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Doctors against animal experiments Therefore, animal experiments in medicine are completely unnecessary
Dr. Utz Anhalt interviewed leading members of the "Doctors Against Animal Testing", who call for an end to animal testing because these animals inflict unnecessary suffering and at the same time have no value for scientific knowledge and medical practices in humans.
Image: Henrik Dolle - fotolia Can you tell us something about The Doctors Against Animal Testing? When and why was this organization founded. What are the goals? What have you achieved so far? "
The Doctors Against Animal Testing Association was founded in 1979 by the neurologists Margot and Herbert Stiller, the ophthalmologist Reinhold Braun and like-minded colleagues in Hamburg, recognizing that animal testing is deeply unethical and the results from animal testing are of no value because of significant differences between humans and animals have.
Under the motto "Medical progress is important - animal experiments are the wrong way!", The association has since advocated for a general abolition of animal experiments, as they are rejected for ethical, medical and scientific reasons.
The Doctors Against Animal Testing Association plays an important role within the animal rights and animal rights movement in developing and providing scientifically sound arguments against animal experiments, in researching background information from animal research-based research, as well as in information on the state of development of animal-free methods.
The aim of the association Doctors Against Animal Experiments e.V. is the abolition of all animal experiments.
A particularly important success of our 36 years of ongoing education with u.a. Information booths, campaigns, signature campaigns, press releases, is that animal testing has become a public issue with increasing media exposure, political pressure has been generated, and that animal-free research is being driven forward.
The association maintains since the mid-1990s, an Internet database in which several thousand animal studies are recorded and described comprehensible to laymen to convey an impression of the cruelty and absurdity of animal experiments.
With our Eastern Europe project we are already providing animal testing-free teaching aids to 55 institutes in 5 countries of the former Soviet Union. Thus, they forego the so far numerous animal experiments in student education. This enabled 38,000 vertebrates (dogs, cats, rabbits, rats and frogs) and 15,000 invertebrates to be saved each year from suffering and dying in animal experiments.
Thanks to the "Stop Botox Animal Experiments" campaign we initiated together with our partners in the "European Coalition to End Animal Experiments" (ECEAE), we were able to build up so much pressure that two manufacturers of the nerve agent botulinum toxin (Botox) are now working on a recognized cell culture Test method. We will continue this campaign until the other companies change.
Also in cooperation with the ECEAE, we were able to prevent with our REACH project, that a repeat of already performed toxicity studies. At least 18,000 rats, mice, rabbits and fish escaped an agonizing death.
On our highly informative and constantly updated homepage, interested lay people and scientists will find access to sound and informed information on the subject of animal experiments.
"Doctors against animal experiments" says in the name, that it is a scientifically sound criticism. The public often thinks that opponents of animal experiments are emotionally motivated, while scientists and doctors consider animal experiments to be necessary. While animal experiments for the military and cosmetics meet with widespread rejection, many animal experiments are considered necessary for science. But they also have serious medical and scientific criticism of this practice. Which?
Our association "Doctors Against Animal Testing" expressly rejects animal experiments for ethical as well as medical and scientific reasons. The medical and scientific criticism of animal experiments is based on a variety of arguments.
Diseases of humans can not be explored by experiments on living things of another species, since even in species that are closely related to humans, there are grave differences in anatomy and physiology. We now know that not the single gene is important, but its regulation determines what it does in an organism. To give one example: Monkeys, which have a high degree of genetic compatibility with humans as our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, show marked differences, i.a. with regard to immunological reactions, and there have been repeated fatal or even fatal adverse events in the clinical trials of drugs considered safe and effective in monkeys.
Human diseases can not be modeled in the animal. The primarily healthy young animals are artificially damaged by diseases, usually with diseases that are foreign to the species and whose complex mechanisms of development and processes in the human organism can not be reproduced in an "animal model".
Even the (never appropriate) housing conditions in the lab mean tremendous stress for the animals. In addition, there are stress reactions caused by experimental manipulations, such as touching and painful procedures, which additionally falsify the results of the research.
