Animal experimentation and amblyopia: some thoughts about it

Recently there was some publicity about animal experiments performed on kittens by researchers at Cardiff University and people were asked to sign an online petition about it:

"Some kittens were raised in complete darkness while others were deprived of the sight in one eye by having their eyelids sewn shut. The kittens were then anaesthetised, artificially ventilated and paralysed with a drug to prevent eye movements. They were then subjected to highly invasive head surgery during which the skin was cut away, the skull was opened and the brain was exposed for recordings.

After various tests, all the kittens were killed and parts of their brain removed for analysis.

Sophisticated methods of studying vision and the neurologic processes underlying it in human beings already exist. Not only is this experiment inhumane, it is unnecessary for human health.

Ricky Gervais has joined the BUAV in calling for an end to these experiments: “I am appalled that kittens are being deprived of sight in one eye by having their eyelids sewn shut. I thought sickening experiments like these were a thing of the past. I support the BUAV in calling for this research to be stopped.”

I am given to understand that this research at Cardiff University has been discontinued.

To explain why very young kittens have been used for research into the lazy eye condition, and why adults, whether cats or humans - cannot be used for it:

The lazy eye condition: Amblyopia, or "lazy eye", is the loss of an eye's ability to see detail. It is the most common cause of vision problems in children. If it is not tested for and treated early, say before age 5, there is likely to be permanent poor vision in the eye.

I have amblyopia in my left eye. That eye has scarcely any usable vision and effectively sort of 'switches off' when my right eye is open, and leaves all the work to my right eye. This also means in practice that I cannot judge distance. So I've never learned to drive as I didn't feel it would be safe. 

I have been told that my amblyopia was caused by medical/nursing staff covering up that eye for some days when I was only a few days old, something to do with protecting it from a draught, or treating it for an infection - I don't know. - Anyway, the point is, that amblyopia is a developmental condition. It is caused very early in life when the messages from the eye along the optic nerve to the brain should become established and the brain trained to interpret them correctly. If the messages aren't being sent properly during that vital early developmental period then the brain learns to interpret them in a limited, muddled sort of way. I may be wrong, but I think of it as a problem of the optic nerve, rather than the eye itself. I was treated for it - the treatment was to try to force the lazy eye to work by covering up the other eye with a patch - but the treatment was too late and didn't work for me.

The research I have written about would have caused amblyopia in the kittens by preventing messages from the retina along the optic nerve to the brain in the critical period. Such research has been going on for many years. Professor Colin Blakemore, for example, spent some years on this kind of animal research into amblyopia. I don't understand why they do this animal research. To the best of my knowledge, and I stand to be corrected on this, no good ever comes of the research. Despite many years, loads of suffering, oodles of time and money, I've never heard of anything useful coming from it. Occasionally I have enquired over the years if there is any treatment now for my amblyopia, but there isn't. So who, apart from the researchers who are paid for this barbarism, benefits from it?

I have written about animal experiments before, but in relation to drug testing, which is falsely claimed to result in safer drugs to be used on people. I think that animal experimentation is rarely, if ever, of any use at all, and I'm against it, especially if it involves cruelty, as this does. A good book that gives some insight into cruel animal research is The Plague Dogs, by Richard Adams. I recommend it.

I am not myself in favour of the usual sort of animal research that is done "to make medical progress".

I was interested in this letter, which appears on the Letters Page of the online Telegraph today. I hope it is OK to reproduce it here.

Animal research

Sir - You quoted me saying that Oxford University will be glad if and when animal research becomes unnecessary. This is true. However, as I went on to explain, that day has not yet arrived. There is scientific consensus worldwide that some animal research is needed to make medical progress.

Those who believe scientists are unwilling to move away from animal use because of inertia or lazy thinking are misguided. There is every incentive - legal, moral and financial - to find other ways to answer research questions.

Animals are used only where no other research technique is possible.

