From: hulsey@athena.cs.uga.edu (Martin Hulsey)
Subject: Re: animals in research
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 22:35:05 GMT

Robert Black writes:

>In article <ceqe02Zm29YI01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> 
tsr00@duts.ccc.amdahl.com (Ted Robinson) writes:
>>In article <1992Nov2.152851.20701@athena.cs.uga.edu>, 
>>hulsey@athena.cs.uga.edu (Martin Hulsey) writes:
>>> Despite a couple of challenges, no one has disputed my claim that 
there 
>>> is no (non-extinct) species that would sacrifice its own members to 
save 
>>> members of another species.
>
>Maybe the scope or sophistication of the question has not been fully
>appreciated, but how does your hypothesis deal with actual recent 
events
>like these occurring near my home:
>
>     1. Woman and children escape burning house.  Woman then dies of 
smoke 
>        inhalation, after running back in to save pets.
>
>     2. Pit bull attacks young girl while horrified family looks on.
>        Family German shepherd intervenes between pit bull and girl,
>        thereby slowing the attack long enough for help to be summoned.
>        Shepherd dies but the girl's life is saved thanks to the extra
>        time provided by the shepherd for help to arrive.
>

Its not my hypothesis; its a fact.  I was referring to *species*, and 
you cite the acts of *individuals* as counterexamples.  Because the 
unusual acts of interspecies "altruism" you cite were fatal to the 
individuals involved, they reinforce my position that such acts are 
nonadaptive for their respective species.

You provided two examples of how such traits are ultimately selected out 
in successful species, unless you would also care to refute the 
principles of Darwin.

BTW, the etymology of altruism is from the French word _altruisme_ which 
is itself derived from the term _autrui_ meaning "other people."  I 
suggest that it is anthropomorphic to suggest that non-human animals may 
exhibit altruism (I am not suggesting that you claimed such; others 
apparently did).  Then again, anthropomorphism is a common 
characteristic of animal advocates.

>>I never implied that my description was a comprehensive description of 
>>the events leading up to the discovery of Insulin.  I did not intend 
to 
>>overlook Collip's contribution, as he worked alongside the others.  I 
>>feel that he and Best should have shared the 1923 Nobel.  Banting and 
>>Mcleod agreed, for they shared their prizes with Best and Collip.  The 
>>fact, by your admission, that Collip used *Ox* pancreas to develop his 
>>extract *further emphasizes* the crucial role that animals played in 
>>this research.  Therefore, you have not successfully disputed my 
claim.  
>
>Your claim above states:
>
>        "The indisputable fact is that if insulin had not been 
discovered 
>         using animals (human or otherwise) in 1923, more than one 
million 
>         people would have died up until now, and millions more would 
die 
>         in the future.
>
>Since you have parenthetically included (the escape hatch of) humans,
>you're right in that I haven't disputed the first part of your claim. 
>Nor do I wish to, since the discovery of insulin could have been made
>using either human or nonhuman pancreas.  But if you had not included
>humans, then I would dispute it, since it's clear that nonhuman animal
>research was not necessary for the discovery of insulin. 

By "human or otherwise" in the above claim, I was referring to the dog 
experiments only.  I still question whether insulin could have been 
isolated from human pancreas, and you have provided no rational 
scenario.

>[...]
>Also it's not entirely clear what your meaning was in the phrase "using
>animals." If you meant to include the removal of pancreas from already
>dead oxen, then this does not make the case for lab experiments with
>animals.

Sure it does.  Quite a few "lab experiments" have relied on materials 
obtained at the slaughterhouse.  If memory serves, Guillemin's Nobel 
(1977) is another example.  The more recent isolation by Tatemoto of 
Neuropeptide Y from 7 kg of porcine brain is another that immediately 
comes to mind.  There are many others.

I am not simply making a case for the use of animals in the laboratory.  
You are trying desparately to deny the crucial role of animal by-
products in medical research, because it is inconsistent with your 
utopian agenda.

>The dogs of Banting and Best, as well as those of their predecessors, 
did
>not have to die in order to save diabetics.  The popular citation of 
the
>Banting and Best work as evidence of the value of animal research is a
>flawed claim.