The results of animal research speak for themselves. Ninety-five percent of the animals tested in clinical trials fail in clinical trials, that is, when they are first tested on humans, because of serious side effects or ineffectiveness. Of the 5% of approved drugs, one fifth is withdrawn after years of use because of serious complications (e.g., Vioxx, Lipobay, Acomplia, etc.). Due to adverse drug reactions, 58,000 people die each year in Germany and 210,000 have to be hospitalized. Drug side effects are now the third leading cause of death.
The animal experiment research has so far neither managed to find out the causes of "common diseases" such as cancer, Parkinson's disease, rheumatic diseases, depression, dementia, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, migraine, etc., nor to cure them reliably.
Vivisection, the slicing of animals alive, has a particular tradition in Cartesian thought in Europe. Rene Descartes coined the dualism of material body and immaterial soul in modern times; The body should work like a machine. Pain cries of the animals were for him nothing more than reactions of a soulless automaton. This dualism is fundamentally wrong, as proven by biological research. Emotions such as thoughts arise in the brain, messengers carry this information, endorphins cause happiness, etc. Nevertheless, this essentially Catholic thinking influenced western science. Is this also true for today's representatives of "necessary" animal experiments?
The researchers, who perform experiments on animals, in most cases postulate their alleged necessity and justify it with the - clearly refutable - benefit for humans.
It is difficult to say to what extent these researchers feel at all obliged to philosophically justified justification or are wasting their thoughts on the ethics of their actions.
How they handle the perception that the animals are obviously capable of suffering and that they intentionally harm them, I can not answer.
What is certain, however, is that animal experiment-based research is an enormous economic factor and that it promotes scholarly careers, especially as the German Research Foundation predominantly grants funds for animal research.
4) What exactly is meant by animal testing? When I drop acid in a rabbit's eyes to see how risky a cosmetic product is, it's obviously tormenting. It is also reprehensible to let rats search the exit in a labyrinth?
Animal experiments are defined in § 7 of the Animal Welfare Act as interventions or treatments for experimental or educational purposes on animals, if they may be associated with pain, suffering or harm to these animals and the genetic material of animals, if they suffer pain, suffering or damage to the animals mutagenic animals or their carrier animals may be linked.
The term of repudiation is a somewhat coquettish approach to the facts. Even if the mentioned, meaningless and inconclusive labyrinth experiments on rats seem relatively "harmless", the animals are exposed to considerable postural and experimental stress, and they too are killed after the experiments, just like almost all "experimental" animals.
However, there is certainly a graduation within the animal experiments, the so-called severity. The EU Directive provides that the level of suffering inflicted on an animal in an animal experiment is assigned one of four degrees of severity. This is assessed in the permit application for a planned animal experiment by the performing experimenter - and usually trivialized.
The prohibition of trials of the severity level "heavy" provided for in the EU directive is not implemented in Germany. That means trials of severity "heavy" like - just to name a few examples -
- Administering electric shocks
- Death by poisoning
- Irradiation with fatal consequences
- Death by rejection reaction of transplants
- Bone tumors and metastatic tumors
- Unstable fractures
- Septic multi-organ failure
may continue in Germany.
Together with two other animal rights organizations, our association has been running a campaign since February 2016 with the aim of enabling Germany to implement the EU's ban on animal testing of severity "difficult".
Today's medicine is based on the patient as an individual. For example, if someone suffers from a mental disorder such as borderline syndrome, genetic dispositions are as much a part of it as their biographical experiences and social environment. An ideal therapy model does not exist. the therapy has to be much more tailored to exactly these people. Contradicts the animal experiments, which emanate from an animal model?
The absurdity of animal experiments is particularly evident in the "animal models" used in the study of mental illness. In the field of depression research, for example, all methods have in common that by adding a physical stress in the animal in the most cruel way, a condition called by the experimenter depression is generated, which should then be "cured" by administering an antidepressant.
For example, in the "forced swim test" mice and rats must swim to exhaustion in a water vessel with smooth straight walls and are considered depressed when given up early.
In another experiment, mice are placed on a phased grid and if they no longer jump up in the event of electrical shock, but suffer defenseless, they are considered to be depressed.
In the tail suspension test, rats are hung on the tail by means of adhesive tape and if they no longer rear up but hang, they are considered to be depressed.