Professor Rodney Phillips, University of Oxford

I am not myself in favour of the usual sort of animal research that is done "to make medical progress", especially when the "medical progress" is for the supposed benefit of people, rather than animals themselves, and often entails a lot of suffering for the hapless animals that are the subjects of the research. I believe this suffering cannot be morally justified. And there have been plenty of instances of drug companies suppressing evidence they don't want us to know. - Have a look at some of the evidence:

The news that antidepressants in actual fact don't work better than sugar pills and increase the risk of suicide has filled major media during the past year. Psychiatrists, Big Pharma and medical agencies, responsible for distorting the facts for many years, are now working hard to save profits and careers, says Swedish independent investigator and reporter Janne Larsson.
Read article on Sepp Hasslberger's Health Supreme website

Tricyclic antidepressants, e.g. amitriptyline, also known as Elavil, Tryptanol, Endep, Elatrol, Tryptizol, Trepiline, Laroxyl, also cause weight gain/fluid retention and are therefore a common cause of obesity, a very serious illness. Likewise several steroids and HRT - See prescribed steroids and HRT and amitriptyline

Glaxo 'downplayed' warning on heart-attack risk from Aids drug

GlaxoSmithKline and one of its key executives are facing possible manslaughter charges re. side-effects of an anti-Hepatitis "B" vaccine

US VACCINE MAKER TARGET OF HOMOCIDE INVESTIGATION
In a criminal case guaranteed to send shockwaves throughout the international pharmaceutical industry, French authorities are targeting a US-based drug company and its executives in a homicide investigation. The multi-billion dollar corporation GlaxoSmithKline and one of its key executives are facing possible manslaughter charges stemming from allegations that the company failed to fully disclose side effects from an anti-Hepatitis "B" vaccine distributed between 1994 and 1998. Also being investigated is the French-based drug company Sanofi Pasteur, which also sold doses of the Hepatitis "B" vaccine, according to French news sources
Read article at newswithviews.com

Drugs 'of no benefit' to hyperactive children

Scale of pharma payments to med schools revealed

It seems to me that the research is not actually done to benefit the health of people who are ill, but to benefit the profits of the drug companies, because most animal research seems to be testing new drugs or drug variations, and there is a lot of evidence that the drug companies cannot be trusted about the truthfulness of the research findings they disclose, e.g. Read article at pharmalot.com

It was reported on 19 July 2006 in Britain's "Daily Telegraph" that the British Pharmacological Society has drawn attention to the widespread poor prescribing practices among doctors.

I was glad to see this, especially following on as it does, the Sunday Telegraph's report 'Sleaze in the Medical Profession' of July 9th 2006. As a steroid victim myself, damaged and made morbidly obese by being inappropriately prescribed HRT (without testing hormone levels first) and by inadequate monitoring and testing thereafter, I feel peculiarly well-placed to make critical comments.

We are not just badly served by our extremely highly paid doctors, we are ill-served by our politicians and by the Department of Health and by the Parliamentary Select Committees and many other individuals and agencies and professional bodies who should be monitoring these matters. - I wrote well over 30 letters to MPs and Select Committees, medics, scientists, media people and others in 2001 about the dire consequences of inappropriate prescribing - often in high dose - of certain steroids and of HRT and of amitriptyline, an antidepressant drug. Following those I received only one helpful reply - from Professor Sir Richard Doll, agreeing with what I had written about the obesity problems caused by poor prescribing and indicating that these could be lessened by diuretics and/or eating less salt/sodium, a fact I had already deduced. He wrote that all doctors should know this. - Mine didn't - and furthermore, mine CATEGORICALLY refused me diuretics when I asked to try them!

It is over 50 years since steroids were first prescribed and it is both incredible and deplorable that most doctors are still unaware in practice of their potential for causing sodium and water retention and morbid obesity, cancer and type 2 diabetes, heart disease, blindness and the many other serious health problems attendant on these... - That this is the case MUST be largely the responsibility of the researchers working for the drug companies, and the drug companies themselves, who MUST have known the facts because of their research on animals.

Animal research doesn't seem to have saved much suffering in the case of the many millions of victims of drug-induced morbid obesity, does it, since the findings of the animal research have been so well concealed from the people who most needed to know the truth? Nor, of course, was there justification for the deaths and suffering of the animals sacrificed in this research.

See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page.

A call for an end to medical tests on primates

The time has come to stop medical tests on primates

Article in the Guardian:

"Progress will not grind to a halt without animal research, argues Michelle Thew."