Many different kinds of animals suffer this fate, including monkeys, baboons (including wild-caught baboons), dogs, cats, pigs, rabbits, mice, rats, gerbils, guinea pigs, sheep, horses, goats, budgerigars and many others. These experiments include the animals being poisoned, genetically mutated, infected with lethal pathogens, stressed, deprived of parental care, irradiated, burnt, blinded, traumatised, forced to inhale noxious substances and subjected to "interference with the brain." The most common tests involve dripping materials into rabbit's eyes or applying substances to the shaved backs of rabbits or guinea pigs and studying the irritation or damage. Animals are also force fed or dosed with substances to assess what affects the substances have. These tests can cause great suffering to the animals.
But surely we need animal experiments to discover how safe new drugs are before we give them to humans? Or do we? The combination of Fenfluramine and Dexfenfluramine, touted as the answer to a dieter's prayer a few years ago, was extensively tested on animals and found to be very safe. Unfortunately it caused heart valve abnormalities in humans. Or how about the arthritis drug Opren? Tests on monkeys found no problems but it killed 61 people before it was withdrawn. And as for having to choose between rats and your child, Cylert, given to children with attention deficit hyperactive disorder, was fine for animals but caused liver failure in 13 children.
The problem is not a new one, animals are not the same as humans, and so drugs that affect them in one way may well affect us differently. Now this is usually presented as a solvable problem by researchers. We can get an idea of the effects that the drug will have from animals, they say, but does it work like that. Animals, that may seem closely related, may function quite differently to humans, and there is no way of predicting what the differences will be.
Rats and mice, for instance, have pretty much the same make-up as us, but when it comes to something as basic as whether a chemical is harmful to them or not, how do we know if it will be the same on humans, does someone have to die before the we will know?
Now, with all the information presented before you, will you think twice about giving your child a drug that has been animal tested?