The April 28 Daily Bruin editorial, “Animal testing
necessary for some research,” alludes to new technology that
may eventually replace animal testing. In her April 30 letter,
“Animal testing not “˜necessary evil,'”
Christina Johnson argues that activists need to protest to bring
about this change more rapidly. This is a misguided and unrealistic
goal.
Of course the scientific community should always strive to
improve animal testing methods by reducing the number of animals
used and the animals’ pain and discomfort. And there should
be constant pressure for the enforcement of humane treatment
standards and the improvement of those standards. But is the
complete elimination of all animal testing in the near future a
realistic goal? That is, will we soon develop entirely viable
alternatives?
We must first understand that, at present, some research
questions can only be addressed by testing on whole, living
animals. This is because of the way complex systems work. Take, for
example, obesity. Obesity is a serious medical problem that we are
still unable to treat reliably and effectively because it is very
complicated. Research has shown that, in both humans and other
animals, eating behavior and metabolism are regulated by an
intricate interplay between many different biological factors, such
as the gastrointestinal tract, the central nervous system, body
fat, and the endocrine system, not to mention psychological and
social influences. Not only does each one of these consist of a
complex and dynamic set of chemical mechanisms, but they all
interact with each other and the environment in diverse ways. So,
for a true understanding of what’s going on and how we can
manipulate things (say, to decrease body weight), we can’t
study each component in isolation.
Thus, vitro experiments, which use a small part of an animal in
an artificial context, are inadequate. Furthermore, we can’t
use human subjects, because it is often impossible to obtain the
proper level of control. Also, there are even more ethical concerns
with testing humans than with testing animals. In order to have any
hope of understanding and conquering a complex problem like
obesity, we must currently test on whole, live animals.
What new technology will come along to make such testing
obsolete? Perhaps we could clone animals from scratch, but that
would present us with the same ethical problems. One future
alternative that is sometimes pointed to is computer modeling, in
which we could use computer programs to simulate animals’
reactions to treatments. As far as I can tell, this is the only
potential alternative that could fulfill all research needs. This
may “one day” be possible, but it is a long way
off.
As demonstrated by the example of biological causes of obesity,
the systems at work inside of us and other animals are enormously
complicated. In fact, the complete biological system of any
organism is so vastly complex that we have barely begun to
understand the unified mechanisms at work in even the simplest of
animals.
To have a truly accurate computer simulation of an animal would
require modeling every atom of every molecule of every cell, not to
mention how they all interact with each other. Needless to say, we
will not have the depth of biological understanding necessary for
this for quite some time, regardless of technological innovations.
And gaining that understanding will only come as a result of much
more animal testing. Protesting to end animal testing entirely will
not help accumulate this information any quicker.
What’s more, if we do create an anatomically accurate
digital replica of an animal, complete with firing neurons,
wouldn’t testing that replica put us in the same ethical
quandary we were trying to escape?
Protesting for progress on viable alternatives to animal testing
while remaining blind to the reality of those alternatives is not
productive.
Assuming that curing serious diseases in both humans and other
animals is an important goal that we should continue to pursue,
there is no way animal testing will be completely eliminated within
our lifetime. No amount of protesting can change that. Thus,
activists should adopt a more informed and realistic perspective,
focusing on the improvement of methods and enforcement of
standards, rather than advocating the impossible.
Finley is a fifth-year cognitive science student.