There are two
lessons to be learned from the startling new study reporting that decades of burn,
sepsis and trauma experiments on mice have led nowhere: First, mice aren't good stand-ins for
humans. The
second one I'll get to in a minute.
The study, just
published in the Proceedings of the
National Academies of Sciences, examined human cells and found that what happens to mice when they're
burned and infected isn't the same as what happens to people. The time and resources spent
using mice to try to figure out how to treat humans are "a heartbreaking
loss of decades of research and billions of dollars," according to
National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins. Scientists now
understand why all 150 drugs developed using these animals failed in human
patients. The study's lead author stated, "[Researchers] are so ingrained
in trying to cure mice that they forget we are trying to cure humans."
The cost to everyone--patients, taxpayers and mice--is enormous.
Here's the second
lesson: If scientists and their funders had taken the ethical course from the
start--that is, if they had not harmed and killed some beings in an effort to
help others--we might be much further along scientifically. As a nation, we'd be
more progressive ethically, too.
Look at some of the
burn studies now being conducted at the University of Texas Medical
Branch. Mice, dogs, sheep and pigs are burned over as much as 40
percent of their bodies with a scorching-hot metal rod or the open flame of a
Bunsen burner. The animals suffer for weeks before they are killed. In some of
the experiments, animals are also forced to inhale smoke to injure the lining
of their respiratory tract.
Animals have suffered for decades in dead-end laboratory searches for cures for human ailments. The Food and Drug Administration has reported that 90 percent of drugs that test safe and effective in animals either fail to work in humans or harm them. A 90 percent failure rate should be unacceptable. It's certainly ample evidence that animals, while they no doubt feel pain and want to lead their own lives, are nevertheless not biological replicas of humans. Recent landmark reports have even found that chimpanzees, humans' closest genetic relatives, are terrible models of human ailments.
If animals had been
left out of this scientific equation, would science be further along in its
quest for drugs to treat burn and trauma patients? What avenue not pursued
might have been the right path to helping people?
But even if
experimenters had learned something useful, it would still be wrong to take a
Bunsen burner to a tiny mouse. It is wrong to lay a red-hot metal bar against
the body of a dog. It is wrong to take a blowtorch to the sensitive skin of a
pig. It is wrong to poison, infect, manipulate and cut up animals in a
laboratory.
We all owe the authors of this study a huge thank-you. They have proved once again that it is modern studies using human cells, not deadly experiments on animals, that will actually help people who have been badly burned. But now is a good time to learn the larger lesson: We can and must solve human problems without harming animals.
Kathy
Guillermo is the senior vice president of Laboratory Investigations for People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.PETA.org.
