Hell begins", said Gian-Carlo Menotti, "on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do . . . " For me, the concept of hell lies in two words: "Too late!"
Heart Research on Animals: A Critique of Animal Models of Cardiovascular Disease by Brandon Reines, a book of science, compassion and insight, is timely. It has the sound of a ringing alarm clock. In the United States, approximately 60 million animals are used annually for medical research. The author addresses this difficult subject in a reasoned, calm manner. Doubting Thomases may examine the evidence, and if they are still in doubt, they should keep an open mind, not rejecting without proof.
Vivisection is employed in medical research for a variety of justifications, including the following:
1. Humans are superior and all other living creatures are inferior, existing mainly to serve our needs and support our ambitions. Animals have no independent rights even to their own lives. FALSE.
2. Clinical research involving humans is largely inaccurate and therefor has no scientific merit. FALSE.
3. The current state of medical knowledge and future advances would not be possible without animal experiments. FALSE.
4. Animal models simulate the human condition and, therefor, vivisection is the way to find solutions to our ailments. FALSE.
The supposed superiority of humankind is an elitist egotism; an arrogant reason for wrong-doing. It is based on a distorted view of physiology, anthropology, evolution and ontology. A narrow, dogmatic interpretation of religion helped perpetuate this belief, thanks to religious doctrines which have come to transcend and de-emphasize the pure religious experience. Along the path of history, very few have served humanity with the devotion and excellence of Albert Schweitzer. He said: "The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret. It has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics take root, can only attain breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind."
Human chauvinism has been fostered by many. In this regard Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton deserve the lion's share of criticism. Francis Bacon, considered the father of the empirical method of science, sought knowledge so that humans could establish command over nature, and "torture nature's secrets from her." His own life was a series of conflicts. He held several public offices, but spent his final years in seclusion after charges of bribery and misconduct in office were brought against him. The "Baconian spirit" was transmitted to Rene Descartes, a mathematician and a founder of modern Western philosophy. He espoused the dualist philosophy of mind and separated mind-body-nature. Living bodies, in his opinion, are working machines. He defended vivisection and believed animals do not suffer, considering their cries meaningless. During his time, it was common for scientist to nail animals onto boards, cutting them alive to observe the circulation of blood, which was still a hotly-debated issue in the seventeenth century despite the fact that the blood's circulation had been demonstrated centuries earlier, as I will discuss later.
Isaac Newton coordinated and amplified upon the theories of his predecessors. His mechanistic view of the universe remained unchallenged until modern physics proved several limitations and errors in his theories. Animals are not mere objects; maltreated, they suffer; loved, they appreciate and enjoy. Tom Regan, a philosophy professor at North Carolina State University, has lucidly articulated The Case for Animal Rights, a recently published, original and powerful book. The complexity of animal awareness is discussed at length. Animals have keen perception; can initiate action, not merely react; are able to remember; have expectations and a sense of their own future. They are not only conscious, but self-conscious as well. They have emotions, including fear, hatred, and the capacity to express pleasure and pain. Tom Regan explains that the case against the use of animals for research should be based not only on what harm it does to human character and spirituality, but also on its independent merit as a "direct moral concern", a "direct duty". I wholeheartedly concur.
The argument that research involving human subjects is unethical and inaccurate is misleading. On the surface it has the cloak of morality and concern; at its depth, ignorance and naivity. Clinical studies are the legitimate cornerstone for understanding and treating human illness, as Mr. Reines so ably demonstrates in this book.
The claim that we owe most of our advances in medicine to animal research &127is simply untrue. Mr. Reines gives due attention to these facts in a skillful and scholarly manner. My comments here are meant to amplify.
We did not discover through vivisection the inner chambers of the heart and the flow of warm blood in our veins and arteries. The Ebers Papyrus (1550 B.C.) includes a surprisingly accurate description of the circulatory system, depicting the existence of blood vessels through the entire body and the heart functioning as the center of the blood supply. In 1240 A.D. Ibn Al Nafis discovered the pulmonary circulation. He was director of the Nasiri Hospital in Cairo, and his discoveries were made on cadavers obtained from cemeteries in Cairo and Damascus. He proved that the blood circulates from the right side of the heart to the lungs, where it was aerated before reaching the left side of the heart. Thus, Galen's theory that the blood flows from the right side of the body to the left through an opening in the intervening septum was finally laid to rest. Galen, the 2nd century A.D. physician, is considered the father of experimental physiology. His erroneous conclusions, which misled the Western world for 11 centuries, were based on animal research. Imagine the many millions who have suffered or died as a result of treatment based on false premises, as well as the animals, forced as they were to suffer the tortures of the damned before perishing in vain.
The pioneering work of Ibn Al Nafis went largely unheeded, until Andre Cournand gave him credit in the book Circulation of Blood - Men and Ideas,published in 1964. Cournand shared the Nobel prize in Physiology-Medicine in 1956 with Richards and Forssmann for their work on heart disease.
William Harvey (1578-1657) returned to England after studying medicine at the University of Padua in Italy, and completed Ibn Al Nafis' work on the circulation of the blood. His findings stemmed from his observations of live human beings, including himself, and on cadaver dissection.
Modern cardiology and cardiac surgery would not be possible without cardiac catherization. This procedure was first performed by Forssmann in Germany. Utilizing his forearm, he inserted a catheter into a vein and advanced its tip, under fluoroscopy, into his own right atrium. This momentous event signaled a new era.
In coronary bypass surgery, the patient's own veins are utilized in the vast majority of cases. For the most part, this relatively new operation relieves the symptoms of the disease, prolonging the lives of patients with severe narrowing of the left main coronary artery and triple vessel disease. Animal research was not responsible for this development. It came as a natural extension of Kunlun's work on peripheral vessels. In 1961, in France, Kunlun first used a portion of a person's own vein to replace obstructed arterial segments. This gave birth to arterial bypass surgery for different parts of the body, the heart included.
By contrast, Beck of Ohio and Vineberg of Canada took their theories to the animal laboratory in search of a surgical answer to the complications of coronary artery disease. Each devised more than one procedure, envisioning success from their findings in animals. Not long after, their recommended operations were performed on thousands of patients. And what were the results? To say the least; unworthy. To put it bluntly; a fiasco, a total failure. I am a witness to this event and the least I can do is speak out: ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION INEVITABLY LEADS TO HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION. That is the final verdict, sad as it is. And the toll mounts on both sides.
Brandon Reines disusses most of the breakthroughs in cardiovascular research: blood transfusion, asepsis, modern endotracheal anesthesia, the various cardiac medications and many more. He correctly asserts that while these developments are now at our disposal, virtually none of them were developed as a result of animal research.
While all creatures share with us the divine gift of life and have common characteristics, each has its unique qualities. Information gathered from one species won't necessarily break the code of the mystery of another. For example, dogs have been extensively used in heart research, but their coronary arteries differ from those of humans - they have smaller connections with one another and the left coronary artery dominates, while in humans the right does so. In addition, the conduction system has a different pattern of blood supply, and, consequently, researchers have had difficulty producing ischemic heart block in dogs, which occurs frequently in humans. The blood coagulation mechanism is unlike ours, therefor, using dogs to test prosthetic devices and valves is unreliable. A dog's reaction to shock is also very different from that of humans. After massive blood loss a dog's intestines are congested, while in the human we see pallor and ischemia. No wonder conclusions from dog experiments extrapolated to human beings frequently bring about catastrophic results and regrettable failures, which occurred with the earlier models of heart valves and in the first several years of using the heart-lung machine.
The rat is not a suitable model for studying essential hypertension, and the rabbit is ineffective in atherosclerosis research. Imagine the loss incurred, not only to the dog, the rat and the rabbit, but to the human as well. In the field of transplantation, live animal tissues and organs transplanted to human recipients have been deadly. In 1667 Jean Dennis, one of the physicians to Louis XIV, transfused animal blood to human beings. One of the recipients was a baron, who died as a result of the transfusion. In October of 1984 Leonard Bailey transplanted the live, beating heart of a baboon to 17-day old "Baby Fae". The unfortunate infant lived for several days, time enough for picture taking, television coverage, and newspaper and magazine interviews. The propaganda circus backfired when the infant finally succumbed to the inevitable. From Jean Dennis to Leonard Bailey all attempts along similar lines have failed. Animal transplants that have functioned on a long-term basis in human recipients such as pig heart valves and bovine arterial grafts have not been obtained from live animals. They were harvested after the death of the donor animal and treated with chemical agents to killl their unique antigenic properties. Without such preparation these grafts would be rejected. Animals do not have to be specifically sacrificed for this purpose.
Learning surgical techniques by practicing on live animals is unnecessary, imprudent, cruel and unjustifiable. It has never produced a great surgeon. Practice surgery on live animals has been illegal in Great Britain since 1876, yet there is no indication that British surgeons are in any way inferior to our own.
The eighteenth century poet, Alexander Pope, wrote: "The proper study of man is mankind." In Aristotle's opinion the poet has the advantage of expressing the universal, the specialist only the particular. In the final analysis, however, ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION INEVITABLY LEADS TO HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION.
In academic institutions, ascent on the academic ladder and promotions depend to a large extent on publication of scientific material ("Publish or perish"). A relatively easy way to produce publishable material is to design animal experiments. There are thousands and thousands of scientific journals, containing few articles of significant merit. Duplicative experiments are continually being performed by researchers. Conflict and confusion are commonplace. Continuing grants for animal research make such a pattern possible.
In the interest of fairness, I would venture to say that many members of our universities and scientific instiututions have elected to stay away from animal research, resorting to superior goals without inflicting pain and suffering on other creatures.
In conclusion:
1. Animals have rights, the most basic being their right to life.
2. The study of human beings is the only sure way to unveil the mystery of humankind,to find cures for human ailments, and to prevent suffering. Strict ethical standards, compassion and a "reverence for life" must guide every step of the road.
3. Advances in medical science did not primarily result from the practice of vivisection.
4. Animal models differ from their human counterparts. Conclusions drawn from animal research when applied to human beings are likely to delay progress, mislead, and do harm to the patient.
5. ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION INEVITABLY LEADS TO HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION.
Introduction by Prof. Brandon Reines
Published by the American Anti-Vivisection Society, Suite 204, Noble Plaza, 801 Old York Road, Jenkintown, P.A. 19046-1685, U.S.A., 1986.