Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Tammy Drake, you're the director of Research and regulatory policy
Speaker 2: for the Center for Humane Economy. You led the charge
Speaker 2: in getting the passage to that FDA Modernization Act, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure it felt really good and it was a
Speaker 2: heavy lift to get that done. Describe for me what
Speaker 2: the situation is now in terms of animal testing and experimentation.
Speaker 2: What kinds of things are done. I know it's tough
Speaker 2: stuff to hear this. What kinds of things are done
Speaker 2: to dogs and cats and primates.
Speaker 1: And other species.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it isn't pretty. And when you're looking at testing
Speaker 3: for pharmaceuticals, primarily they start with safety pharmacology in general toxicology, right,
Speaker 3: They're looking at cardiovascular system, the central nervous system, gas are, intestinal, respiratory,
Speaker 3: all of that stuff, and then they have to try
Speaker 3: to find a safety margin for a first in human dose.
Speaker 3: In that process they are using rodents and non rodents.
Speaker 3: For instance, if they're looking for acute toxicity, Lu's twenty rats,
Speaker 3: dogs or primates, And when they do that, everybody dies,
Speaker 3: right and in most cases, And Zahir can correct me
Speaker 3: if I'm wrong because I've never worked in a lab. Thankfully,
Speaker 3: all the animals are killed, you know, they go into
Speaker 3: sub chronic testing, chronic testing. Over time, they use more
Speaker 3: and more animals and they kill them because they want
Speaker 3: to do a nekruptcy to see what the heck happened inside.
Speaker 2: So they basically inject them with whatever drug or poison
Speaker 2: it is to the point where, oh, that's the.
Speaker 3: Dose that kills them exactly, and it actually that's exactly
Speaker 3: what they do, and they have to bring it down
Speaker 3: to where they have They call it NOEL. Correct me
Speaker 3: if I'm wrong, a se hair, you're the scientific no
Speaker 3: no observed adverse effect level, right, So what they do
Speaker 3: is they'll start as okay, that killed everybody. Let's go
Speaker 3: down a little bit, Okay, that killed half of them,
Speaker 3: and then they'll keep trying till they get to a
Speaker 3: dose where everybody seems okay. It's gruesome, you know, and
Speaker 3: as an animal lover, you know it's reprehensible. But then
Speaker 3: they have other they have to do, uh, carcinogenicity, sometimes
Speaker 3: they do ocular and skin irritation, photo toxicity, and then
Speaker 3: they do efficacy testing. And when we're speaking pharmaceuticals, pretty
Speaker 3: much everybody dies, all the animals, whether it's the monkeys,
Speaker 3: the dogs, that might the wrap, the cats, whatever they're
Speaker 3: using as a.
Speaker 4: Model and primates, Oh yeah, doctor, yeah, primates.
Speaker 2: Doctors are here. Isn't wouldn't primates be? You think that
Speaker 2: they are? The results from that are more reproducible. Well,
Speaker 2: what kinds of things are done to primates? I think
Speaker 2: you mentioned seventy thousand a year that we know of.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, so you would think you would think, George,
Speaker 4: that primates are. They are believed to be closest to
Speaker 4: us in terms of behavior and physiology. But the reality
Speaker 4: is in primates there are fundamental differences between us and
Speaker 4: them that do not translate when it comes to medical sciences.
