Written by Debora Dorothea Nadapdap
Universitas Gadjah Mada
IVSA Indonesia
Indonesia
1st Winner of SCoVE Essay Competition: Animal Testing
Animal testing is an uncomfortable and disagreeable topic to be discussed. It's easy to understand why: the media gave a really negative depiction of animal testing. Many media sources greatly impact the public by portraying animal testing as violent, barbaric, and entirely unnecessary. People’s strong empathy for animals makes them less criticized and absorbs it as a generalized blanket statement. People do not realize that they would not be able to live the quality of life that they currently have without the irreplaceable contribution of many laboratory animals over the years. We owe almost all of the medical advancements to the use of animals testing. Some people think that “technology has advanced, we don't need animals in research anymore”, “animal research was cruel and pointless”, and others think that “it just wasn't right for us to subject animals to this use when there are alternatives”. The question is, is animal testing really unnecessary? Are the alternatives offered capable of completely replacing animal contribution? As a veterinarian student and researcher, I want to deliver a fact-based information as a food for thought in order to make an informed stance on animal testing with complete information about the entire story.
Animal testing is often used in human medicine to test the safety and efficacy of a potential novel treatment in treating a specific disease. It is held because animals share many biological similarities with humans. However, this statement is being questioned and criticized because many drugs determined to be safe and effective in animal testing fail during human clinical trials. Yes, animal testing in human medicine is one of those ethically gray areas: it provides numerous improvements but can’t be a perfect human analogue. But, many people do not realize, animal testing also improves health and well being for the animals as well. This is a poorly recognized sector called veterinary medicine. In veterinary medicine, animal testing has been used to develop robust treatments for animals (pretty similar with human medicine, isn’t it?), ranging from determining which drugs are safe and which are not for specific species of animal (e.g. ibuprofen and paracetamol are toxic to cats) to the development of current vaccines for dogs. Even though it is for animal health, this also potentially leads to the improvement of the quality of human’s life. In fact, according to Jones et al. (2008) and Taylor et al. (2001), 60% of human emerging infectious diseases are from animals.
And here’s how it works: if the animals around us are healthy, then we are reducing the risk of infectious diseases spreading to people. If our dog does not get infected with rabies (because there is a preventive vaccination), neither will we. Veterinary medicine is the frontline of the mitigation of zoonotic disease, while human medicine treats the infected people. These two health sectors can’t be viewed separately and for many years, both of these are using animal testing in their research development. Thoughts like “technology has advanced and there is no need to utilize animals in research”, are quite superficial. Many people think that animal testing is the only method used by scientists without prior consideration of other alternatives, and it’s simply untrue.
There have been some great advancements as alternatives for the full replacement for animal models, such as computational modeling, cell and tissue culturing techniques. But each one of them has pros and cons in the application for research. Computational modeling can replace the whole living organism but it is not very applicable in every country since it requires high skills and also the computer systems that might cost a lot of funding. Cells in a petri dish, also known as in vitro method, can be used for screening and determining the specific effect on specific cells, but it lacks the overall organ architecture, which in many diseases can be super important. Tissue modeling or 3D printed organs can be used in gross anatomy and histopathological studies, but it lacks the interactions that happen with other organs because all of the organs in the body communicate with each other. In vitro method and tissue modeling can’t be applied in hormonesand body fluid related research since it requires the entire system to be regulated in the body. To address the limitation of those alternatives above, animal usage in laboratory is still required and necessary in several studies such as for identifying the pathogenesis of exotic diseases and to determining the impacts of systemic hormone activity in the body which might result in a variety of effects like infertility and birth defects (both in humans and animals). Consequently, scientists have to choose the best model that is most suitable and that they have available. If a non-animal model was as good as or even better than the animal models that they currently use, science would definitely move to adapt to use that.
In my opinion, scientists might conduct partial replacement for their research by using the least sentient animals or develop genetically modified non-sentient animals capable of feeling pain but incapable of suffering, either by removing or substituting genes that allow for suffering while enabling the development of the central nervous system. It is still a very raw idea, very difficult, and necessitates further studies, but if it can be done, it's a very delicate balance of using the non- sentient organism possible but still being able to get clinically relevant and representative data.
Animal testing in research is hope to be conducted with comprehensive deliberation in all aspect, particularly the fundamental aspects like the welfare of the animals itself. Answering to this, there are a lot of regulations and care taken to ensure the most humane research testing is done. For example, each university in every country has their own animal care/ethical committee. The committee is responsible for reviewing every research proposal to ensure that the study is necessary, and is primarily concerned with the protocols and procedures that will be done. Any research can’t begin without the approval of this committee. These protocols are approved based on the 3 R's in animal research defined by Russell and Burch (1960) and NC3Rs has updated it to modern research practices. The 3 R's are replacement, reduction, and refinement. Replacement means replacing the laboratory animal with an inanimate system like a computational modeling system or cells and tissue culture as described before. Reduction is reducing the number of animals used in the research and also being able to justify the objectives of why the research needs that animal numbers to achieve robust and credible findings. Refinement has to do with altering the process and method itself to ensure the animal model is minimized in the amount of discomfort, pain, distress, and suffering that it might experience. Scientists are committed to applying the 3 R’s, and to using alternatives instead of or before conducting animal testing. Also, there are strict punishments for scientist who disobey the regulations.
Supporting animal research doesn’t need to be an all or nothing approach. We can read an article or a journal and be critical about the methods that they used or the conclusions they drew from their study. It would be pleasant to see many greater initiative to pursue minimally invasive approaches to animal research and I believe in the future, those non-animal model alternatives might completely replace the use of animals in research that significantly proves irrelevant, but should in tandem with improving skills, machine learning, and more sensitive biometrics. But for now, animal testing still can be done for some aspects of studies, but it has to be done under strict adherence to the ethics and regulations.
References
Jones K.E., Patel N.G., Levy M.A., Storeygard A., Balk D., Gittleman G.L., Daszak P. 2008. Global trends in emerging infectious diseases. Nature, 451(21):990–994.
National Centre for the Replacement Refinement & Reduction of Animals in Research. The 3Rs.(https://nc3rs.org.uk/who-we-are/3rs).
Russell, W.M.S., Burch, R.L. 1959. The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique. London: Methuen & Co.
Taylor L.H., Latham S.M., Woolhouse M.E. 2001. Risk factors for human disease emergence. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London Ser. B. 356:983–990.