> Environmental and Health Concerns > Biodiversity

Perhaps you have seen the images of fluffy white rabbits, locked into restraining devices while substances are smeared into their eyes or rubbed onto their shaved skin to test for a reaction. Animal testing to determine the safety of cosmetics, personal care products, and household cleansers is only part of the science that involves warm-blooded mammals.

Animals are also used, and subsequently killed, every year in many other types of laboratory experiments, from military testing to simulated car crashes to deliberately introduced diseases such as AIDS and Alzheimer’s. These experiments take place in labs at universities, pharmaceutical companies, and testing agencies, and on farms and military bases around the world.

A Noah’s Ark of Victims

While it is estimated that rodents, including the typical mouse and rat, account for as many as 90 percent of all laboratory animals, a variety of animals are used in laboratory experiments, including gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, dogs, cats, and primates such as monkeys, baboons, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans.

How many animals are used? Statistics are hard to come by, especially since the US revised its Animal Welfare Act in 2002 to specifically exempt mice and rats from statistical counts. The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection estimates that 10 to 11 million animals are experimented on every year in the UK. In 2002 the US Department of Agriculture used 1,137,718 animals (remember, this number does not include mice or rats). In 1999 more than 1.7 million animals were subjected to testing in Canada.

Animals are Economical–and Dispensable

Why are animals used? Researchers who conduct experiments on animals argue that it would be unethical to test substances with potentially adverse side effects on humans; animals are good surrogates because their responses are similar to humans. However, some animals are chosen for other reasons. Rodents are used for reasons of space, economy, and convenience as they are smaller than larger test animals, such as dogs and monkeys, and can therefore be housed by the hundreds in less space. Rodents also reproduce quickly, making them economical and dispensable.

Many scientists support animal research because their careers depend upon it. Studies using animals produce faster results with less effort since animals have a shorter life span than humans, allowing an animal researcher to publish more papers than one who studies humans. The more articles they publish, the more prestige and job security they can attain.

A Life of Isolation, Boredom, and Pain

Although scientists who experiment on animals claim the test subjects are treated humanely, the fact is that research animals never live the way nature intended. Naturally social animals, such as chimpanzees, who in the wild would live in groups, groom one another, and play together, are housed one by one in small cages. Other animals such as mice and rats are crammed by the hundreds into tiny cages.

A large number of lab animals suffer isolation, boredom, anxiety, psychological distress, separation from their mothers soon after birth, and sleeplessness. These discomforts are in addition to the physical pain the animals endure during performance of the experiments.

Animal-Free Alternatives

Animal testing is not the only option in toxicity testing. Alternatives are widely available and include human clinical and epidemiological studies; experiments with cadavers, volunteers, and patients; computer simulation and mathematical models; and in vitro (test tube) tissue culture techniques, to name just a few. Reconstructed human skin models such as EpiDerm and EPISKIN can replace skin corrosion tests on rabbits.

Life After the Lab…If You’re Lucky

Most research animals will never see the outside of a lab. In fact, most animals used in research are purpose-bred in labs. Many animals are killed off as surplus or are euthanized when they are no longer deemed “useful.” Yet others die during research from side effects of the research itself. Take, for example, the lethal dose, 50 percent (LD50) test. In this experiment, a group of animals are force-fed increasing quantities of a substance until 50 percent of them die.

Dana Bidnall is a BC-based writer with a soft spot for cats of the house-trained variety.

Source: alive #299, September 2007