From: tara@starburst.umd.edu (Tara McDermott)
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg
Subject: Re: The Power of Prevention (was: Animal Experiments)
Date: 23 Dec 1992 16:31:44 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory
NNTP-Posting-Host: starburst.umd.edu

mhulsey@hestia.fcs.uga.edu (Martin Hulsey) writes:

>In article <tara.724439627@starburst.umd.edu>, tara@starburst.umd.edu (Tara
>McDermott) wrote:
>> 
>> Animal researchers would like us to believe that without vivisection
>> we would still be living in the dark ages.

>I'm certainly not one of them.  I'm trying to argue that prevention and
>treatment are *both* important.  Animal research has contributed greatly to
>both aspects of disease control.

Animal research has contributed greatly to both aspects because that
is all that has been used, at least it is the major majority of study.
If not much research has been done on humans, why of course it will
not have had as great an impact, because it just has not been used to
the extent that animal research has been used.  In no way does this
then refute my beliefs (and beliefs of those in the scientific
community) that animal testing is not AS good as human testing (be it
in vitro, computer simulation, human volunteer, or cadaver research).

>The animal "rights" movement regards animal research as unethical
>exploitation, so numerous tactics are engaged to discredit its contribution
>to human and animal health.  These deceptions are most effective on younger
>people who have scarcely heard of once-common diseases such as smallpox,
>rickets, tuberculosis, pellagra, polio, beriberi, diphtheria and rabies.

In my next post, it was mentioned that some of these diseases could
have better been served by using humans instead of animals.  Did you
dismiss this, or did you not see this?  Instead of taking an otherwise
healthy animal, inducing a disease and then studying it in hope for a
cure, the same could have been done on a human that already HAD the
disease.

>>It is certainly true that
>> life-expectancy has increased dramatically over the past hundred
>> years, but is this really due to animal experiments?

>To deemphasize the importance of medical research using animals, opponents
>point to advances in sanitation and nutrition as a cause for our increased
>longevity.  Little do they realize the role that animal research played in
>these advances as well.

>If not for the pioneering animal work of Jenner, Koch and Pasteur, the
>importance of sanitation in the prevention of disease would not have been
>discovered.

>Koch used guinea pigs to determine the fundamental criteria for proving
>that microbes cause disease.  He isolated a microbe from lesions of a
>diseased animal, and grew the microbe in culture.  Subsequent inoculation
>of a healthy animal with the cultured microbe, caused the disease in that
>animal.

I'm sure at that time that there were plenty of disease ridden humans
that sported lesions that Koch could have used, instead of inducing
them in animals.  As for his research on then inoculating a healthy
animal with a disease, for what purpose was it done?  Current
sanitation being what it was at the time, I'm more than sure that
people realized that these diseases were contagious already.  Further
research on this particular issue seems rather wasteful. 

>The Golden Age of Nutrition followed the Golden Age of Microbiology. 
>Pioneers in nutrition developed postulates to relate nutrients to the
>deficiency symptoms they alleviated.  These postulates were analogous to
>those employed by Koch.  This is more than a coincidence, because one of
>these pioneers, Eijkman, studied in Koch's laboratory. 

When was ths Golden Age of Nutrition?  Was that during the 1950's or
earlier?  Much of our past knowledge of nutrition, coming from studies
done on laboratory rats, and other such creatures has now been proven
wrong.  For example, the studies confirming that rats needed all the
protein in an egg to remain the healthiest.  It was then postulated
that humans needed a complete protein, the kind only found in egg
yolks and meat.  Today we know this is false.  In fact, this
information is dangerous to human health.  Eggs are very very high in
cholesterol, and too much protein leads to many diseases which the
American people are suffering from--cancer, osteoporosis, heart
disease.  The fact is, humans are different, despite the great
similarity to many animals, and have a different nutritional need than
animals.  Using research done on animals when it comes to nutrition is
not very efficient and can pose a risk to human health.  It already
has. 

I think my main point of disgression with your point of view is that
because animal research has been done in the past, and because some of
it has been successful, you believe that it is currently the best
method of insuring the health of the human species.  I don't know how
I would feel on the matter if we had this discussion 150 years ago,
but now, I feel that with current technology the way it is, we no
longer NEED to do animal research.  Not only that, but with the
information we already hold, we should act on that.  We know how to
prevent cancers--at least 85% of them (this is a rough figure),
through modifying our eating habits, and getting people to stop
smoking.  The other diseases of affluence such as heart disease are
easily preventable as well.  We already know how to, but nothing is
being done about it.  This seems criminal to me.  Why not reform the
information that is being taught to school children, so that they grow
up eating the right foods, instead of the wrong foods?  I already know
the answer to this, by the way... the meat and dairy industries are so
powerful that this won't happen for many years to come at least.  But
my point is, we know how to stop most people from getting cancer, and
stop people from having heart attacks, and stroke, and what have you.
Instead of making animals go through this process as well in a search
for a cure, why not just cure the humans?  It would save untold
millions of dollars spent on animal research, it would make health
care more than affordable, people would live longer, be healthier and
happier, surgery would not be a common occurance, and it would be much
less of a burden on our natural resources (by having a plant based
diet instead of a meat based one).  No, I'm wrong.  By prevention, we
would be saving many billions of dollars better spent on other things.
Our society would flourish.

>--
>mhulsey@hestia.fcs.uga.edu                      Society for Neuroscience
>Martin G. Hulsey                              National Rifle Association
>Dept. Foods & Nutrition      Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior
>University of Ga.    North American Association for the Study of Obesity

--
Tara McDermott               
tara@starburst.umd.edu       
I eat tofu, and I vote.
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg