Science and Self-Doubt

Why animal researchers must remember that human beings are special.

Frederick K. Goodwin & Adrian R. Morrison from the October 2000 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

Activists claim that animal experiments are duplicative. The reality is that today only one out of four grant requests is funded, a highly competitive situation that makes duplicative research scarce. But research does have to be replicated before the results are accepted; and progress usually arises from a series of small discoveries, all elaborating on or overlapping one another. When activists talk about duplication, they betray a fundamental misunderstanding of how science progresses. Nor do they understand scientists. What highly trained, creative individual wants to do exactly what someone has already done?

Activists urge prevention rather than treatment. They say we should urge people to adopt measures such as an altered diet or increased exercise to prevent major illness, so that we would not need so many new treatments. But much of what we have discovered about preventive measures has itself resulted from animal research. You cannot get most cancers to grow in a test tube; you need whole animal studies.

Activists argue that we should use alternatives to animal research. A favorite example is computer simulations. But where do they think the data that are entered into computers come from? To get real answers, one has to feed computers real physiological data. There is an argument that researchers should use PET scans, which can provide an image of how a living human organ is functioning, as a way of avoiding the use of animals. It took Lou Sokoloff at the National Institute of Mental Health eight years of animal research to develop the PET scan methodology.

There are many other arguments. Activists say animal research diverts funds from medical treatment. But the United States spends only 37 cents on animal studies for every $100 it spends on treatment. We could divert all our research funds into treatment, and it would have no impact on sick people.

Activists say that pets are at risk, but more than 90 percent of the animals used in research are rodents. At the same time, about five million unwanted cats and dogs are killed in shelters every year, which comes to about 50 animals killed in shelters for every one that must be sacrificed in research. One reason so many animals are killed in shelters is that animal rights organizations have diverted much of the funding from animal welfare organizations, so they cannot run adoption or neutering programs as well as they could with more funds.

Despite the weakness of their arguments, the animal rights activists have taken their toll on research. Nothing impairs creativity like fear. Today, scientists who work with animals are often segregated in high-security, bunker-like buildings, separated from their colleagues. In effect, biomedical research budgets are reduced by the costs of increased security and compliance with new regulations.

But the situation could get even worse. If the individual who sued the USDA had succeeded in gaining standing to sue on behalf of animals, a precedent would have been established that could have lead to mischief by those who would impede research. Should a future case succeed, an activist "plant" in a laboratory need only claim distress at the way animals are being treated to bring a nuisance lawsuit against the laboratory. Even now, an accusation of wrongdoing, no matter how trumped-up, will lead to weeks or months of work stoppage while the laboratory is being investigated by government agencies.

Including rats and mice (as well as birds) under the Animal Welfare Act, as the USDA has been urged to do, is more complicated. Viewed superficially, the proposal is not unreasonable. Rats and mice are animals, after all, and deserving of appropriate care. Their exclusion from oversight by the Department of Agriculture reflects the department’s decision to focus available funds on monitoring the well-being of such animals as primates, dogs, and cats. But one need not be overly cynical to suspect that the real motive behind the push for inclusion is not a desire to protect the rodents’ welfare so much as a wish to impede research by all means possible. Bureaucracy is expensive and enervating. The fact that the person leading this effort, John McArdle, once suggested in an interview that brain-dead humans are reasonable substitutes for animals as research subjects speaks volumes about the real agenda here.

Is there a proven problem concerning the welfare of these animals? The Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC), the extra-governmental organization that intensively examines animal care programs at institutions striving to receive AAALAC’s highly desirable seal of approval, has estimated that 90 percent of the rats and mice used in research are already overseen by either AAALAC inspections or those required by the U.S. Public Health Service. Many nonacademic institutions, such as pharmaceutical companies and commercial breeders, are covered by AAALAC inspections. Thus, the USDA would needlessly duplicate oversight programs already in place.

We live in an age of moral self-doubt. Some scientists and other individuals associated with biomedical research in supportive roles have begun to feel guilt over their use of animals. That has spawned a group calling itself the "troubled middle" (a rather presumptuous phrase, suggesting that only they care about the issues raised by animal research). Indeed, a whole industry has grown up around this sense of guilt, with constant, somewhat repetitive conferences focusing on how to oversee research, how to be the perfect member of an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, and how to find alternatives to using animals. These topics are not unworthy, but the conferences give short shrift to the perspectives of working scientists, who rarely appear as major speakers.

Progress toward increased human well-being cannot flourish amid such self-doubt. Scientists and members of the public who support their work must recognize that they are engaged in a struggle for minds. Their own minds therefore must be clear about what justifies animal research when necessary: that human beings are special. Researchers and others must appreciate the value of such work, and must be ready to state unequivocally and publicly that human life comes first. We who work with animals, and those who support the benefits of that work, have made a moral choice, and we must be willing to stand by it.

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