Freethought & Rationalism Archive

free12thinker · 04-13-2002, 03:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Dr. Evil:


Then you've never taken any medication prescribed by a physician since ALL prescribed meds are tested for toxicity in animals and given an LD50 rating, which is the dose of a specific medication that caused death in 50% of the animals it was tested on.

I hope you don't get sick soon and need antibiotics!

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: Dr. Evil ]

There are thousands of people in the US who refuse to use antibiotics (though not always for this reason), and although I can't swear that my parnts didn't give me antibiotics, I have not used any since my 17th Birthday, when I became a vegetarian. I have not used any, and I have been sick a few times (who hasn't been right?), but I simply don't see the fairness in trading their lives for ours. There have been proven studies to show that antibiotics can be tested in other ways, and we should be exploring those ways.

There are more vegetarians in the world than meat eaters (true fact) and there are far less civilized countries that understand the roles of animals and people. America is not one of those countries. America is selfish. America is cocky and America is the dominant country of the world. We could care less about anyone but ourselves.

Dr. Evil · 04-13-2002, 04:19 PM

Quote:

There have been proven studies to show that antibiotics can be tested in other ways, and we should be exploring those ways.

Care to elaborate?

droolian · 04-13-2002, 09:51 PM

More on antibiotics...

Quote:

Beacon Journal 04-01-2002

Cost of overuse

The cost of doing nothing about the overuse of antibiotics is high. Consider:

• Resistant bacterial infections cost the United States about $4 billion a year, according to the nonprofit organization Keep Antibiotics Working.
• The FDA estimates that 5,000 people per year have had their illnesses prolonged because of the use of an antibiotic in poultry flocks.
• One in every six cases of campylobacter infection – the most common cause of food poisoning -- is resistant to fluoroquinolones, the class of drugs most frequently prescribed for food-borne infection. Before fluoroquinolone was approved for use in poultry, there was virtually no resistance.
• One in every three cases of a strain of the salmonella bacteria is resistant to antibiotics.
• Nearly all strains of staphylococcus infections in the United States are resistant to penicillin and some are resistant even to newer drugs.

<a href="http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/living/health/2975789.htm" target="_blank">http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/living/health/2975789.htm</a>

Quote:

Institute of Medicine
"An increasingly important contributor to the emergence of microbial threats to health is drug [antibiotic] resistance. Microbes that once were easily controlled by antimicrobial drugs are, more and more often, causing infections that no longer respond to treatment with these drugs."[2,pg.92]
"Treating resistant infections requires the use of more expensive or more toxic alternative drugs and longer hospital stays; in addition, it frequently means a higher risk of death for the patient
harboring a resistant pathogen. Estimates of the cost of antibiotic resistance in the United States annually range as high as $30 billion. Even with the continuing development of new drugs, resistance to antibiotics is an increasingly important problem with certain bacterial pathogens."[2,pg.93]

Quote:

Throughout the 1990s, awareness of this problem has been growing.

In May 1998, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE that a strain of salmonella bacteria had emerged in the U.S. in the last 5 years which is resistant to 5 different antibiotics.[3] Called typhimurium DT 104, this rapidly-emerging bacterium is responsible for an estimated 68,000 to 340,000 illnesses each year in the U.S. The proportion of salmonella infections caused by typhimurium DT 104 increased 30-fold in the U.S. between 1980 and 1996.

The Centers for Disease Control blamed the rapid emergence of this infectious agent on the use of antibiotics in livestock, summarizing its recommendations this way: "More prudent use of antimicrobial agents [antibiotics] in farm animals and more effective disease prevention on farms are necessary to reduce the dissemination of multi-drug-resistant typhimurium DT 104
and to slow the emergence of resistance to additional agents in this and other strains of salmonella."[3]

<a href="http://199.45.69.176/tony/Corner/F/0257.html" target="_blank">http://199.45.69.176/tony/Corner/F/0257.html</a>

Dr. Evil · 04-14-2002, 09:41 AM

Whats ironic is that microbial resistance has been known almost as long as modern antibiotics (such as penicillin) have been in use.

From PNAS, Volume 31, Issue 1 (Jan. 15, 1945, 16-24)

Quote:

Production of Staphylococcus Strains Resistant to Various Concentrations of Penicillin

M. Demerec

It is a well established fact that strains of bacteria resistant to various sulfa drugs, as well as strains resistant to penicillin, may readily be obtained by growing bacteria on media containing increasingly higher concentrations of the respective chemicals.

