancer medication Herceptin, the first cancer-fighting drug to successfully target a specific genetic alteration, thereby limiting side effects such as hair loss and nausea that often accompany conventional therapies. Mouse models of human cancers such as prostate, pancreatic and lung cancer are widely utilized to test innovative cancer-fighting agents.

Animal research plays a very important role in the development of targeted therapies that can be used in personalized medicine, and an early example of this is the drug Herceptin, which is used to treat cancers that express the HER2 gene.

Parkinson's disease:UCLA scientists pioneered deep brain stimulation, a surgical procedure used to treat a variety of disabling neurological symptoms most commonly the debilitating symptoms of Parkinson's disease, such as tremors, rigidity, stiffness, slowed movement and walking problems. The procedure, made possible through research involving non-human primates, is used to treat Parkinson's patients experiencing only limited benefits from medication alone. Deep brain stimulation also is used to treat essential tremor, a common neurological movement disorder.

developed a model of human breast cancer in which many of these same features have been applied to genetically modified human breast tissue. Model is created by first isolating normal human breast tissue from surgical specimens, genetically modifying it to express oncogenes, and then introducing the modified tissue into specially engineered mice. Modified breast tissue first grows into normal breast tissue, but then develops into human breastt tumors while growing in the mouse breast tissue.The (HIM) model

Parkinson's researchers looking for ways to ignite the repair mechanisms already in a patient's brain so that they can fix damage that mechanisms couldnt do otherwise.In the future, researchers may use stem cells from embryonic or adult sources not to replace lost cells directly, but rather to turn on the body's own repair mechanismsresearchers may find effective drug treatments that help a patient's own stem cells and repair mechanisms work more effectively.

Stem cells in the adult primate brain occur in two locations. One, the sub ventricular zone, is an area under fluid-filled spaces called ventricles. The other is the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. In primates, very few new neurons normally appear in either place, which is why the phenomenon escaped notice until recently.

In the mid1990s that when the brain is injured, stem cells in these two areas proliferate and migrate toward the site of the damage. The researchers are now trying to discover how far this kind of response can go toward ameliorating certain kinds of damage.

Animals used

Rodents are small in size, easy tohandle, relatively inexpensive to buy and keep, and producemany offspring in a short period of time.However, rodents may not always be the best animal modelto use in certain experiments. In these cases, dogs, cats, rabbits,sheep, pigs, fish, frogs, birds, nonhuman primates, or other kindsof animals may be used. All of these animals together make upless than 10% of the animals used in research.

Facts & Figures(2009)In the U.S 1.13 million animals were used in experiments (excluding rats, mice, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and agricultural animals used in agricultural experiments), plus an estimated 100 million mice and rats76,001 subjected to pain without pain relief

In Canada (2008) 2.27 million animals used in experiments98, 633 animals subjected to severe pain near, at, or above the pain tolerance threshold of unanesthetized conscious animals

In the United Kingdom (2009)3.6 million experiments on animals2.7 million without anesthesia

Why we use animals and why Testing isn`t always reliableScientists typically use animals for testing purposes because they are considered similar to humans, but Diseases that are artificially induced in animals in a laboratory are never identical to those that occur naturally in human beings only similar. And because animal species differ from one another biologically in many significant ways, it becomes even more unlikely that animal experiments will yield results that will be correctly interpreted and applied to the human condition in a meaningful way.

For example, according to former National Cancer Institute Director Dr. Richard Klausner, We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didnt work in humans. At least 85% HIV/AIDS vaccines have been successful in non-human primate studies, as of 2010, every one of nearly 200 preventive and therapeutic vaccine trials failed to show benifit. In one case, an AIDS vaccine that was shown to be effective in monkeys failed in human clinical trials because it did not prevent people from developing AIDS, and some believe that it made them more susceptible to the disease. According to a report in the British newspaper The Independent, one conclusion from the failed study was that testing HIV vaccines on monkeys before they are used on humans, does not in fact work.

Current regulatory standards for medical research in Canada require that medical research be performed on animals. non-animal models can be used to reduce the number of animals required, they cannot replace animals altogether. By law, animals must be tested in basic medical research to determine how different treatments actually perform in a live body.

Health Canada explains the reasons for this It is often important to understand how the body as a whole functions under certain conditions, including how repair and defence mechanisms operate in the whole animal. In order to conduct studies in a living body, researchers must use animals whose bodies closely resemble those of humans.

Pros & ConsAs time passed by, it became only natural of scientists to test on animals. Not until the past recent years there has been a controversy over animal testing. People have different opinions and different approaches to this matter. Some people think hat it is wrong to force animals to be tested on. Others think that testing on animals can solve problems for humans.