The claim is not flawed until you disprove it.

>And if one of the most famous and often-referenced pillars
>in the animal research edifice is so easily toppled, then what are we 
>to make of other more obscure examples and claims?

First, this unscholarly revisionist scenario doesn't prove anything.  
The "edifice" stands, and has vastly more pillars than you can imagine.

Second, is this not akin to arguing that if one animal activist is a 
terrorist, then so must be the others?

>The second part of your claim (that millions would have died) is
>speculation.  It is certainly not a *fact*, let alone indisputable.  We
>don't know what route an alternate historical path would have taken. 
>But if insulin had never been discovered, it does seems likely that
>fewer diabetics would have survived to produce some of the succeeding
>generations.  Whether the casualties would still have numbered in the
>millions, given this selection process, is arguable.  But you're always
>on shaky ground when you observe that: (1) X happened, then Y happened;
>(2) therefore if X had not happened, then Y would not have happened.

I'm not making such an argument.  I agree that if more people died of 
diabetes for lack of a treatment, then there would be fewer to die in 
successive generations.  Even if we account for this, many humans would 
die in past, present and future to save a few dogs.

If you are arguing that if diabetes were not made treatable, it would be 
subsequently selected out of the population, you are again wrong.  The 
problem with your argument is that there were millions of years for this 
to happen before 1922, and yet these "bad" genes survived.

>mh>Of course, the final proof that these extracts were effective in 
>>treating *human* diabetes came after human trials.
>
>It was not the *FINAL* proof.  It was *THE* proof.

I will not waste time arguing semantics.

You and others have failed to provide a reasonable scenario wherein 
Collip could have extracted insulin from pancreas (human or otherwise) 
without the prior knowledge obtained with dogs. 

>mh>Until the recent introduction of recombinant human insulin, the only 
>>source for Insulin to treat diabetics was that obtained from animals 
at 
>>the slaughterhouse.  I seriously doubt your suggestion that insulin 
>>could be effectively isolated obtained from human cadavers.  It 
degrades 
>>fairly rapidly postmortem, and the amount of available material would 
be 
>>too limited.
>
>It wasn't my suggestion but it does further reinforce the case that
>nonhuman animals were not needed to discover and purify insulin.  And
>the fact that pancreatic extracts were readily available from
>slaughterhouses does not support the case for animal research. 

Why not?  Medical research using animal sometimes takes place in the 
lab.  Sometimes it takes place at the research farm.  Sometimes 
materials are gathered in the abattoir, and returned to the lab.  Why 
would the *location* of animals used for medical research matter?

>[...]
>Not really.  Animals were not needed in the development of a treatment
>for diabetes.  This is not in doubt.  The critical steps were: (1) the
>discovery of a link between the pancreas and diabetes which derived 
from
>human autopsies;

Again, the clinical observations provided only an associative link.  
Animals were required to demonstrate that extracts of pancreas could be 
used to keep depancreatized animals alive indefinitely, and thus save 
lives rather than simply prolong death.

>(2) Collip's technique for extracting insulin from
>pancreas which did not require animals; and

Wrong.  By your own admission, he used animal pancreata, and not human 
pancreata.  You have failed to demonstrate how anyone could have 
obtained sufficient quantities of fresh human pancreata to perform such 
an extraction.

>(3) the testing of various
>pancreatic extracts on humans.  The weak counter-claim which could be
>made is that insulin as a slaughterhouse by-product from animals was
>needed to provide the quantities required, after the discovery was 
made,
>to treat the numbers of diabetics.  Whether or not this is true, it 
does
>not make the case for animal research.

It depends on what you call animal research.  Few would accept your 
stringent requirement that "research" must be conducted in a "lab."

>[...]
>The dog experiments, which were entirely inspired by clinical
>observations, mainly served to convince skeptics that insulin existed. 
>By using dogs, these experiments "proved" for humans what was already
>known (from human studies) to those held captive by Koch's postulates,
>which had taught that clinical observations had to be "proved" by
>experiments on animals. 

This is the second most ridiculous paragraph I have ever read.  The 
clinical observations convinced no one that "insulin existed."  The 
clinical observations suggested an association between diabetes and the 
pancreas, but gave *no* indication that an extract of pancreas could 
save lives. 

