THE MYTHS OF ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION
Bernhard Rambeck, MDMyth 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / Intro / Next Page
Seventh myth: "Animal experiments cause no damage to man"
Medical research and science based on animal experimentation play an essential role in the problem of today's medicine, in that it is in every respect undergoing one of the worst crises in its history. We have medicine producing experimentally developed super-achievements but which is not affordable for most patients any more. We have drugs which can, in animal models, eliminate various intentionally produced defects; but most of these drugs cannot cure the patients - or they definitely harm them - because a chemically or operatively induced disturbance is quite different from a human disease, which may be induced by psychosomatic interactions and caused by multiple factors. Apart from this, an ailing human being, in all his individuality and complexity, nearly always reacts quite differently from a healthy animal.
The absolute helplessness of today's medicine in face ofthe shocking cancer mortality rate; its continuing powerlessness in respect of cardiovascular diseases; its distressing failure in the area of chronic illnesses, from arthritis through allergies, asthma, auto-immune diseases, multiple sclerosis and up to diseases of the gastrointestinal tract and the nervous system - all this is no accidental event, nor is it a particular curse of fate. Here, the logical consequences of a one-sided orientation on a wrong-model system are apparent - a model system which has been dev~oped and tested on the basis of animal experiments but which can have only minor importance for man.
It sounds paradoxical, but animal experiments stabilise today's illnesses, because the hope of finding drugs by animal testing destroys the motivation for self-initiative and for a basic change in our way of life. As long as we hold on to the hope of new drugs against cancer, cardiovascular diseases and so on, not only we ourselves, but also our health systems, are inadequately motivated to come to terms with the causes (such as smoking, alcohol, wrong nutrition and stress) of these illnesses.
Myth 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / Intro