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