History of animal testing
In his unfinished 1627 utopian novel, New Atlantis, scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon proposed a research center containing "parks and enclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds which we use ... for dissections and trials; that thereby we may take light what may be wrought upon the body of man."
Boyle conducted numerous trials during which he placed a large variety of different nonhuman animals, including birds, mice, eels, snails and flies, in the vessel of the pump and studied their reactions as the air was removed.
[6] Here, he describes an injured lark: …the Bird for a while appear'd lively enough; but upon a greater Exsuction of the Air, she began manifestly to droop and appear sick, and very soon after was taken with as violent and irregular Convulsions, as are wont to be observ'd in Poultry, when their heads are wrung off: For the Bird threw her self over and over two or three times, and died with her Breast upward, her Head downwards, and her Neck awry.
[7]In the 18th century, Antoine Lavoisier decided to use a guinea pig in a calorimeter because he wanted to prove that respiration was a form of combustion.
In 1921 Otto Loewi provided the first substantial evidence that neuronal communication with target cells occurred via chemical synapses.
[10] In the 1960s David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel demonstrated the macro columnar organization of visual areas in cats and monkeys, and provided physiological evidence for the critical period for the development of disparity sensitivity in vision (i.e.: the main cue for depth perception), and were awarded a Nobel Prize for their work.
[12] In 1997, innovations in frogs, Xenopus laevis, by developmental biologist Jonathan Slack of the University of Bath, created headless tadpoles, which could allow future applications in donor organ transplantation.
For example, a 2014 study from McGill University in Montreal, Canada suggests that mice handled by men rather than women showed higher stress levels.
Roughly 15 years later, Behring announced such a mix suitable for human immunity which largely banished diphtheria from the scourges of humankind.
The success of the animal studies in producing the diphtheria antitoxin are attributed by some as a cause of the decline of the early 20th century antivivisectionist movement in the USA.
Hinshaw followed these studies with human trials that provided a dramatic advance in the ability to stop and reverse the progression of tuberculosis.
[24] In the 1940s, Jonas Salk used rhesus monkey cross-contamination studies to isolate the three forms of the polio virus that affected hundreds of thousands yearly.
[26] Albert Sabin made a superior "live" vaccine by passing the polio virus through animal hosts, including monkeys.
[31] In 1960, Albert Starr pioneered heart valve replacement surgery in humans after a series of surgical advances in dogs.
[35] The non-human primate models of AIDS, using HIV-2, SHIV, and SIV in macaques, have been used as a complement to ongoing research efforts against the virus.
Such exposures are now followed rapidly with anti-HIV drugs, and this practice has resulted in measurable transient virus infection similar to the NHP model.
"The comparison and correlation of results obtained in monkey and human studies are leading to a growing validation and recognition of the relevance of the animal model.
Although each animal model has its limitations, carefully designed drug studies in nonhuman primates can continue to advance our scientific knowledge and guide future clinical trials.
[45] Presently, animal experimentation continues to be used in research that aims to solve medical problems including Alzheimer's disease,[46] multiple sclerosis[47] spinal cord injury,[48] and many more conditions in which there is no useful in vitro model system available.
"[55][56] O'Meara thus expressed one of the chief scientific objections to vivisection: that the pain that the individual endured would interfere with the accuracy of the results.
"[57][58]Opposition to the use of nonhuman animals in medical research arose in the United States during the 1860s, when Henry Bergh founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), with America's first specifically anti-vivisection organization being the American AntiVivisection Society (AAVS), founded in 1883.
In the UK, an article in the Medical Times and Gazette on April 28, 1877, indicates that anti-vivisectionist campaigners, mainly clergymen, had prepared a number of posters entitled, "This is vivisection," "This is a living dog," and "This is a living rabbit," depicting nonhuman animals in a poses that they said copied the work of Elias von Cyon in St. Petersburg, though the article says the images differ from the originals.
In 1831, the founders of the Dublin Zoo—the fourth oldest zoo in Europe, after Vienna, Paris, and London—were members of the medical profession, interested in studying the individuals both while they were alive and when they were dead.
[62] Claude Bernard, known as the "prince of vivisectors"[63] and the father of physiology—whose wife, Marie Françoise Martin, founded the first anti-vivisection society in France in 1883[64]—famously wrote in 1865 that "the science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen.