It is only now, 45 years after the fact, that we are beginning to take precautions to prevent our arsenal of antibiotics from becoming useless.

[ April 14, 2002: Message edited by: Dr. Evil ]

Yellow3 · 04-14-2002, 11:16 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Dr. Evil:


Then you've never taken any medication prescribed by a physician since ALL prescribed meds are tested for toxicity in animals and given an LD50 rating, which is the dose of a specific medication that caused death in 50% of the animals it was tested on.

I hope you don't get sick soon and need antibiotics!

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: Dr. Evil ]

Not only antibiotics recieve animal testing. As far as I know, all new medical treatment procedures (ranging from the exotic as gene therapy to the more routine, such as new follow-up treatments to surgery) MUST pass through animal testing before they can move to human trials. All drugs, and all laboratory chemicals are or have been tested for their LD50. Look up the Merck listings for just about any substance used in the kitchen, lab, or anywhere else and you'll probably find how much you have to feed to rats so that 50% of them will die. Even the Ames altered carcinogen test is not cruelty-free; because they recently realized that bacteria are not true analogues to vertebrates because of their lack of a liver to detoxify carcinogens, liver extract is routinely used on the bacterial plates to simulate the presence of this organ when checking mutation rates. You can probably guess where it comes from.

- Jen

hal9000 · 04-16-2002, 03:12 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by David Payne:
As I thought, no vegetarian fundamentalists have been able to come up with a reasonable regime for achieving the desired result without resorting to some form of authoritarian social system to achieve their goals. MeBeMe gave it a go, but he was into killing those who would defy his rule as king. (I guess, I missed his reply and only got a few bits and pieces of what he said before he got banned for it.)
In the end it is impossible for those like PETA, or my personal favorites the ALF, (Animal Liberation Front) who espouse extreme solutions to ending the practice of eating meat, to articulate any meaningful way to get to that stage without resorting to some form of authoritarian social structure. You guys talk the talk, but you can�t walk the walk, without destroying democracy in the process. There are worse things than eating meat, and extremism in the name of anything is one of them. In this regard you are no different than the religious fundies who would kill us all to save us from our sins. Take a good look in the mirror, for you are them, with a different �Holy� agenda. So all your talk leaves you <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

[ April 11, 2002: Message edited by: David Payne ]

Nuff said.

droolian · 04-17-2002, 10:07 PM

Animal Testing—
Legal drugs kill more people than illegal drugs. 100,000 deaths each year from drugs tested on animals.

Quote:

Dr. Richard Klausner, National Cancer Institute;
“We have cured mice of cancer for decades—and it simply didn’t work in people.”

Johns Hopkins has a site on alternatives to animal testing.
<a href="http://caat.jhsph.edu/" target="_blank">http://caat.jhsph.edu/</a>

There’s also a book out called Sacred Cows & Golden Geese by C. Ray Creek, MD and Jean Swingle Creek, DVM.
<a href="http://www.curedisease.com/FAQ.html" target="_blank">http://www.curedisease.com/FAQ.html</a> This is an interesting FAQ that holds an alternate view on human harm due to animal research with the industry's own data.
Dr. Albert Sabin on Polio:

Quote:

Paralytic polio could be dealt with only by preventing the irreversible destruction of the large number of motor nerve cells, and the work on prevention was long delayed by the erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading experimental models of the disease in monkeys.

Alexander Fleming:

Quote:

Fleming might have thrown penicillin away had he done his initial tests on guinea pigs or hamsters, since it kills those species. Fleming later told his students:
“How fortunate we didn’t have these animal tests in the 1940s, for penicillin would probably never been granted a license, and possibly the whole field of antibiotics might never have been realized.”

Funny since we’re talking about antibiotics that the “inventor” of penicillin would say that.

