Why Animals Should Not Be Used For Research

Written in response to a letter supporting the use of animals in medical research (1995)

Whilst opposing the use of animals in experimentation, I must say that I feel great compassion for all people suffering from any kind of illness and can fully understand their frustration. I am, however, deeply concerned that many people feel that anyone disturbed by the appalling cruelties inflicted upon animals in experimentation is against research. This is most certainly not the case. We are as anxious as anyone that medical progress should be made.

Doctors in Britain against Animal experiments state, “As animals differ from humans, conclusions drawn from animal research, when applied to human disease, are likely to delay progress, mislead and do harm to the patient.” They claim that 95% of medical progress came about by the study of patients during life and after autopsy, e.g. insulin for diabetics; inhaled drugs for asthmatics; anticancer treatments for leukaemia; vaccines such as polio; drugs to control Parkinson’s disease; artificial heart valves; anaesthetics.

Many drugs, e.g. Thalidomide, Practol, Opren, were tested and found safe on animals, but had disastrous effects on humans. Yet had Penicillin, which was discovered without animal experiments, been tested on guinea pigs or cats instead of mice, it would have been discarded as ‘fatal’. After many years of cancer research on animals, Dr Irwin Bross of the American Institute for Cancer Research stated, “While conflicting animal results have often delayed and hampered advances in the war on cancer, they’ve never produced a substantial advance either in the prevention or treatment of human cancer.”

Doctors John Bailar and Elaine Smith of the American Cancer Advisory Board have pointed out the lack of interest in prevention and have stated that animal research has not worked at all. There’s no doubt that most diseases are directly related to our diet, along with alcohol, tobacco and our environment. Dairy products, for example, have been linked to the development of arthritis, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, multiple sclerosis etc.

It’s impossible to recreate a naturally occurring human disease in a healthy animal, as it’s artificial. Billions of animals have been infected with artificial cancerous tumours. Unfortunately, the ‘breakthrough cures’ that worked on animals have failed when applied to humans. Dr Murry Cohen of the Medical Research Modernisation Committee states that monkey osteoporosis, Parkinson’s disease and arteriosclerosis studies are defective because the artificially induced bone abnormalities, brain injuries, and blood clots induced in young monkeys differ from those of elderly humans.

The unreliability of animal experiments stresses the urgent need for methods of direct relevance to people, e.g. human population studies; clinical investigation of patients suffering from diseases; computer technology to design drugs; and test-tube experiments with human cells and tissues; which are quicker, cheaper and more reliable. It was through human population studies that smoking was identified as a cause of cancer. Yet after 50 years of trying, it proved impossible to induce lung cancer in animals by forcing them to breathe tobacco smoke. This delayed health warnings for years.

Dr Brandon Reines, a Specialist in History of Medical Science, points out, “It was, in fact, not Alexis Carrel but the French clinical investigator Jean Kunlin who pioneered bypass surgery in 1949 without any animal experiments.” Bypass surgery was delayed many years, because of misleading animal experiments. Rather than accept direct human observations, scientists try to ‘confirm’ results in animal experiments, e.g. with the polio vaccine, which was delayed 30 years because of this. According to Dr Bross, the chemotherapeutic agents which are of value in the treatment of human cancer were found in clinical studies.

As a Christian, I cannot believe that a loving God would intend us to find a cure for our diseases through the evil of animal experimentation and I cannot help but wonder how much further we might have advanced if we had followed an honourable path of research. Even if we were to benefit physically or mentally from animal research, at what cost to our soul? Jesus says, “Whoever cares for his own safety is lost, but if a man will let himself be lost for my sake and for the Gospel, that man is safe” (Mark 8). Surely to use a weaker and defenceless creature for our own material well-being is to show a total reversal of Christ’s selfless love and compassion which led to His own sacrifice for the whole creation.

Roslyne Smith

My book, ‘Animal Welfare: Through The Cross’ is a compilation of articles of the work of ACC. These articles aim to express, inside and outside the Church, the view that cruelty of any kind is incompatible with Christ’s teachings of love, that love is indivisible, and that cruelty towards any sentient creature is a breach of love. All proceeds go to animal sanctuaries and humane research.