Can Medical Research on Animals be Justified?

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U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt stated in 2006 that the Food and Drug Administration must come to grips with an appalling statistic: Nine out of 10 drugs tested safe and effective on animals fail when they get to human trials. Adverse reactions to prescription drugs successfully tested on animals kill 100,000 people in the U.S. every year, making it one of our country’s leading causes of death.

Examples of drugs that have harmed people include estrogen replacement therapy, which was lauded as a major advancement in treating bone loss and other menopause symptoms, but was later found to increase the risk of breast cancer. The use of Vioxx resulted in more than 140,000 deaths worldwide even though animal studies had shown it to be safe and, in some studies, even heart-protective in mice, rats and monkeys. Many other “approved” drugs such as Phenactin, E-Ferol, Oraflex, Zomax, Suprol, and Selacryn have been pulled from the market after killing or harming thousands of people.

Transgenic transplants were also hailed as a boon to humans, but animal organs have never proven to be a viable alternative to human organ transplants. The insertion of human genes into pig hearts, livers and kidneys does not change the fact that animal-to-human transplants, and even animal-to-animal transplants, have never worked. For years, experimenters have been ripping the hearts from pigs and grafting them into baboons and other animals. The organ is rejected so quickly that, in many cases, even as the animal lies on the operating table, the heart turns black and stops beating. If the baboon lives for two hours, the procedure is considered a "success."