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Facing attacks, Iowa sends research underground
Faced with the threat of attacks from animal rights activists, the University of Iowa is taking its animal research lab underground.
The university's board of regents has approved an $11.1 million budget to create a 35,000-square-foot vivarium that will be dug out under a grassy courtyard. The new lab will connect the university's Medical Education Research Facility and the Carver Biomedical Research Building, providing greater security with no need to transport research animals above ground. The board noted that other research centers, including the University of Southern California, have also built underground labs to protect researchers and their work from attack.
It's not a vague threat. Five years ago the Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for organizing a break-in by masked intruders at the University of Iowa in which computers were trashed and hundreds of research animals were stolen. And in southern California researchers' homes and vehicles have been subject to attacks as well. Even more aggressive strategies are used by animal rights groups in the UK, which have organized campaigns to intimidate researchers who undertake experiments with animals.
- read the report from the Des Moines Register
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Comments
By Harvey Grove | Posted 6:46pm | June 19, 2009
FDA regulations require all drugs be proven safe and effective on humans before they can be marketed for humans. Drugs for animals have to be proven safe and effective on animals. This means they have to be tested on animals first in order to get an idea as to what the drug does to various organs of the body because to use them on humans without any history can kill a human. The fact that a drug is used on animals provides a lot of data for humans, however, it is not the last word because drugs designed for animals often are useless on humans due to toxicity.While many drugs used on humans were tested on animals this does not mean they will work the same way on humans or at what dose. Age, gender, weight, allergy, kidney and liver function, cardiac effects, gastric effects, bladder effects, diabetes, pregnancy, race, carcinogenic effects, what does it do to nursing mothers, does it show up in the mothers milk and many other factors have to be considered before prescribing it for humans.
The data obtained for veterinary use often helps to determine efficacy on humans. I'm sure those that want to treat animals do not want to use a drug that had not been tested on animals first. How can a company guarantee usefulness on animals or humans without adequate data from each.
The idea of not testing veterinary drugs on animals prevents the development of drugs to help animals. How are they to determine if the drugs are effective on the very animals they want to help. Their good intentions will cause the death of many animals and humans.
Think it over before you tear some laboratory apart.
Before any drug is FDA approved for use on humans the rules state the drug MUST be proven SAFE AND EFFECTIVE by FDA for the indicated use. This is so that any side effects that occur (all medication has side effects) will be due to the drug as opposed to interaction with any other medication the patient may be taking (as often occurs in clinical practice).
No matter how much info is available before taking any medication more is needed because medicine is an ART NOT A SCIENCE. It is common for two docs to have different methods of treating the same problem and this can require different medications.Drs are conservative and will always use older drugs because they are familiar with them. Any NEW medication is used ONLY as a LAST RESORT because the doc has little or no experience with a new one and does not yet know about drug interactions with the new one. As it is, A PRESCRIPTION for any medication is really an experiment as a patient's response can NEVER be predicted. Experience and success with any medication does not mean it will work the same on all other patients with the same disorder. Dosage of medication may have to be adjusted due to patient's weight, gender, age, race (different races can respond differently to a number of drugs), allergy and many other reasons. The response of animals to drugs is not always the same as it is to humans (there is a tranquilizer for horses that does not work on humans).
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