Various quotes;

Quote:

•DR Selikoff: Does the animal model have any relevance to human disease? If not we’re wasting a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of good scientists, and a lot of good space at NIH… Dr Upholt: …I completely agree with Dr. Clayton that extrapolation is unscientific.” Coulston and Shubick (Eds) Human Epidemiology and Animal Laboratory Correlations in Chemical Carcinogenesis Ablex Pub 1980 p391-3

Dr Shubick summed up the meeting by saying, “the chief objective here is to keep us all employed and to make sure we do interesting experiments so we can keep coming back to nice places like this.” Coulston and Shubick (Eds) p309

“Attempts to obtain malignant tumors in monkeys failed, since primates turned out to be highly resistant to certain blastogenic agents, carcinogenic for other animals.” Beniashvili, Dzhemali Sh. Experimental Tumors In Monkeys CRC Press 1994

“Spontaneous tumors in monkeys are very rare…Many researchers believe that monkeys have an inherent specific resistance to malignant tumors. The low incidence of spontaneous tumors in monkeys has been associated with difficulties in experimental induction of tumors in these animals.” Beniashvili, Dzhemali Sh. Experimental Tumors In Monkeys CRC Press 1994 p161

“Thus unlike humans…in monkeys lung tumors are extremely rare.” Beniashvili, Dzhemali Sh. Experimental Tumors In Monkeys CRC Press 1994 p45

The cosmetics industry has nearly stopped animal testing.
<a href="http://caat.jhsph.edu/about-us/achievements.htm" target="_blank">http://caat.jhsph.edu/about-us/achievements.htm</a>

[ April 17, 2002: Message edited by: droolian ]

Dr. Evil · 04-18-2002, 04:17 PM

This is a list of alternative methods that I saw on one of the websites listed above:

Quote:

IN VITRO RESEARCH
EPIDEMIOLOGY
COMPUTER & MATHEMATICAL MODELING
GENETICS
CLINICAL RESEARCH
AUTOPSIES
POST-MARKETING SURVEILLANCE
TECHNOLOGY

In vitro research is a great first step in many scientific experiment because it allows the scientist to isolate a certain cell type and test the effects of a drug on that cell type. However, that is its downfall as well. A petri dish doesn't have a circulatory system, and does not allow you to test physiological effects on entire systems.

Epidemiology is also a valuable technique and should be used to follow the effects of placing a new drug on the market. Once again, it test for information after the fact and does NOT allow you to make any type of prediction on drug safety until the drug is out on the market.

Computer modeling is a great idea, but a computer model is only as good as the person that programs it, and also assumes that we know enough to accurately program it.

Genetics allows you to make certain predictions, however it is not absolute. If you have a gene that predisposes you towards certain types of cancer, it does not mean you will be afflicted with that disease, just that you could be.

Clinical research is already in use, however clinical trials occur after the drugs have been tested in animals. As you have pointed out, often the drug does not prove effective in humans. However, it is a better alternative than knocking off someones grandmother using an untested drug. Ooops, the computer model said it wouldn't kill her!

Autopsies and post-marketing evaluation fall into the same category as epidemiology, it is a usefull tool in evaluating the effects of a drug, however one again it is used to measure effects after the drug is being used in humans. It offers no predictive value before the drug is placed on the market.

Quote:

�Attempts to obtain malignant tumors in monkeys failed, since primates turned out to be highly resistant to certain blastogenic agents, carcinogenic for other animals.� Beniashvili, Dzhemali Sh. Experimental Tumors In Monkeys CRC Press 1994

�Spontaneous tumors in monkeys are very rare�Many researchers believe that monkeys have an inherent specific resistance to malignant tumors. The low incidence of spontaneous tumors in monkeys has been associated with difficulties in experimental induction of tumors in these animals.� Beniashvili, Dzhemali Sh. Experimental Tumors In Monkeys CRC Press 1994 p161

�Thus unlike humans�in monkeys lung tumors are extremely rare.� Beniashvili, Dzhemali Sh. Experimental Tumors In Monkeys CRC Press 1994 p45

This actually seems like a good reason to experiment on primates. One could reason that since there is a genetic similarity between humans and primates that discovering why primates are less susceptible to cancer could lead us to a cure in humans as well.

Quote:

Paralytic polio could be dealt with only by preventing the irreversible destruction of the large number of motor nerve cells, and the work on prevention was long delayed by the erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading experimental models of the disease in monkeys.

This quote shows the importance of picking the correct animal model in order to make an accurate prediction about a certain drug. For example, you wouldn't want to use a primate to study HIV since they don't seem to be negatively affected by this virus.

Also, <a href="http://www.bret.org.uk/nec.htm" target="_blank">this</a> website seems to contradict some of the information in the sites you posted, especially concerning the role of animal research in the development of the polio vaccine and diabetes research.

