Of Mice and Men

Let me get started by saying that I am for animal research. Animal research, when done properly, is absolutely necessary to develop compounds before they reach human patients. It is just too hard to figure out how a compound will work in a whole living system by simply using tissue culture models, computer models, etc.

That said, I believe that the research establishment greatly abuses the use of animals. For starters, I can name several instances by several labs where experiments were badly planned and animals, mostly rodents here, had to be sacked. Rodent colonies are not always maintained thoroughly resulting in rodent offspring that needs to be sacked because of negligence.

Another aspect of animal research that I don't think receives enough attention is whether certain types of research should be doing animal research. An example of this is basic research on biologic agents that have no foreseeable use to improve the standard of life of humans or other living organisms. While scientists argue that basic research is necessary to fuel the therapies of tomorrow, and this is a fair argument, I find it that fairly often scientists rush to the rodent to determine if there is something of interest. It also drives me crazy when animal experiments are carried out to simply fill out a figure for a scientific paper.

While I do not advocate the stop of animal research and I am no fan of PETA, I do think that scientists need to do a better job at making sure that animals are treated as living organisms that can feel and sense pain rather than just as an assay that can be easily disposed of if something comes up.