If you live in the UK, simply type in your postcode at this link to ask your MP to sign EDM 278, for a science hearing to publicly prove animal experiments are failing the search for human treatments and cures.
HELP DISTRIBUTE OUR LEAFLETS: tailor made as an introduction for colleagues, friends and family, our leaflet explains why animal experiments must stop – and how scientists outside the vested interests recognise the failure of animal models, writing about this often and openly in the scientific literature. Please help distribute our leaflets by ordering a free pack at our contact page.
To see a PDF of the leaflet please visit this link.
Statistics are tools that biological science uses to evaluate whether a method is predictive. For example, when we visit our doctor, we reasonably expect the results from our blood test, x-ray or urine analysis to be in the range of 90% accurate in order to diagnose and treat any illness we may have. This is reinforced by standards required by medical practise, where laboratory tests are accepted as predictive – and protective of the safety of humans – only if they are reliable in the region of at least 95%.
What defines prediction? In a scientific context, a prediction is a rigorous (often quantative) statement forecasting what will happen under specific conditions. For more on this please click here. In science, guessing correctly or finding correlations are not the same as predicting the answer.
There have been many studies which evaluate the ability of animal models to predict for humans, such as the study by Lumley and Walker: Animal Toxicity Studies: Their relevance for Man: Quay 1990 p73. This took six medicines and retrospectively tested them on animals. How valuable was the method at predicting for humans? In this study animals predicted correctly for humans only 31% of the time. This percentage would be around the same for random guessing - failing to match the standards required and accepted for prediction in medical practise, and entirely unacceptable for human patients who need help now.
It is important to appreciate that the above study is one of many in the scientific literature and all conclude with a predictive value in the same range of 31%. It will be no surprise, therefore, to learn that the National Institute of Cancer has gone on record saying we have lost cures for cancer because of studies in rodents.
It is also important to realise that the above study is not anecdotal: there are no studies in the scientific literature that show evidence to the contrary, that animals have a predictive value beyond guesswork - either in medicine testing or disease research.
Sometimes you do not need statistics to work out the value of a testing method:
Around 100 vaccines have been shown to have protected monkeys from HIV or SIV or SHIV. Each and every one of these has failed to protect humans from HIV. Thousands of neuroprotectant medicines have been tested in animals and shown to be effective. NONE have been effective in humans.
Please visit this leaflet (suitable as a print out) that summarises many further such examples and the reasons why clinical translation from animals to humans fails.
GRAPHS
The scientific literature has also published many graphs which - again - consistently demonstrate no correlation between a medicine's ability to reach its target in primates, rodents, dogs or humans. Watch this science lecture for more details; read one of many examples of senior researchers who confirm these statistics
Compare all of the above with the laboratory animal model community's literature, illustrated here by Gad S.C's Animal Models in Toxicology Second Edition 2007:
Biomedical sciences use of animals as models (is to) help understand and predict responses in humans, in toxicology and pharmacology...by and large animals have worked exceptionally well as predictive models for humans...Animals have been used as models for centuries to predict what chemicals and environmental factors would do to humans....The use of animals as predictors of ill effects has grown since that time...if we correctly identify toxic agents (using animals and other predictive model systems) in advance of a product or agent being introduced into the market place or environment, generally it will not be introduced...
Ironically, even the laboratory animal model community has difficulty agreeing with its own text book, above, as demonstrated by its Handbook of Laboratory Animal Science Volume II Animal Models 1994:
It is impossible to give reliable general rules for the validity of extrapolation from one species to another. This…can often only be verified after the first trials in the target species (humans)…Extrapolation from animal models…will always remain a matter of hindsight….[( Salén 1994) p6]
Please help FLOE achieve its aims: to free human medicine from the damaging grip of misapplied veterinary principles and help ensure the unobstructed advance of personalised medicine:
For more on FLOE's illustration of science please visit AFMA/EFMA