What Does Animal Welfare Really Mean?
Biomedical industry lobbyist Frankie Trull has once again been touting “the essential need for animals in medical research.” Repeatedly, she tells us that animal testing was important or necessary for this or that medical discovery. She never mentions the failures of animal-modeled research – for example, that animal models predicted that Vioxx would be good for instead of dangerous to our hearts. More importantly, she never gives details about just how the animal models are supposed to be necessary. This is important because regulations prevent new drugs being brought to the US market without animal testing. Until those laws change, it will always be possible to say that we wouldn’t have Life-Saving Treatment X without animal testing. That doesn’t mean the animal testing was necessary for anything more than compliance with the law. It also does not answer the question what could have been accomplished had comparable resources, intelligence and skill been devoted to non-animal-based re
