I am concerned by the misconception that most medical advances are due to animal testing. If you read up, you'll find that many modern medicines were discovered through sheer serendipity, and were only confirmed with animal testing to rule out any potential side-effects that would result in big, nasty lawsuits for pharmeceutical companies. Animal testing advocates fly the flag of being the cornerstone of medical progress, but many medicines that were perfectly safe for humans in clinical tests and other forms of testing were delayed in reaching the market because they had unforseen reactions in animals. Did you know that Penicillin's life-saving powers were put on hold for years because of its fatal effects in some animal species?
While physiologically, all animals are remarkably similar, biochemically, EVERYONE is different - not just by species, but on a person to person basis. A drug that could save one man's life could kill another in a violent allergic reaction. A drug that gives one person seizures could have not a single side effect on another. Thus it stands to reason that, since drug testing isn't even reliable from person to person, it certainly is not reliable from species to species. Thalidomide has NEVER caused birth defects in ANY other animal - including our closest relative, the chimpanzee. Yet countless babies were born with horrific birth defects because of this drug which passed safety testing with flying colors.
The more reading you do, the more sicked you'll be by the fact that this archaic and unscientific method has kept safe drugs off the market and put dangerous drugs on it. Add to that the high costs that pass to consumers, and the appaling corruption that often results in companies picking and choosing which species or results they want to rush a drug to market, and it is frankly a mircale that we have as many useful drugs as we do. Forget the "poor, tortured animals" - animal testing is harming humans and scientific progress even more! While animal testing often has a accuracy of only a little better than 50%, human cell cultures, computer models, and other newer but dramatically underfunded methods have accuracy ratings of well over 80%. The sad mix of corruption and traditionalist thinking in the medical field has hindered our progress in medicine greatly, the resulting loss of human and animal life is a tradgedy we should all be raging against.
THAT SAID - I am *not* some kind of PETA freak who thinks that killing a single dog to cure AIDs wouldn't be worth it or something of the like. Until proper funding is allocated to more accurate methods of testing, I'd rather have animal testing than nothing. However, I think that collectively, we need to start making our voices be heard about the human issue of animal testing, because we could kill two birds with one stone - eliminating an outdated, inefficient practice, and stopping a whole lot of senseless human and animal deaths.
