Are you a hypocrite for taking medications if you are opposed to animal experimentation?

These days, it’s relatively easy to adhere to a cruelty-free lifestyle when it comes to cosmetics and personal and household products.  Animal testing is not a legislative requirement and there are countless cruelty-free options.  Medications however, are a different story.

Regardless of whatever drugs we take – be they pain-killers, antibiotics or chemotherapy drugs – at some stage in their development every one of them will have been tested on animals.  And there would be very, very few people opposed to animal research who can claim to have never taken any medications based on their ethics. Does this make those people hypocrites?  I don’t believe so.

This is an issue that reigned heavily on me when initially diagnosed with breast cancer almost two years ago, and something I have considered at length.  I was acutely aware of the vast financial resources invested in cancer research – much of which involves animal experimentation.  Being staunchly opposed to animal experiments my situation posed a massive personal dilemma, and so I undertook my own research to help me reconcile my ethical choice in regards to my own health.

Naturally, every one of us has an interest in remaining alive and healthy, and we should take advantage of whatever medications are available to us today. I am, of course, not opposed to medicines, nor the use of a drug where it could be of benefit.  I am however, very much opposed to the way in which they have been tested.  These medications will have been tested on animals due to legislative requirements (mainly the US Federal Drug Administration –aka the FDA).  But the fact that they were used in the process does not imply that they were a necessary part of the development.

Nine out of ten drugs ‘proven’ effective in animal tests fail in clinical trials. That’s a massive 90% failure rate.  What other sort of industrial process would survive with an absurd 90% failure rate?  There are so many differences between animals in their anatomy, genetics and metabolism which make them inappropriate models for human medicine.  Consider Tamoxifen for example – the drug I am now taking to block oestrogen.  In monkeys and rats, Tamoxifen can also act as an anti-oestrogen, but in mice, dogs and rats it can have  the opposite effect, behaving like an oestrogen. Can we therefore credit the release of this drug to animal experiments?  Or does this illustrate that animal experiments are unreliable?

In short, the drugs we have available to us today are here not here because of animal tests but despitethem.  Rather than shunning them, we should instead be pushing for non-animal methodologies that are species-specific and more likely to be effective.

My personal investigations into chemotherapy drugs revealed that the drugs I was to be given (Adriamycin, Cyclophosphamide and Taxol) were discovered more than forty years ago – almost before I was born.  It didn’t make sense to me.  We’ve seen countless news headlines over the past few decades heralding cures for cancer - all of course based on animal trials. Where was that miracle cure now that I needed it?  And what have all the millions of animal lives lost and billions of dollars pumped into cancer research in the interim achieved?

Instead of being grateful for the limited number of treatments we have available to us today, we should instead be dissatisfied that there are still no cures for cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, diabetes and many others.  Imagine the treatments and possibly even cures we could have available to us today if the magnitude of resources wasted on ineffective animal experiments throughout the last few decades had been redirected to species-specific research.

With cosmetics and household products we have a choice – an option of using cruelty-free.  It’s not only imperative that we have cruelty-free options with our medicines; it’s essential if we are to find genuine cures.

For further information about animal experiments: Please visit www.HumaneResearch.org.au
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