Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Cost of Experiments on Animals - Hardcover

Greek M. D., C. Ray; Greek D.V.M., Jean Swingle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826412262 ISBN 13: 9780826412263

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2000

Synopsis

Cancer has long been cured in mice but not in people. Why? Successful laboratory treatments and cures for one species don't necessarily result in cures for humans. But, because practice has become economically entrenched within medical industry, animal experimentation -against all medical evidence- continues.The human benefits of animal experimentation- a bedrock of the scientific age- is a myth perpetuated by an amorphous but insidious network of multibillion-dollar special interests: research facilities, drug companies, universities, scientisits, and even cage manufacturers.C.Ray Greek, MD, and veterniary dermatologist, Jean Swingle Gree, DMV, show how the public has been deliberately misled and blow the lid off the vested-interest groups whose hidden agendas put human health at risk.

About this title

About the Author

C. Ray Greek, M. D., is a board-certified anesthesiologist who has devoted himself to the message of this book. He and coauthor Jean Swingle Greek, D.V.M., speak at national and international forums on the subject of animal experimentation and have recently established Americans for Medical Advancement, a nonprofit foundation based in Los Angeles.Jean Swingle Greek, D.V.M. and co-author C. Ray Greek, M.D. speak at national and international forums on the subject of animal experimentation and have recently established Americans for Medical Advancement, a nonprofit foundation based in Los Angeles.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Comparative medicine may not be everyone's idea of a riveting dinner topic, but it is ours. This book grew out of our meal-time conversations during the 1980s. Those were the years of our professional educationone of us as a veterinarian, and the other as an anesthesiologist. When our animal and human patients exhibited the same symptoms, discussion became its most heated. This was because diagnoses and treatment plans for animals frequently differed for humans. Pitting the veterinarian's dictates on the one hand against the physician's on the other, we would each get huffy and self-righteous, then whip out our textbooks to prove our accuracy. Many references later, sure enough, according to the books, we were both right. Well, this was puzzling! These discrepancies flew in the face of what we had been taught to revere. Animal experimentation was an inviolable convention - a political sacred cow. Everything we had been taught, from fetal pigs forward, suggested that animals were just like humans, a bit furry and funny looking perhaps, but otherwise just the same. Like everyone, we had been convinced by many familiar determinants: animal experimentation for human medical research had a time-honored history. Milestones supposedly garnered from animal studies were constantly in the media. As medical students, we were well familiar with the government's requirement for animal assays in drug development and its financial rewards to research institutions. Certainly, grant money for such projects was vital to the incomes of our teachers and universities. Indeed, our medical training pivoted on assumed anatomic, biochemical and physiological characteristics shared by man and beast. This sizable and persuasive rationalism averred that animals were ideal test beds for human therapies. So, why then was Ray's human patient with high cholesterol developing coronary heart disease and Jean's dog with high cholesterol experiencing a thyroid disorder? Why do women who have had hysterectomies need to fight osteoporosis while neutered cats live longer, healthier lives? And why are humans not vaccinated for parvo and dogs for rubella? Our dinner conversations suggested that most animal diseases simply do not occur in humans. Conversely, the major killers of humankind are extraordinarily rare among the four-legged set. Plainly, if there was parity, it was not universal. Sure, the basics are the same. Fundamental cell activity and metabolic processes - the stuff of research decades ago - correspond in animals and humans. Still, we thought, why did scientists use animals back when human autopsy, tissue culture techniques or human observation could have provided the same information? Some animal experimentation led to developments. But in how many cases were the animals necessary? Animals can be used to grow viruses, but so can Petri dishes and human tissue cultures. All mammalian blood - animal and human - has components in common, so why not use human blood for totally accurate results? Moreover, when it came to present-day research - mostly involving microbiology on the most complex levels - why scrutinize species whose physiologic response to disease, disease manifestation and disease incidence so clearly deviates from human response? Logic, it seemed to us, even back then when we had but few comparisons, was somehow amiss.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0826412262
• ISBN 13: 9780826412263
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224