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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbam here. In January of eighteen, US Food and

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Speaker 1: Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced that the agency, after

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Speaker 1: an internal investigation, had permanently ended a nicotine addiction study

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Speaker 1: in which four squirrel monkeys had died. He said in

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Speaker 1: a statement on the FDA website, based on this team's findings,

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Speaker 1: it is clear the study was not consistent with the

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Speaker 1: agency's high animal welfare standards. In a September seventeen letter,

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Speaker 1: famous primate researcher and conservationist Jane Goodall had announced the

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Speaker 1: research as cruel and unnecessary, saying that the harmful effects

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Speaker 1: of smoking on humans are already known and could be

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Speaker 1: studied directly. In addition to ending the study, Gottlieb said

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Speaker 1: that the findings indicated that the FDA's protections for animal

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Speaker 1: research subjects quote may need to be strengthened in some

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Speaker 1: important areas. For that reason, he announced the launching of

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Speaker 1: an independent, third party investigation of all of the FDA's

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Speaker 1: animal research and the creation of a new animal welfare

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Speaker 1: counsel to oversee those studies going forward. Additionally, Gottlieb said

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Speaker 1: that the FDA would strengthen its commitment to replacing, reducing,

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Speaker 1: and or refining animal studies with new methods, and said

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Speaker 1: that animals should be used in studies only when there's

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Speaker 1: no other way to do research that's important for public health.

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Speaker 1: But even so, he said, it is important to recognize

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Speaker 1: that there are still many areas where animal research is

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Speaker 1: important and necessary. In particular, he cited the use of

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Speaker 1: primates as essential for the development of some critical vaccines

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Speaker 1: for human children. The research involving monkeys and the agency's

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Speaker 1: response highlighted what for many people is a discomforting reality.

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Speaker 1: Despite computer simulations and other tools available to today's researchers,

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Speaker 1: laboratories still use large numbers of animals as experimental subjects,

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Speaker 1: and an email, FDA spokesperson Tara G. Rabbin said that

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Speaker 1: the agency currently is utilizing eight thousand, one hundred and

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Speaker 1: sixty seven creatures of various sorts in research that includes

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Speaker 1: over seven thousand road two hundred and seventy primates, hundred

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Speaker 1: and nine fish, thirty one lago morphs, an order that

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Speaker 1: includes rabbits and hairs, twenty mustella that's animals such as

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Speaker 1: ferrets and weasels, twelve amphibians, six cows, and five goats,

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Speaker 1: but that's only a fraction of the animals subjected to

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Speaker 1: testing in other government, university, and private sector labs. A

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Speaker 1: sixteen report by the U S Department of Agriculture listed

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Speaker 1: over eight hundred and twenty thousand animals, including one hundred

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Speaker 1: and thirty nine thousand rabbits, seventy one thousand primates, sixty

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Speaker 1: thousand dogs, and eighteen thousand cats, among other animals. Elizabeth Magner,

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Speaker 1: program manager for the New England Anti Vivisection Society, said

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Speaker 1: in an email that the most common toxicology tests, which

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Speaker 1: include oral and dermal sensitization and irritation testing, still cause

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Speaker 1: thousands of animals to suffer and die in the US

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Speaker 1: each year, and despite the FDA's position that animal testing

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Speaker 1: is still essential, there are increasing questions about its scientific value.

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Speaker 1: Drugs often produce results in animal tests that can't be

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Speaker 1: replicated with humans, and at least a few drugs that

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Speaker 1: were deemed safe in animal testing have turned out to

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Speaker 1: be dangerous or even lethal when taken by human subjects.

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Speaker 1: The use of animals and research goes back to ancient times,

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Speaker 1: when Greek physicians did exploratory surgery on live animals to

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Speaker 1: study their anatomy and physiology. In the early nineteen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: rodents became a staple of laboratory research after the breeding

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Speaker 1: of a standard strain, the whist rat. Katherine will It,

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Speaker 1: director of Regulatory Toxicology, Risk Assessment and Alternatives for the

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Speaker 1: Humane Society of the United States, explains, when we do

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Speaker 1: research on animals, it's because a hundred years ago it

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Speaker 1: was the best thing people could think of. We've learned

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Speaker 1: that animals are not very good predictors of what happens

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Speaker 1: with people. But will It and others are hopeful that

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Speaker 1: animal testing will be replaced by alternatives that will not

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Speaker 1: only spare animals from suffering, but produce more reliable results

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Speaker 1: about human effects. One particularly promising technology is the development

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Speaker 1: of microchips lined with living human cells that enable them

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Speaker 1: to serve as simulated human organs. Geraldine A Hamilton's, President

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Speaker 1: and chief Scientific Officer of Emulate Incorporated, explained in an

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Speaker 1: email how the devices work. She said, each of Emulates

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Speaker 1: propriety organ chips, such as the lung, liver, brain, intestine,

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Speaker 1: or kidney, contains tiny hollow channels lined with tens of

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Speaker 1: thousands of living human cells and tissues, and is approximately

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Speaker 1: the size of a double a battery. An organ chip

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Speaker 1: is a living, micro engineered environment that recreates the natural

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Speaker 1: physiology and mechanical forces that sells experience within the human body.

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Speaker 1: She said that this technology can predict human responses with

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Speaker 1: greater precision and detail than modern cell culturing or animal

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Speaker 1: based experimental testing. According to Hamilton's the devices already are

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Speaker 1: being used by pharmaceutical companies, and NASA is working with

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Speaker 1: Emulate to use the company's brain chip in space in

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Speaker 1: order to better understand the effects of microgravity and other forces.

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Speaker 1: Organ chips also can be combined in a system to

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Speaker 1: simulate how multiple organs react to something, and Emulate is

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Speaker 1: working on the patient on a chip, which eventually will

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Speaker 1: include organ ships that are tailored with an individual patient's

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Speaker 1: own cells. Those sorts of developments give opponents of animal

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Speaker 1: testing hope that it will soon become a thing of

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Speaker 1: the past. As Elizabeth Magner puts it, we are confident

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Speaker 1: that this reality is not only possible, but inevitable. Today's

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Speaker 1: episode was written by Patrick J. Keiger and produced by

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Speaker 1: Tristan McNeil for more on this and lots of other

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Speaker 1: forward thinking topics, visit our home planet, tostof works dot com.