Here is a quote from Dr. Sabin concerning the use of animal research:

Quote:

Professor Sabin recently said
" My own experience of more than 60 years in biomedical research amply demonstrate that without the use of animals and human beings, it would have been impossible to acquire the important knowledge needed to prevent much suffering and premature death not only amongst humans but also amongst animals."

After Dr. Fleming's rabbit test, two other researchers proved that penecillin was an effective antimicrobial substance using the following technique:

Quote:

Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, searching for potential antibiotics at Oxford University in 1940, used the mouse protection test. This animal test was first described in 1911, was in routine use from 1927 and ultimately led to the introduction of sulphonamide drugs in the 1930s. In the test, Florey and Chain injected eight mice with a lethal suspension of bacteria, and four of these were also given penicillin. The fact that the four mice which received penicillin lived and all the rest died was definite proof that penicillin worked against serious bacterial infections. It was this test which set Florey, Chain, Heatley and others on the long road to purifying and mass producing penicillin.

In 1945, Alexander Fleming, Ernst Chain and Howard Florey received the Nobel Prize for the discovery and development of penicillin.

Seems like Chain and Florey picked the correct animal model and reaped the benefits!

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: Dr. Evil ]

droolian · 04-18-2002, 10:01 PM

Quote:

Dr.Evil:Clinical research is already in use, however clinical trials occur after the drugs have been tested in animals. As you have pointed out, often the drug does not prove effective in humans. However, it is a better alternative than knocking off someones grandmother using an untested drug. Ooops, the computer model said it wouldn't kill her!

100,000 humans and surely some of those are someone’s grandmother, perish per year due to animal experiments. Tested drugs kill that many people and that’s with very fast recalls. If these experiments were truly working shouldn’t we have it perfected by now? It is safer to take non-tested illegal drugs.

Quote:

In vitro research is a great first step in many scientific experiment because it allows the scientist to isolate a certain cell type and test the effects of a drug on that cell type. However, that is its downfall as well. A petri dish doesn't have a circulatory system, and does not allow you to test physiological effects on entire systems.

In vitro research doesn’t predict what happens to a living system, but since 100,000 humans yearly dying from drugs tested on animals prove that testing animals is even more inadequate. It is very good at predicting what will happen to the species tested, but doesn’t seem that much like science when applying it to humans. Ultimately all drugs are tested on humans.

Quote:

Scientific America, issue 0297: In a striking illustration of the inadequacy of animal research, scientists in the 1960s deduce from numerous animal experiments that inhaled tobacco smoke did not cause lung cancer (tar from the smoke painted on the skin of rodents did cause tumors to develop, but these results were deemed less relevant than the inhalation studies). For many years afterward, the tobacco lobby was able to use these studies to delay government warnings and to discourage physicians from intervening in their patients' smoking habits.
More: …In nearly all animal birth-defect tests, scientists are left scratching their heads as to whether humans are more like the animals who develop birth defects or like those who do not.

Rats, mice, and other animals synthesize nearly 100 times the human allowance on vitamin C.
$25 billion spent on animal research since 1971. Seems as if it worked, we’d have cancer cured.

Quote:

Dr. Ray Greek, author of Sacred Cows & Golden Geese-The Human Cost of Experiments on Animals: Defenders of animal research who insist that animal experiments have contributed to our understanding of CAD fail to note that animal experiments were designed to reproduce results obtained through human-based research.

Even then, the animal experiments failed to "validate" human research, primarily because nonhuman animals do not naturally develop CAD. Because CAD is a uniquely human disease, there is no "perfect" animal model that replicates it.

That has not stopped researchers from attempting to replicate CAD in an astounding number of animal species, ranging from rabbits, cats and dogs to kangaroos, sea lions pelicans, ducks and horses. All have failed. When researchers force the clogging of arteries in rabbits, the plaques do not ulcerate and break off as they do in humans. Rats and mice do not metabolize fats as humans do.

Quote:

Dr. Evil: This actually seems like a good reason to experiment on primates. One could reason that since there is a genetic similarity between humans and primates that discovering why primates are less susceptible to cancer could lead us to a cure in humans as well.

We’ve already attempted inducing cancer on them repeatedly.

Quote:

“Attempts to obtain malignant tumors in monkeys failed, since primates turned out to be highly resistant to certain blastogenic agents, carcinogenic for other animals.” Beniashvili, Dzhemali Sh. Experimental Tumors In Monkeys CRC Press 1994

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: droolian ]

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: droolian ]

Dr. Evil · 04-19-2002, 06:36 PM

Quote:

In vitro research doesn�t predict what happens to a living system, but since 100,000 humans yearly dying from drugs tested on animals prove that testing animals is even more inadequate. It is very good at predicting what will happen to the species tested, but doesn�t seem that much like science when applying it to humans. Ultimately all drugs are tested on humans.

