What's wrong with vivisection?

Photos from a 2005 undercover investigation at UConn Health Center primate supplier. Covance Laboratories in Vienna, VA. The
macaques above are used for drug testing at Covance before they are eventually sent to labs like the one at UCHC to be abused and killed.

What's wrong with vivisection?

WASTED LIVES & WASTED DOLLARS
Over 50,000+ nonhuman primates (over 20 mil. total animals) suffer slow, painful deaths at
the hands of vivisectors at Universities, hospitals and private institutions every year in the U.S.
(1). These individuals are wild-caught (or their offspring) in the jungles of Southeast Asia and
Africa who have been imported by commercial dealers and breeders in the U.S. They are
separated from their families, confined in small crates with little to no food or water and no
veterinary care and shipped around the world. Many die in the process.

There are no federal regulations restricting what researchers can do to animals in labs and,
as a result, billions of our tax dollars ($1.5B in 2004) are spent to support mislead research
that entails cutting, paralyzing, drugging, and fatally infecting them with degenerative and
infectious diseases. These vital funds are intentionally being directed away from more
effective means of discovery in order to keep pharmaceutical companies, researchers, and the
legislators that support them, thriving.

BAD SCIENCE
The scientific community includes many researchers who not only question the ethical nature
of these experiments, but their validity altogether.

In January 2006, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt expressed the
need to encourage earlier use of human drug trials stating that, “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.”(2) These findings were not
anomalies.

For example, a December 2006 literature review article published in the British Medical
Journal reported that “many studies in animal models are of poor methodological quality” and
that “lack of concordance between animal experiments and clinical trials may be due to…the
failure of animal models to adequately represent human disease.” These results, of course,
do not account for the plethora of studies that fail and remain unpublished.

Similarly, a literature review published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in
October 2006 examined over 2,000 of the most heavily-cited scholarly articles that focused on
animal models of human therapeutic interventions. The researchers found that only about
37% of the 76 animal studies (which, given their heavy citation were the "best" studies during
the period) "translated at the level of human randomized trials." The researchers concluded
that "patients and physicians should remain cautious about extrapolating the findings of
prominent animal research to the care of human disease" and that "poor replication of even
high-quality animal studies should be expected by those who conduct clinical research."

And finally, a January 2007 British Medic al Journal article reported that "animal models may
not adequately mimic human pathophysiology. Test animals are often young, rarely have
comorbidities, and are not exposed to the range of competing (and interacting) interventions
that humans often receive.....Many clinical trials would probably not have gone ahead if all the
data had been subjected to meta-analysis."

BAD MEDICINE
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) estimate that for every
1,000 drugs that is tested on animals, only one reaches human clinical trials. Of these, only 1
in 5 are eventually approved by the FDA. That’s a staggering failure rate of roughly 99.99%.

And, adding insult to injury, the small percentage of drugs that reaches the market cause over
700,000 nonfatal injuries and 100,000 deaths every year (JAMA, 279: 1200-5, 1216-7, 1998).
Several salient examples of dangerous drugs that made it to human clinical trials were
recently hot topics of discussion in mainstream media: TGN1412 , Vioxx, more currently,
Pfizer's torcetrapid , and Novartis' Zelnorm. All were shown to be safe in animal models but
ultimately lead to injury and deaths in human subjects. These data must not be taken lightly.

A study by the Food and Drug Administration found that 52% of the prescription medications
they approved between 1976 and 1985 caused serious side effects that led to the drugs being
withdrawn or relabeled. Each of these medications had been deemed safe after extensive
animal testing (4).

Adverse drug reactions (ADR) kill more than 106,000 Americans every year, more than all
illegal drugs combined, and are the fourth leading cause of death in America, behind heart
disease, cancer and stroke.(5) ADRs are also responsible for over on top of this. (6)

BUT THERE’S HOPE…
Ending NHP research would benefit human medicine by halting the flow of unreliable data
from it, and by diverting research funds to more appropriate and promising methods. These
include batteries of human-based tests that provide reliable and relevant information on which
to base further research and translate laboratory findings to the clinic: microarrays and other
DNA technologies; proteomics and metabolomics; mathematical and computer modelling;
epidemiology; human clinical research; myriad in vitro molecular biological techniques;
microfluidics devices; scanning technologies, microdosing etc.... in short, technologies that
have demonstrably contributed to human medicine.

1. United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, "Annual Report of
Enforcement," (2004).
2. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The Drug Development and Approval Process.
3. Food and Drug Administration press release, FDA Issues Advice to Make Earliest Stages of Clinical Drug
Development More Efficient, January 12, 2006.
4. GAO/PEMD-90-15 FDA Drug Review: Post Approval Risks 1976-1985.
5. Journal of the American Medical Association 279 (1998): 1200-5, 1216-7.
6. Associated Press. October 17, 2006.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE SHORTCOMINGS OF PRIMATE VIVISECTION:

Nonhuman Primates in Medical Research: Sensible or Dispensable? by J. Bailey, PhD.
Neurological Experiments: Monkey See...But Not Like Humans by Dr. Aysha Akhtar, M.D.
Americans For Medical Advancement Article Index

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All sentient animals (human and
non-) have an inherent value that
exists outside of their utility to
others. We recognize this value
and afford these individuals the
right to be treated in a manner
that is respectful of it. To act in
a way that reduces animals
(human and non-) to mere
resources for others to exploit
for food, experimentation,
clothing or entertainment is a
violation of this right and it is our
obligation to insure that such
exploitation does not continue.