The Toronto dog experiments demonstrated for the first time (after many 
unsuccessful tries by others) that symptoms of diabetes could be 
reversed by administration of a pancreatic extract, and that a 
depancreatized dog could be kept alive *indefinitely* using pancreatic 
extracts.  Prior to that, there was *NO* indication that an unidentified 
life-saving substance was contained in extracts of pancreas.

You are also way off-base with respect to Koch.  Where do you guys get 
this stuff?  Certainly not from a peer-reviewed journal!  Koch's 
postulates did not teach that clinical observations _per se_ had to be 
"proven" using animals.  His work, using guinea pigs, unequivocally 
demonstrated for the first time that microbes cause disease.

This breakthrough overshadows even that of Banting & Best with respect 
to the number of human lives subsequently saved.  It is therefore no 
surprise to me that antivivisectionists would wish to again rewrite 
medical history, and deny the role of animals in this discovery.  I do 
not care to again debate the myriad, though less feasible, "alternative 
paths" that you would propose for this discovery without using animals.

These Bambiphilic accounts of medical history consistently suggest that 
clinicians make the great discoveries, and that vivisectors can produce 
nothing but misleading findings.  The truth is that misleading findings 
and great discoveries can come from either paradigm.

If we examine the case of Robert Koch, and the "germ theory" of disease, 
we see an example where clinicians were in error, and an animal 
researcher proved them wrong.  The leading  *clinicians* of the day 
vehemently argued against the "germ theory" of disease.  In this case, 
clinical observations were misleading.  All it took was a few guinea 
pigs to subsequently save countless human lives.

One of the most egregious aspects of Bambiphilic revisionism is the oft-
repeated assertion that advances in sanitation and nutrition, rather 
than animal research, are responsible for the increase in longevity that 
we enjoy today.  The fallacy of this argument is that animal research 
was required for these advances as well.  The pioneering work of Pasteur 
and Koch used animals to prove that microbes do indeed cause disease.  
How would anyone have seen the great need for sanitation if not for the 
knowledge that microbes cause disease?  Pioneering nutritionists such as 
Hopkins, McCollum, Funk, Eijkman and others used animals to determine 
basic dietary requirements for organic and inorganic micronutrients.  
How would we know today what comprises a healthy diet if not for this 
information?

Few realize that the fundamental paradigm that the nutrition pioneers 
used then and today to make such investigations were derived from Koch's 
postulates.  This is no mere coincidence, for Eijkman studied in Koch's 
laboratory.

>[...]
>Yes, we can only conjecture, but a strong case can be made that Ted and
>ted are correct.  See Brandon Reines' short account, THE TRUTH BEHIND
>THE DISCOVERY OF INSULIN, or, better, a key source of his, THE 
DISCOVERY
>OF INSULIN by Michael Bliss (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
>1982).  Bliss is a historian writing about the discovery of insulin.  
He
>is not an AR person.

Do these references suggest, as you do, that insulin could have been 
discovered without the use of animals?

A conference held in Israel celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 
discovery of Insulin (Israeli Journal of Medical Science 8(3):467-494; 
1972).  Anyone who reads this account will discover that there is 
controversy regarding the Nobel committee's decision to award the Nobel 
to Banting & McLeod rather that Banting, Best, Collip and MacLeod.  
There is, however, no controversy among leading diabetes researchers as 
to the essential role of animals in past, present and future research 
concerning diabetes.

>If these 55 examples are as shakey as the claim for insulin, then they
>will not make a case for animal research.  Unfortunately, they're less
>famous and therefore probably less well studied and documented by a
>trained and competent historian. 

The authors of the references I gave in my last post are trained and 
competent historians.  If you would care to look at these or the primary 
literature, you might see whose claim is shaky. 

>Also the fact that animals are used in a valuable and well-publicized
>experiment in no way demonstrates or proves the nonexistence of other
>paths to the same knowledge.

Yes, there are an infinite number of paths to knowledge, but the ones 
that really count are the ones that are timely.  I, for one, am not 
willing to sit around and wait for someone to solve today's medical 
challenges without using non-human animals.

--
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

Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals