Progress — Minus The Animals
Kinship Circle Presentations, 2013

• $3 MILLION (SO FAR): A decades-long Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison sound localization lab mangles cats to gain data on how human brains process sound. Holes are drilled in a cat's brain to screw in a steel column that stops head motion. Second surgery opens cat's head to destroy inner ears and lodge electrodes. The cat awakens deaf to undergo drills…before killed to dissect her brain. “Funding violent experiments on cats means $3 million less is spent on research to actually improve human health. This can be conducted ethically with sophisticated brain imaging-recording techniques in humans.” Dr. Lawrence Hansen, neuroscience-pathology professor, Univ. Calif-San Diego; named in top 100 brain researchers, Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.


• $5,075,798 (SO FAR): Maternal deprivation tests in infant monkeys began (1960s) with Harry Harlow's Well Of Despair. Univ. of Wisconsin still places infants, within 24 hours of birth, with a live snake or wire “surrogate peer” to simulate adverse rearing conditions. They're further traumatized with human intruder skits, brain scans, spinal taps, etc. before killed for brain dissection. The mom-baby bond is well-documented. 10-year NIH study: Isolated infant monkeys self-mutilate, etc. Testing for half century+ wastes time, money.


• ACADEMIC RESEARCH: A highly competitive grant culture creates pressure to churn out protocols, regardless of existing data or scientific validity. Schools get grants that help pay for overhead unrelated to labs. Quick money comes from animals, not human-focused clinical or cell-line studies. “NIH under-funds patient-oriented research,” (Committee on Addressing Career Paths for Clinical Research. Nat'l Academy Press, Bethesda, MD) with biggest cut for animal studies.


• BIG PHARMA & ACADEMIA - FORGING MILLION-DOLLAR RELATIONSHIPS: “Big Pharma and an academic institution agree jointly on which projects to fund, and in return for financing, company gets first option to commercialize results.” Sharing An Umbrella, MoFo Tech (science/tech-based trends) 2012.

• Animal data creates false assumptions that speed new drugs from clinical trials to market, with unforeseen adverse drug reactions. I.E., Mice, the go-to human disease model, supply 100% inaccurate data for sepsis, burns, trauma. Species discrepancy may render mice useless in cancer and heart disease tests as well. For sepsis (full-body inflammation from infection) investigators found that humans suppress a gene similar to a gene actively used in mice. When researchers disable this gene in lab mice, a test drug is successful. In humans, the same variable ups fatality. Genomic responses in mouse models poorly mimic human inflammatory diseases. National Academy of Sciences, Feb 2013.


• The animal model presumes an effect in one species occurs in another. Yet science says genetic, metabolic, physiological and psychological traits vary significantly from species to species. A drug metabolized in a pig, dog or mouse doesn't look like the same drug in a person. Its physiological pathways (way a drug interacts with body parts) are unique in each species.


• ADVERSE DRUG REACTIONS ARE 4TH LEADING CAUSE OF U.S. DEATH (FDA). 2 million+ people annually suffer ADR disability and hospitalization; 100,000 die (Journal of American Medical Association). FDA records show 1,734 drug recalls, 2004-2011. But recalls average once a month, say Brigham & Women's Hospital researchers (2012 Archives of Internal Medicine). FDA recalls just half of Class 1 medical products that may harm or kill humans.

• ANIMALS EXIST IN PERPETUAL DISTRESS from handling, confinement, noise, isolation, pain, fear… Stress hormones influence animal data (Laboratory Animal Science 2004). Repeating the same experiments again and again, for decades, is a hard sell — given the lack of cures from animals induced with human disease/injury in settings humans never encounter.


• SUBJECTIVE SCIENCE, CAN'T BE REPLICATED: One 2012 study found 47 of 53 landmark findings can't even be reproduced! “It was shocking. Pharmaceutical industry relies on these findings” (Journal: Nature, March 2012, C. Glenn Begley, former head of global cancer research at Amgen). Failure was blamed, in part, on animal models irrelevant to diseases, in an arena that fosters poor science, even fraud, as researchers fight for funds.

• REFERENCE ANIMAL-USE INDUSTRY JOURNALS, PAPERS, WEBSITES: I.E., While researching Kinship Circle educational literature, I read a smoking (tobacco) study abstract that stated: Results are inconclusive because no animal mimics evidence found in studies of human smokers.


• OVERSIGHT AND INSPECTION AGENCIES: I.E., U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) devotes a website page to adverse drug effects (ADRs), the 4th leading cause of U.S. death. By law, all drugs are animal-tested.


• NEWS REPORTS: I.E., A 2013 report that swept media outlets dubbed mice, the go-to model for human disease, 100% inaccurate as data sources for inflammatory diseases — plus all immune studies, including cancer and heart disease (Genomic responses in mouse models poorly mimic human inflammatory diseases. National Academy of Sciences. Feb 2013). “I was stunned by just how bad the mouse data are. It's really amazing, no correlation at all,” (Dr. Mitchell Fink, sepsis expert, Univ. of California, Los Angeles).