November 19, 2007

Animal Research: A Sensitive Topic

Dr. John Ellis, Executive Director with the Pennsylvania Society for Biomedical Research, Camp Hill, PA, with 30 years experience in the field, says, "It's an emotional issue - one that we have to look at scientifically." Dr. Ellis understands the love people have for their pets. When his dog was diagnosed with kidney disease, he says he would have given anything for there to be a cure. Cures, even for pets, come from research, he said.

"We all have emotional ties to our animals," he said. But what of the emotional ties to people, to children in cancer wards, he said, who benefit from medical advances?

"If we didn't use the dogs in medical research, we'd stop medical progress," Dr. Ellis said.

"Doing tests on animals doesn't guarantee the drugs will be safe in humans," says Dr. Alka Chandna, Senior Researcher for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Norfolk, VA. Dr. Chandna says in 2004, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revealed that of all the drugs that test safe and effective in animals, 92 percent were found to be unsafe or ineffective in humans. Calling it a ,"ninety-two percent failure rate," Dr. Chandna said, "That's an F. Only eight percent of the time are you getting a result that's accurate. "

She points to a January 2006 FDA press release titled, FDA Issues Advice to Make Earliest Stages of Clinical Drug Development More Efficient. That article quotes Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, saying, "Currently, nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies."

Chandna says, "The first people that take that drug are the true test subjects, being experimented on in the true sense." She says the animal's make up is different, that they have a different biochemistry and a different metabolism.

Dr. Ellis disagrees, saying dogs are similar to human physiology, and that, "Almost every medical advance over the last century has come through animal-based research." He said insulin for diabetics was first developed using dogs. He quotes Dr. Joseph Murray, Nobel Prize Winner, Transplantation Surgeon: "Animal experimentation has been essential to all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements and all vaccinations."

Dr. Chandna says animals most commonly used in experiments include: dogs, cats, primates, rats, mice, guinea pigs, hamsters, and pigs. She says over one million animals are being used and killed every year in the United States for animal research.

Dr. Ellis says 96 percent of animals used in research are rats and mice. They also use fish quite often, namely the Zebra fish.

STATE - The use of dogs in medical research has been on the decline over the past 25 years, says Dr. John Ellis, Executive Director with the Pennsylvania Society for Biomedical Research, Camp Hill, PA.

Dr. Ellis says they've been able to use mice, instead of dogs. And, when able, they use cell and tissue cultures that don't use animals at all. In 1973, 195,000 dogs were used in United States for research, he said. By 2006, that number was down to 66,000 dogs.

Use of animals in medical research is a highly regulated industry, Dr. Ellis says, regulated federally by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). He says the USDA makes unannounced inspections at a minimum of once a year to insure laws are being followed.

Kennels that sell dogs for medical research, such as Alder Ridge Inc. in Lakewood, are inspected by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, (PDA) says Chris Ryder, PDA Press Secretary. Ryder says it's mandatory that inspections are completed at least once a year, but their policy is twice a year. An inspection of Alder Ridge Inc. on March 12, 2007 showed 1,192 dogs on the premises with all inspection categories satisfactory. Inspection categories include: shelter, bedding, temperature, food, water, food/water receptacles, bedding cleanliness, etc. Listed under Dogs sold showed 152 dogs; and in the previous 12 months, dogs sold numbered 735. To view the report online, type in: http://services.agriculture.state.pa.us/KennelInspections/Reports/DisplayReport.aspx?ID=a36d7d0d-fd0a-4b2d-a601-b3696501a80a

A call placed to James Barton, owner of Alder Ridge Inc., as a follow up to October's dog farm fire, was not returned.

FDA mandates use of primates and dogs

Dr. Ellis says the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires testing be done in non-rodent species, traditionally dogs and primates.

When it comes to animal research, Dr. Alka Chandna, Senior Researcher for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) says ,"Dogs are largely used in (drug) toxicity testing." Dr. Chandna says they force feed the "candidate (experimental) drug" to the dogs over a span of weeks or months or longer than a year, observing the "various organ systems of the dog effected." She calls it a painful, lethal process. "It's part of the experiment to kill the animal to see how the drug affected the liver ...(It's) very rare for an animal to make it out alive," she said. "It's the humane thing to do to euthanize them at the end of the experiment," she said.

Dr. Ellis says most of the dogs are euthanized in the end. If a new drug is being tested, he said, they have to look at the internal organs. The dog might look good externally, but they need to look internally at the kidneys and liver and have a pathologist look at the tissues. He said if they didn't do that, they'd, "have to use a lot more animals."

He said about five percent of animals used in research experience pain during procedures. If they can't be given pain medication because it would affect results of that particular experiment, he said, "We're obligated to find alternate ways to minimize the pain and stress to these animals." He said they take training classes on how to recognize pain. "Most procedures don't involve pain at all," he said, the animals are given the medication and their stool, urine and blood are drawn.

"Would mandatory use of pain relief be more humane than if the use of pain relief were optional, as it currently is? Yes, of course," Dr. Chandna said. She points to a quote from Dr. Catherine Dell'Orto, former post-doctoral veterinary fellow at Columbia University, who she says, "blew the whistle on cruelty in the university's labs." Dr. Dell'Orto's quote: "What I saw at Columbia still gives me nightmares. I saw baboons whose left eyes had been cut out - so that major blood vessels could be clamped off through the empty eye sockets to induce strokes - who had collapsed in their cages, unable even to lift their heads, eat, or drink after this horrendous surgery. They were left in these dire conditions without any painkillers, as the experimental protocol demanded and denied the merciful release of euthanasia."

Cowering in cages

Dr.Alka Chandna, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) says dogs are kept in, "barren cages of concrete and steel." She says the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) only requires they have enough room to move one or two steps in any direction.

[Note: It must be stressed that this is only the minimum requirement as set by AWA, and does not imply what a specific kennel such as Alder Ridge Inc., may maintain.]

Dr. John Ellis, Executive Director with the Pennsylvania Society for Biomedical Research, says the AWA required cage floorspace is a mathematical square, reached by measuring the length of the dog in inches from the tip of its nose to the base of its tail plus six inches plus square it, then divide by 144. Dr. Ellis says, "If you were to house a dog in a cage like that, you must take it out and exercise them," Dr. Ellis said. He said most dogs are kept in dog runs or group runs with other dogs.

Dr. Chandna says, "With this calculation, you can imagine if you had a dog who measured, let's say 2 feet from the tip of her nose to the base of her tail, that's 24 inches. If you add 6 inches, you get 30 inches. Now, (30x30)/144 = 6.25 square feet (so that's the floor area of the cage). As a square, 6.25 square feet would be a cage measuring 2.5 feet by 2.5 feet. For a dog who's 2 feet long from tip of nose to base of tail, that dog has an extra half a foot she can move in any direction. Does this make sense?" She says the dogs are not socialized, that they're left alone in their cage, "in these horrible, barren cages. They cower at the back of their cages." Dr. Chandna says they go, "cage crazy", circling in their cages.

She says they'd like all the cages to be empty, but as long as there are animals in laboratories, PETA is pushing for what they term "enrichment." That means socializing the animals. Giving them toys to play with, "something that engages their brain," she said.

Dr. Ellis says the animals are "kept in very good condition. You don't want a stressed animal for research," he said. "We have a moral and ethical obligation to treat them as best as possible." He says they do believe in "enrichment" and giving the animals toys. He says if an animal is sick or stressed, "those research results aren't as good." He also said the National Institutes of Health (NIH) can stop or cut funding for failure to comply to animal care regulations.