Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbam here. In January of eighteen, US Food and
Speaker 1: Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced that the agency, after
Speaker 1: an internal investigation, had permanently ended a nicotine addiction study
Speaker 1: in which four squirrel monkeys had died. He said in
Speaker 1: a statement on the FDA website, based on this team's findings,
Speaker 1: it is clear the study was not consistent with the
Speaker 1: agency's high animal welfare standards. In a September seventeen letter,
Speaker 1: famous primate researcher and conservationist Jane Goodall had announced the
Speaker 1: research as cruel and unnecessary, saying that the harmful effects
Speaker 1: of smoking on humans are already known and could be
Speaker 1: studied directly. In addition to ending the study, Gottlieb said
Speaker 1: that the findings indicated that the FDA's protections for animal
Speaker 1: research subjects quote may need to be strengthened in some
Speaker 1: important areas. For that reason, he announced the launching of
Speaker 1: an independent, third party investigation of all of the FDA's
Speaker 1: animal research and the creation of a new animal welfare
Speaker 1: counsel to oversee those studies going forward. Additionally, Gottlieb said
Speaker 1: that the FDA would strengthen its commitment to replacing, reducing,
Speaker 1: and or refining animal studies with new methods, and said
Speaker 1: that animals should be used in studies only when there's
Speaker 1: no other way to do research that's important for public health.
Speaker 1: But even so, he said, it is important to recognize
Speaker 1: that there are still many areas where animal research is
Speaker 1: important and necessary. In particular, he cited the use of
Speaker 1: primates as essential for the development of some critical vaccines
Speaker 1: for human children. The research involving monkeys and the agency's
Speaker 1: response highlighted what for many people is a discomforting reality.
Speaker 1: Despite computer simulations and other tools available to today's researchers,
Speaker 1: laboratories still use large numbers of animals as experimental subjects,
Speaker 1: and an email, FDA spokesperson Tara G. Rabbin said that
Speaker 1: the agency currently is utilizing eight thousand, one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty seven creatures of various sorts in research that includes
Speaker 1: over seven thousand road two hundred and seventy primates, hundred
Speaker 1: and nine fish, thirty one lago morphs, an order that
Speaker 1: includes rabbits and hairs, twenty mustella that's animals such as
Speaker 1: ferrets and weasels, twelve amphibians, six cows, and five goats,
Speaker 1: but that's only a fraction of the animals subjected to
Speaker 1: testing in other government, university, and private sector labs. A
Speaker 1: sixteen report by the U S Department of Agriculture listed
Speaker 1: over eight hundred and twenty thousand animals, including one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty nine thousand rabbits, seventy one thousand primates, sixty
Speaker 1: thousand dogs, and eighteen thousand cats, among other animals. Elizabeth Magner,
Speaker 1: program manager for the New England Anti Vivisection Society, said
Speaker 1: in an email that the most common toxicology tests, which
Speaker 1: include oral and dermal sensitization and irritation testing, still cause
Speaker 1: thousands of animals to suffer and die in the US
Speaker 1: each year, and despite the FDA's position that animal testing
Speaker 1: is still essential, there are increasing questions about its scientific value.
Speaker 1: Drugs often produce results in animal tests that can't be
Speaker 1: replicated with humans, and at least a few drugs that
Speaker 1: were deemed safe in animal testing have turned out to
Speaker 1: be dangerous or even lethal when taken by human subjects.
Speaker 1: The use of animals and research goes back to ancient times,
Speaker 1: when Greek physicians did exploratory surgery on live animals to
Speaker 1: study their anatomy and physiology. In the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: rodents became a staple of laboratory research after the breeding
Speaker 1: of a standard strain, the whist rat. Katherine will It,
Speaker 1: director of Regulatory Toxicology, Risk Assessment and Alternatives for the
Speaker 1: Humane Society of the United States, explains, when we do
Speaker 1: research on animals, it's because a hundred years ago it
Speaker 1: was the best thing people could think of. We've learned
Speaker 1: that animals are not very good predictors of what happens
Speaker 1: with people. But will It and others are hopeful that
Speaker 1: animal testing will be replaced by alternatives that will not
Speaker 1: only spare animals from suffering, but produce more reliable results
Speaker 1: about human effects. One particularly promising technology is the development
Speaker 1: of microchips lined with living human cells that enable them
Speaker 1: to serve as simulated human organs. Geraldine A Hamilton's, President
Speaker 1: and chief Scientific Officer of Emulate Incorporated, explained in an
Speaker 1: email how the devices work. She said, each of Emulates
Speaker 1: propriety organ chips, such as the lung, liver, brain, intestine,
Speaker 1: or kidney, contains tiny hollow channels lined with tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of living human cells and tissues, and is approximately
Speaker 1: the size of a double a battery. An organ chip
Speaker 1: is a living, micro engineered environment that recreates the natural
Speaker 1: physiology and mechanical forces that sells experience within the human body.
Speaker 1: She said that this technology can predict human responses with
Speaker 1: greater precision and detail than modern cell culturing or animal
Speaker 1: based experimental testing. According to Hamilton's the devices already are
Speaker 1: being used by pharmaceutical companies, and NASA is working with
Speaker 1: Emulate to use the company's brain chip in space in
Speaker 1: order to better understand the effects of microgravity and other forces.
Speaker 1: Organ chips also can be combined in a system to
Speaker 1: simulate how multiple organs react to something, and Emulate is
Speaker 1: working on the patient on a chip, which eventually will
Speaker 1: include organ ships that are tailored with an individual patient's
Speaker 1: own cells. Those sorts of developments give opponents of animal
Speaker 1: testing hope that it will soon become a thing of
Speaker 1: the past. As Elizabeth Magner puts it, we are confident
Speaker 1: that this reality is not only possible, but inevitable. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Patrick J. Keiger and produced by
Speaker 1: Tristan McNeil for more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: forward thinking topics, visit our home planet, tostof works dot com.