Speaker 4: I give you an example of COVID nineteen, which is,
Speaker 4: you know, everybody here is familiar with this. We went
Speaker 4: through that ordeal all of us. In fact, the non
Speaker 4: human primates did not get COVID. They have a structural
Speaker 4: difference in the way receptors work make them more immune
Speaker 4: to COVID infection, and therefore they are terrible as a
Speaker 4: model to study that of infection. Imagine if in fact,
Speaker 4: there hasn't been a recorded non human primate dying from
Speaker 4: disease burdens or multifactorial system failure, the hallmark of COVID
Speaker 4: nineteen DA from the get go, George, again, the translatability
Speaker 4: is not is not there, But let's assume, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: given the general belief that the primates are close to us,
Speaker 4: and there is there is a fundamental issue with with
Speaker 4: primate in terms of leading us down in a rabbit
Speaker 4: hole when it comes to the pharmaco kinetics and the
Speaker 4: dosage that Tammy has just talked about, and that you know,
Speaker 4: the lethality and how do you take that that does
Speaker 4: and apply it to humans. So you have heard recently
Speaker 4: about the shortage of primates. I you know this this
Speaker 4: looking out that story last last year. Basically we need
Speaker 4: to import a lot of primates from from China and
Speaker 4: Tammis actually is an expert on this, and I wrote
Speaker 4: an opinion piece for Without the last last year on
Speaker 4: that where where I chronicle the issue with the primate
Speaker 4: and and and and the futility of using using primates.
Speaker 4: I mean to cut a long story short shortage from
Speaker 4: from the imports of primate being somewhat compensated from Cambodia.
Speaker 4: But then again that has been admired with smuggling issues,
Speaker 4: and Temmy can actually shed more light on this, to
Speaker 4: the point that the Fish Life handed indictment several indictment
Speaker 4: criminal indictments in November of twenty twenty two, again reducing
Speaker 4: the imports from from Cambodia and the animal enthusiast animals
Speaker 4: so enthusiasts for the manument anymore. Research enthusiasts have been
Speaker 4: trying to increase the breeding programs, the domestic bleeding programs
Speaker 4: of primates, and that is a that's a terrible idea
Speaker 4: that has been a quest for decades and they have
Speaker 4: used this particular instance of the shortage in primate for
Speaker 4: laboratory testing to kind of promote that agenda.
Speaker 2: Tammy, I want to talk about the primate experimentation before
Speaker 2: we get into the regulatory situation. Can you tell me
Speaker 2: what is done to primates? Is it the same as
Speaker 2: with dogs are injected until they die? I ask because
Speaker 2: I've seen these these horrible photos of where these little
Speaker 2: monkeys have their heads shaved and their brains are cut open,
Speaker 2: mother alive and awake.
Speaker 3: Yep, they and they put them in and not just
Speaker 3: for you know, if you look at basic research as
Speaker 3: well as drug development, like NIH funded. We have seven
Speaker 3: National Primate Research centers here in the US, and NIH
Speaker 3: funds all of them. And some of the experimentation is
Speaker 3: so shocking. For instance, they here in Oregon. I live
Speaker 3: in Oregon. The Oregon National Primate Research Center does a
Speaker 3: lot of experimentation on drunk monkeys to the tune of
Speaker 3: probably thirty million dollars. And then they got another grant
Speaker 3: to do drunk monkeys and COVID. And there's another experiment
Speaker 3: that is very famous that happened here in Oregon, and
Speaker 3: I don't think they're doing it now, but it was
Speaker 3: a maternal obesity study. They would get, you know, impregnate
Speaker 3: and I think these were Reeseu's macaque monkeys, feed them
Speaker 3: a high fat junk food diet, and then when the
Speaker 3: offspring is born, that'd take it from their mother and
Speaker 3: scare the monkey and then cut the baby monkey's brain
Speaker 3: open to see what happened. And I don't know, George,
Speaker 3: I don't know about you, but tell me how does
Speaker 3: that benefit us. I'm trying to figure it out, because
Speaker 3: if you think most of the research for HIV AIDS
Speaker 3: vaccine has been done on non human primates. Many were
Speaker 3: done on chimpanzees. We don't experiment on chimpanzees in the
Speaker 3: US anymore, but thirty to forty vaccines in approximate ninety
Speaker 3: clinical trials involving more than twenty thousand human volunteers. Every
Speaker 3: single one of the vaccines failed, every single one. It
Speaker 3: costs our tax dollars billions and it's been thirty years.
