A recent review of four degenerative neurological diseases: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and Huntington’s chorea revealed that animal models have contributed little if any relevant information. The rat model of Alzheimer’s disease differs from that of the human disease in that the rats do not exhibit loss of appetite, motor coordination, or develop amyloid neural triangles, a common characteristic of Alzheimer’s. Similarly, the animal model of Huntington’s chorea fails to reproduce any of the three classical symptoms: involuntary movements, psychological disturbances, and dementia.

Many clinical investigators also recognize the value of autopsies and biopsies. Autopsies have been crucial to our understanding of diseases such as hearty diseases, appendicitis, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. Although autopsies are limited to the lethal stage of a diseases, diagnostic needle and endoscopic biopsies often permit the safe extraction of human tissue from living patients. Which can then be tested on, because it is human tissue the data will prove to be much more compliant with human diseases.

Key discoveries in immunology, anesthesiology, first aid, alcoholism, and psychopharmacology were also based primarily on clinical research. The main source of medical knowledge has always been the direct study and close monitoring of human patients with human diseases. Cardiologist Dean Ornish has proved though patient studies that a low fat vegetarian diet, regular exercise, smoking cessation, and stress management can reserve heart diseases, all of which when tested on animals proved inconclusive. Henry Heimlich relied on patient studies to develop the Heimlich maneuver, the Heimlich operation, and the Heimlich chest drainage valve. His current clinical research has shown malariotherapy to be a promising treatment for AIDS.

The unreliability of vivisection is due mostly to misleading information that has delayed necessary further research. Aside from the undeniable biochemical differences of animals and humans, the highly unnatural environment of the laboratory invariably stresses the animals which effects the entire organism by altering pulse, blood pressure, hormone levels, immunological activities and many other functions. In 1963 prospective and retrospective studies of human patients had already shown a strong link between cigarette smoke and lung cancer. However, almost all experiments to produce lung cancer in animals using cigarette smoke have failed. At the time, a leading cancer animal researcher, Clarence Little wrote: “The failure of many investigators to induce experimental cancers, except in a handful of cases, during fifty years of trying, casts serious doubt on the validity of the cigarette-lung cancer theory.” Due to misleading animal experimentation, warnings and further research were delayed for years while thousands died and thousands more commenced a seemingly unhazardous activity. Animal studies failed to demonstrate that asbestos caused cancer, but human clinical investigation had already strongly indicated that it did. Crucial genetic, molecular, and immunological differences between humans and other animals prevented animal models from serving as an effective means by which to seek a cure for cancer. The weight adjusted daily gross of saccharin given to rats in animal tests of saccharin’s carcinogenicity was equivalent to a human consuming about 1,000 cans of saccharin containing soda. Regardless of a compounds actual carcinogenicity at a typical human exposure levels, such massive dosing itself could cause cancer. The transition of the research into human cures was further impeded by the observation that saccharin induced bladder cancers occurred only in male rats. It was later found that male rats contain a protein in greater quantities than female rats and lacking in humans that interacts with saccharin to cause cancer. As a res

Some topics in this essay:
Clarence Little, Nation Cancer, AIDS Unknown, Department Agriculture, Institute NCI, Accounting Office, , Animal Research, Medical Research, Paul Beeson, animal experimentation, human diseases, clinical research, clinical observation, animal models, human disease, tissue culture, human tissue, vivisection research, artificially induced, humans taking drug, tissue culture methods, cell tissue culture, animal experimentation research, alternatives animal experimentation,