Strange Quarks

I attended an event organised by South Aussies for Animals today, titled “How to Make Drugs: new models of humane research” which showed a recently created documentary called “How to Make Drugs and Feel Great about Everything” (US) and followed this by a number of speakers from the NSW Animal Justice Party (AJP), SA Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), and Animal-free Science Advocacy (AFSA).

The basic thesis of How to Make Drugs and Feel Great about Everything was that animal models are unethical and ineffective, noting that 95% of drugs that pass animal testing fail at human clinical trial. Numerous people in the medical research and regulatory areas in the US were interviewed.

One of the people interviewed likened this to an aeroplane company saying their planes would crash 95% of the time, then continuing to spend the same amount of money on the same methods (of management, design, construction).

While I had seen that statistic, I was not aware that adverse drug reactions are the fourth most common cause of deaths in US. I don’t know how that translates to Australia.

On the other hand, it was pointed out that there are very likely drugs that are safe for people but that fail in animal testing so don’t get through to human trials. For example, if animal testing had been the gate for aspirin, it may never have seen the light of day (and for example, aspirin is toxic to dogs).

As one of those interviewed said: we keep wasting time on the wrong models, and while certain cancers in mice, for example, have been cured many times over, we we have no cure for pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, traumatic head injury, stroke in humans, just non-human animals. Another remarked that a problem with fundraising events like running for cancer cure is that it not always clear what the funds raised go towards or whether it’s effective.

Put plainly, billions of dollars spent on animal research is simply wasted because we are different enough from the animal “models” that it matters. The local speaker from SAHMRI later reinforced this by saying that nowhere is this more true than in brain research.

We have already seen a move away from animal testing of cosmetics, shampoo, soap etc.

There are alternatives for medical and drug testing too: organ on a chip, 3D bio-printing of organs based on an individual’s cells (for drug/toxin/disease testing and potentially transplants), and in silico methods such as simulation and machine learning.

Medicine is moving towards an era of personalised medicine, in ways other than bio-printing. Zarina Greenberg from SAHMRI talked about the ability of researchers to now take normal cells, such as skin cells, and to coax them into becoming stem cells (from which they arose) again that can then be differentiated into liver, lung, brain etc cells. For people with particular cancers, these cells can be used to understand personal disease trajectory and potential treatments.

Emma Hurst, from the NSW AJP talked about how she introduced a bill into the NSW parliament to have a right-to-release for animals used in medical experimentation and in particular for dogs and cats to be re-homed. This had multi-partisan support. The bill additionally capped use in animal research before release to 3 years. AJP also introduced (and had approved) a bill to outlaw smoking and forced swim tests which experts giving advice during the creation of the bill declared to be unethical and unscientific. Freedom of information regarding secrecy surrounding primate testing is next.

Rachel Smith of Animal-free Science Advocacy talked about work to review, update and strengthen the 3 Rs framework (replace, reduce, refine) including the addition of rehoming/rehabilitation (after use in research), reproducibility (consistent, repeatable results), and relevance (to human health).

As a former animal model researcher said at the end of the documentary, we should not break the principle of non maleficence, first do no harm, i.e. do not harm innocent beings including non-human animals.