Speaker 2: You know, the NIH then National Institutes of Health. That
Speaker 2: sounds like a respectable outfit. I've just read, you know,
Speaker 2: working on cancer and really big stuff, but reading about
Speaker 2: the things that they allow that they permit there, it's
Speaker 2: a terrible blemish is a here. You must work with
Speaker 2: these folks over the years. Can you give me the
Speaker 2: broad picture on what they approve?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, and I was you know, I was funded
Speaker 4: by an ihe and I so I So, first of all,
Speaker 4: it's and I know folks the NIH personally, and I've
Speaker 4: worked with different program officers, and I can tell you
Speaker 4: that the staff of the NIH are some of the
Speaker 4: most dedicated people will you will ever meet in your life.
Speaker 4: So the issue is not about the talent at the NIH,
Speaker 4: or the issue about the politics that interfere with the
Speaker 4: work of the NIH and the special interest groups. So
Speaker 4: the NIH is, as you know, a forty five billion
Speaker 4: dollars a year. That was the budget of twenty forty
Speaker 4: five billion. This is we are talking a huge number.
Speaker 4: And for the last seven years, George, the budget of
Speaker 4: the NIH have been consistently increasing. So it's wonderful to
Speaker 4: have to be an ecity where science is funded and appreciated.
Speaker 4: Our position is that a lot of the science that
Speaker 4: is funded, particularly the science that is going into to
Speaker 4: animal research, which is by some estimate is forty seven
Speaker 4: percent of the total NIH budgel. So we are talking
Speaker 4: about what you like, twenty five billions, twenty to twenty.
Speaker 4: This is not a small part of body every year.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: We believe that a lot of that is actually supporting
Speaker 4: wasteful research, and that is a tragedy because the mission
Speaker 4: of the NIH is really to promote human health and
Speaker 4: to advance the innovation and discovery of the molecular basis
Speaker 4: of the diseases in order to translate that into remedies
Speaker 4: and cures and treatments. So there is an issue there
Speaker 4: to a fundamental issue. Probably twenty two billion dollars you
Speaker 4: a year in terms of using the proper modeling and
Speaker 4: funding innovative research that needed to be funded so that
Speaker 4: we do not get a ninety five percent failure late
Speaker 4: when we translate the or based basic science experiments and
Speaker 4: mostly on animals into human human action and outcomes. So
Speaker 4: so so there is there is a huge issue there.
Speaker 4: But I I mean, I give the the folks at
Speaker 4: the NIH, you know, credit for for for being so
Speaker 4: dedicated to to to to finding yours. One thing that
Speaker 4: the public does not know is that actually the NIH
Speaker 4: does not fund science. Now you know, let me explain
Speaker 4: what I mean by that, because that sounds like blasphemy.
Speaker 4: What the NIH does it ensembles on committees and studies
Speaker 4: sections members from the academic committee community, so they bring,
Speaker 4: you know, scientists to review these grants and drank them.
Speaker 4: So who really decides at the end of the day.
Speaker 4: The committee is made up of scientists in ranking and
Speaker 4: evaluating grants. It's really not the nihe it's a scientific community.
Speaker 4: And that scientific community is ninety nine percent a bias
Speaker 4: towards animal experimentations. So you can, you know, you can
Speaker 4: do the math and get to the conclusion that unless
Speaker 4: that changed radically, unless we have a radical change in
Speaker 4: the process of how we evaluate grants, and you know,
Speaker 4: spike these committees with individuals who really understand what we
Speaker 4: are talking about when we talk about alternative methods to
Speaker 4: animal testing, innovative technology to artificial intelligence, orgaedoids, organized ship
Speaker 4: and these type of new technologies that are more human relevant.
Speaker 4: We are going to continue to per pitch with the
Speaker 4: error and and and then continue to fund, unfortunately, projects
Speaker 4: that will lead us nowhere.
Speaker 2: Well, you would think ni H, with all their expertise,
Speaker 2: must know that these billions of dollars are being wasted.
Speaker 2: You know that it's it's not producing what they want,
Speaker 2: that that money could be put into something that is
Speaker 2: far more productive and may actually make some progress on
Speaker 2: these issues.
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