How does the fact that 100,000 people die from drugs tested on animals prove that testing in animals is more inadequate than other means. I could easily say that ten times as many people would be dead if they didn't test in animals. Are you really trying to say that if we tested drugs in vitro the total would be less?!? If so, where is your proof? How could it be better to take nontested drugs, wouldn't the drugs that killed "100,000" people still be introduced under your scenario? Wouldn't more drugs that were found to be toxic in animals also be available on the market in your scenario killing even more people?

Could you please post some more information about the 100,000 drug related deaths. This number could be inflated due to drug interactions that were not tested in the animal models. Take for example the drug combination fen-phen. Seperately these were safe drugs, however when used in combination as an apetite suppressant, side effects such as heart valve damage occurred in some users. Also is this figure inflated by adding in human error, such as Docs prescribing the wrong meds, pharmacists giving the wrong pills to patients, or patients using prescribed medications inproperly? I looked on the CDC and FDA websites and could find nothing to substantiate or clarify this figure.

Quote:

Ultimately all drugs are tested on humans.

This is not true, some drugs are found to be too toxic in animal trials to test on humans, so not all drugs are tested on humans.

Quote:

Scientific America, issue 0297: In a striking illustration of the inadequacy of animal
research, scientists in the 1960s deduce from numerous animal experiments that inhaled tobacco smoke did not cause lung cancer (tar from the smoke painted on the skin of rodents did cause tumors to develop, but these results were deemed less relevant than the inhalation studies). For many years afterward, the tobacco lobby was able to use these studies to delay government warnings and to discourage physicians from intervening in their patients' smoking habits.

Many of the Scientist that came to the conclusion that smoking was not bad for your health were on the tobacco companies pay roll. Some of the scientist that tried to expose the truth were fired and many intimidated into keeping quiet (part of the tobacco company cover up and the reason they got sued for billions of dollars.. because they knew from their own research that tobacco smoke was harmfull). Theres a good movie about this but I can't think of the title right now.

Quote:

$25 billion spent on animal research since 1971. Seems as if it worked, we�d have cancer
cured.

Cancer research has been a great success actually. If you compare chemotherapy today to what was being performed twenty years ago you would see a great improvement in cancer remission/survival rates, as well as a better QUALITY of life for cancer patients i.e. less nausea and side effects from the treatment.

Quote:

Dr. Ray Greek, author of Sacred Cows & Golden Geese-The Human Cost of Experiments on
Animals: Defenders of animal research who insist that animal experiments have contributed
to our understanding of CAD fail to note that animal experiments were designed to reproduce
results obtained through human-based research.
Even then, the animal experiments failed to "validate" human research, primarily because
nonhuman animals do not naturally develop CAD. Because CAD is a uniquely human disease,
there is no "perfect" animal model that replicates it.

That has not stopped researchers from attempting to replicate CAD in an astounding number of animal species, ranging from rabbits, cats and dogs to kangaroos, sea lions pelicans, ducks and horses. All have failed. When researchers force the clogging of arteries in rabbits, the plaques do not ulcerate and break off as they do in humans. Rats and mice do not metabolize fats as humans do.

Those that want to terminate animal experimentation are blind to the fact that medical progress has been made over the last 100 years using this technique. If it didn't work at all, scientist wouldn't use it because you could not make a prediction using these models. That is the role of science, to try and predict how an unknown element will behave given certain natural laws, and then testing these predictions.

Quote:

Attempts to obtain malignant tumors in monkeys failed, since primates turned out to be highly resistant to certain blastogenic agents, carcinogenic for other animals.� Beniashvili, Dzhemali Sh. Experimental Tumors In Monkeys CRC Press 1994

This is not entirely true, after doing a pubmed search using "primate malignant tumor" as keywords, over 2500 articles were brought up. Even if it was true, I maintain that they would still be a valuable research animal because of the very fact that they aren't susceptible to tumors, yet are so similar to us. You would want to research why they didn't get those tumors, is there a genetic reason (possibly a tumor suppressor gene)?

[ April 19, 2002: Message edited by: Dr. Evil ]

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