Animal Experimentation - Frequently Asked Questions: What about the claim that animal experimentation is necessary because there are no other whole system models for metabolic processes other than animals?
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

AFMA Americans for Medical Advancement
March 2006

What about the claim that animal experimentation is necessary because there are no other whole system models for metabolic processes other than animals?

This assertion suggests that in vitro research methodologies, though valuable, cannot predict what will happen in a whole living system, which is true. But history has proven that results in lab animals are even more inadequate. Though predicting what happens in particular animal tested, animal experiments do not predict what will happen in humans.

Given that metabolic processes differ greatly between species, information garnered in animal experiments is entirely unreliable. Since it has no predictive value, except for the species tested, it is wholly unscientific when applied to humans. It does not provide the results it professes to provide. Very often substances that have proven effective in animals do not demonstrate curative value in humans and may even harm them. Just as often, animal testing often works at cross-purposes to discovery when poor results bar medications that could alleviate pain and save lives from the market.

As this is the case, all drugs must eventually be tested on humans, and those humans are every bit the lab creatures that animals are. These "clinical phases" of drug testing, as they are called, submit human volunteers to what are at first very small dosages, monitor their reactions, and slowly increase dosage.

Clinical testing and subsequent non-animal methods provide what lab animals cannot - totally accurate readings of human metabolic processes. These include epidemiology, and post-marketing drug surveillance.

Go on to American Experimentation - Frequently Asked Questions: How can we know that medications will not cause birth defects without testing them on animals?


Return to Animal Rights Articles
Read more at Alternatives to Animal Testing, Experimentation and Dissection