Does animal research contribute to human medicine?

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 27 Feb 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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An Education and Debate discussion paper published in the BMJ, in this week's themed issue, 'If it doesn't work, stop it?' (28th February, 2004) http://www.bmj.com identifies a lack of systematic evidence to support the use of animal research. In their paper, 'Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans?

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/328/7438/514

authors, Dr. Pound and Professors Ebrahim, Sandercock, Bracken, and Roberts call for a complete evaluation of animal research to determine its value in the development of human treatments.

The paper concludes by calling for an international research programme, on the scale of the Cochrane Collaboration, to discover whether existing animal data can be generalized to human medicine.

In the interests of patient and research volunteer safety the authors advise a moratorium on all further animal research until such a programme has been completed.

Professor Ian Roberts, Clinical Co-ordinator of the MRC CRASH Trial and corresponding author of the paper said 'New research, whether in animals or humans, should only becarried out after a proper systematic review of the existing research.'

He went on to say 'We are asking only that the same standards that are applied in human research are applied to animal research. We would not tolerate haphazard, biased reviews of human research so why should we tolerate this for animal research?'

Animal research is permissible in our society providing it is of benefit to humans but this paper demonstrates that there is currently insufficient systematic evidence to uphold the concept that animal research generalizes to clinical medicine.

'Comparing results from systematic reviews of animal and human research will allow scientists and more importantly the public to assess the contribution of animal research to improving human health.' explained Professor Roberts.

'There is every reason why the public should be sceptical about scientists' claims that animal research benefits human health', he added.

The paper reveals that numerous biases, variables and subtleties in animal research serve to confound the translational process (extrapolating animal data to humans).

The authors discovered that methods used in human research to assess for quality, such as systematic reviews, are not used consistently in animal research.

It was also found that the methods used in the animal studies that the paper looked at were methodologically weak.

The only justification for animal research is to inform clinical research in the 'pre-clinical' phase but cases were found where animal studies were performed simultaneously to, or even after the human trials.

They found that human studies went ahead regardless, even though the animal data had shown the experiments to be either harmful or ineffective in the animals, meaning that the researchers either ignored the animal data or decided it was unreliable.

Some clinical trials progressed even though the methodological soundness of the animal studies was flawed.

These irregularities suggest that the decisions to proceed with human trials were unethical, defective and a waste of research funding.

NOTES FOR EDITORS

The corresponding author is available for interview. Please contact:

Professor Ian Roberts
Clinical Co-ordinator MRC CRASH Trial
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
49-51 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3DP
Phone: 020 7958 8128
Fax: 0207 299 4663
Email: ian.roberts@lshtm.ac.uk
Web: www.crash.lshtm.ac.uk

This Press Release was sent to you by the Society for Accountability of Animal Studies in Biomedical Research & Education (S-A-B-R-E.org)

S-A-B-R-E was formed by researchers, health policy makers and patients to call for the accountability of animal research in its relationship to clinical medicine. Contact details:

PO BOX 18653,Hampstead
LONDON NW3 4DG
Tel: 020 7722 9394
Fax: 020 7813 3670
Email: enquiries@S-A-B-R-E.org
Web: www.S-A-B-R-E.org