THE LAST WORD
eincarnation is highly unlikely. But in the event
that it is possible, I know what I’m coming
back as: a mouse. Hardly a week goes by
without scientists announcing they’ve cured some of
these furry cheese-eaters of yet another disease, from
cancer and AIDS to Alzheimer’s.
So how come we humans are still succumbing to
these diseases? Aren’t animal experiments supposed to
be reliable signposts towards the next miracle cure?
They certainly have the backing of the Royal
Society, Britain’s premier scientific academy, which
insists that “virtually every medical achievement in
the past century has depended directly or indirectly
on research using animals”. And the Royal Society
doesn’t make statements like that without evidence to
back them up.
Actually, its website doesn’t give the evidence,
but there’s an obvious explanation: there have been
so many medical achievements over the last 100 years it
would take up too much space to list all of those based on
insights from animals. Yet there’s not even a reference to a
research paper, or indeed any source cited at all. The claim
is simply stated, as if only a hamster-cuddling moron could
possibly doubt it.
Driven perhaps by my fondness for cuddling hamsters,
some years ago I decided to see if I could find the evidence
to support the claim. After all, if there were, it would at least
suggest that the current spate of disappointment is just a
temporary blip.
Yet after spending days rummaging through the academic
literature, I drew a blank. Actually, that’s not quite true. I found
the same statement had been made by other scientific bodies,
but again with no detailed evidence to back it up.
I eventually tracked down its origins to an article in a
newsletter published in 1994, attributed to the US Public
Health Service. It has no author, no references and nothing
but a few anecdotes to stand it up.
Frustrated, I began my own search for evidence of the reliability
of animal experiments in medical research, and made a shocking
discovery. Only a handful of studies had even addressed the
issue. Those that did were often botched or meaningless, but
the studies that made some kind of sense suggested that animal
experiments are about as reliable as tossing a coin.
I published my findings in a medical journal, hoping to spur
better research into the issue, and was promptly attacked
by pro-vivisection campaigners. One dismissed my work as
“pointless and pedantic point-scoring”.
Fortunately, the research community took a more constructive
approach, and set up studies to find out how reliable animal
experiments are. Now the results are starting to emerge, and
they’re not exactly reassuring. They suggest that while animal
experiments do sometimes predict what will happen with
humans, they also often fail to do so, and there’s no simple way
of telling which case applies.
For example, an international team has just published a
major study of whether tests on mice can predict drugs’
common side effects, like fatigue and headache. The results
suggest the tests are useless at best, and sometimes
positively misleading.
The study’s authors, which include scientists from leading
pharmaceutical companies, say that “care should be taken” in
the interpretation of animal experiments.
Certainly, care should also be taken over claims of
‘breakthroughs’ based on such experiments, or statements
made by top academic institutions on the basis of no evidence
at all. ßILLUSTRATION: ADAM GALER
ROBERT MATTHEWS ON... ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS
“ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS SOMETIMES PREDICT WHAT’LL HAPPEN WITH HUMANS,
BUT OFTEN FAIL TO DO SO”
ROBERT MATTHEWS IS VISITING PROFESSOR IN SCIENCE AT ASTON UNIVERSITY, BIRMINGHAM