Pros & Cons Pros ConsAids researchers in finding drugs and treatments to improve health and medicine.Countless animals are experimented on and then killed after their use.Medical Treatments have been made possible by animal testing, including cancer and HIV drugs, insulin, antibiotics, vaccines and many more.Others are injured and will still live the remainder of their lives in captivity. Helps to ensure the safety of drugs and many other substances humans use or are exposed to regularly.Generally costs an enormous amount of money, animals must be fed, housed, cared for and treated with drugs or a similar experimental substance.

Human harm is reduced and human lives are saved.May occur more than once and over the course of months, additional costs are incurred.Researchers who study animals discover information that cant be learned from other sources.

Argument that the reaction of a drug in an animal's body is quite different from the reaction in a human.

To see whether such products might be effective in humans.

Animals are in an unnatural environment, they will be under stress.

Painful and torturous experiments inflicted on the animals.

Ethical Aspects why it is wrongPersonal Choice:The ethical aspect overshadows both of them, which means that emotion may be the ultimate determining factor in whether a person believes the benefits of animal testing outweigh the problems involving animal testing.Views and more con points:Animal rights activists are opposed to using animals for medical research because humans do not have the right to use animals. With few exceptions, we do not experiment on human subjects without their consent. Non-human animals cannot give informed consent, and the vast majority of experiments using animals are so invasive and injurious, we would never even consider allowing humans to consent to being subjects in such experiments.

The three R`s

The three R`s are a set of principles that scientists are encouraged to follow in order to reduce the impact of research on animals.

The three R`s are: Reduction, Refinement, Replacement.Reduction:Reducing the number of animals used in experiments by: Improving experimental techniquesImproving techniques of data analysisSharing information with other researchers

Refinement:Refining the experiment or the way the animals are cared for so as to reduce their suffering by: Using less invasive techniquesBetter medical careBetter living conditions

Replacement:Replacing experiments on animals with alternative techniques such as: Experimenting on cell cultures instead of whole animalsUsing computer modelsStudying human volunteersUsing epidemiological studies

Animal experimenters are very aware of this ethical problem and acknowledge that experiments should be made as humane as possible.They also agree that it's wrong to use animals if alternative testing methods would produce equally valid results.Two positions on animal experiments:In favour of animal experiments:Experimenting on animals is acceptable if (and only if): suffering is minimised in all experimentshuman benefits are gained which could not be obtained by using other methodsAgainst animal experiments:Experimenting on animals is always unacceptable because: it causes suffering to animalsthe benefits to human beings are not provenany benefits to human beings that animal testing does provide could be produced in other ways

Alternatives A while ago, the toxicity of a new substance was measured by an ``LD50`` lethal dose(50%) a test that required 200 rats, dogs or other animals to be force-fed various amounts of the substance to determine the dose would kill half the group of animals A change in protocol put a ban on the testThe organization for economic Co-operation and development says that if a substance kills the first three animals it is tested on the trials are not necessary When testing vaccines, the vaccine is only considered effective if at least 80% of the vaccinated animals survive after being exposed to a disease. BUT, the disease must also kill 80% of the control group not protected by the vaccineMethods of Alternatives: 1)tetanus vaccines that only require measuring levels of antibodies in the animal, it not only reduces the suffering, but halves the number of animals needed in half. 2)Some researchers in Canada are trying to use bacteria in tests instead of rats3)usage of cell structures to produce vaccines, they are purer than those made with animals and reduces the need for animal tests to check if the vaccine is safe.Usage of the cell structure has given dramatic changes in the use of monkeys in polio vaccine production in the Netherlands, there used to be 5000 monkeys annually, and it is reduced to the cell cultures of 10 monkeys. The 10 monkeys produce enough polio vaccine to supply their whole country .To tests that involve skin corrosiveness it was measured by how far a substance ate into a rabbits shaved neck, but now methods using replacements like reconstructed human skin or synthetic material called corrosive the number of rabbits used will be reduced.Anti-bodies, were traditionally created by injecting cancer cells into mice, but now can be produced using DNA thats made in a lab or from human cells.

Future of animals in medical Researchlast 30 years there has been a decline in usage if animals in research Great Britain and Norway have cut down the number of animals used in research by 50 percent.Means there is a positive outlook for future research that doesnt involve as many animals because of the negative factors and controversyMore AlternativesNew technology and alternatives are looking better by day In my opinion I think that animal testing in medical research is wrong and cruel , but because of the many advances in research and disease I cant say it didnt help. Researchers should have used other alternatives in my opinion instead of using innocent animals for their experimentations, which caused them pain and suffering.

http://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/resources/video-library/

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