To create a so-called "depression", rats and mice are immersed in cold water, locked in tight plexiglass cylinders for six hours a day, starved, thirsty, tortured with strobe light, loud noises, sleep deprivation and extreme temperature changes.
Depressive episodes of human beings are rarely triggered by physical stress, but by psychological stress, in addition to the aforementioned dispositions. How do you want to model the depression-typical symptoms of inner emptiness, joylessness, guilt, disappointment and even suicidality in animals? Especially since linguistic communication is indispensable for the evaluation of the symptoms. There is definitely no "animal model" that can present mental illnesses such as borderline disorder, anxiety disorder, depression, schizophrenia etc. in their complexity and individuality.
6) People react to medications very differently. The human brain is a social organ and unimaginably complex. Each species is also a complex biological system, but another. In this respect, predictions from animal experiments can be derived?
No, this is impossible. Partly because of the aspects mentioned in point 5) results from animal experiments can not be transferred to humans.
The totally unsatisfactory results in the area of psychotropic drug research are even attributed to adherence to animal experiments by researchers who have so far relied on animal experiments, and there is a turning towards a so-called personalized medicine, which is based on characteristics of a person to be treated and not just supporting their disease diagnosis.
However, the brain researcher Wolf Singer believes that findings from basic research can be transferred to humans because the biological processes in animals and humans are extremely similar. What would they say to that??
Wolf Singer as well as all experimenters of the by definition meaningless and Purpose-free basic research the proof for his allegations guilty.
A follow-up of the results of 15 years of basic research in Bavaria showed that not a single result has led to a therapeutic procedure for humans.
In Germany alone, about 1.2 million of the total 2.8 million animals are tortured and killed each year.
Animal experiments are an integral part of veterinary medicine, and biologists and humanists are also faced with the question of participating. Is it for scientists a career brake to reject animal testing??
The founders of the association "Doctors Against Animal Experiments", Margot and Herbert Stiller, had to suffer from severe verbal attacks and even the assassination. Flat denigrations by animal experiment opponents by animal experimenters are still on the agenda today.
Already in the first semesters of medicine, veterinary medicine and biology studies, the students at many German universities are still "brought in line". So-called "animal-consuming" exercises are pending. Those who refuse to join do not get their ticket and can not continue their studies. Fear of bad grades, or even having to retire, forces many students to act against their conscience. Anyone who has made it through the course despite the desired conditioning of the next generation of scientists and still rejects animal experiments and wants to do research without them, must expect further restrictions in his future career.
However, new career opportunities are opening up in emerging animal-free research.
Wolf Singer justifies animal experiments with the alternative of experimenting on humans. But that would be ethically excluded. And tissue cultures were not suitable for exploring the function of organs. What do you answer this statement?
Precisely because of the lack of transferability of findings obtained in animal experiments to humans, this becomes an object of experiment with an unimaginable risk for life and limb!
The multitude of methods developed in the meantime of an animal-free research are well suited to the investigation of organ functions.
If one uses human cells and tissue, the z. B. incurred in operations as "waste", one has not the problem of transferability.
What good is it to gain insight into organ functions if they are organs of the wrong species??
The abolition of animal testing as a not only profoundly unethical, but also totally inappropriate concept of biomedical research is not only a contribution to animal welfare, but ultimately a contribution to improving the safety and efficacy of medicines and thus protecting patients.
What would be the alternative to animal testing?
Despite very little financial support and cumbersome long-time approval procedures, a variety of animal-free research methods could be developed.
This includes
- Cell cultures with human cells
- Research on induced pluripotent cells-
- Biochips (microorganoids), in which in a small space few living human cells are applied, which map and simulate the function of organs in each organotypical three-dimensional arrangement
- Human blood cells and antibodies from bacterial phage
- Chromatographic methods
- Computer models (QSAR) that are used to calculate their probable effect based on the molecular structure of a substance
- Imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance tomography
- Simulators for practicing surgical procedures
- microdosing
- Epidemiological studies
- Clinical studies based on careful scientific informed observation of patients under therapy by their treating physicians. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)