Miriam Wells in Vice News:
After speaking to people on either side of the debate, it was interesting how much they had in common — everyone agrees that testing on animals is deeply unpleasant, that it would be better if animals were not used, and that phasing out the use of animals in medical research is the ultimate goal. What the animal rights advocates and the scientists disagree on is how much benefit medical animal testing has brought, how fast animals should be phased out, and how they should be treated in the meantime. “People automatically assume that primates are a better model [for medical research] because they're so similar to us,” Kathleen Conlee, vice president of the US-based NGO Humane Society, told VICE News. “But the differences are enormous when you come to their biology. When it comes to the immune system that's where the greatest differences are and that's often what we're studying.” Nearly 90 vaccines that had promising results in primates have failed in clinical trials in humans, said Conlee, adding that very few detailed scientific studies on the scientific value of primate use had ever been conducted. One of the only major US studies, the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council's landmark 2011 report, Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity, concluded that “chimpanzees are not necessary for most biomedical research,” and that there were very few cases where chimpanzee research offered valuable enough insights to “offset the moral costs” of the experiments. The Humane Society is now pushing for a similar study to be done on research involving other primates. “Animals models are always very crude and aren't giving us the answers we need,” said Conlee. “They are always going to have limitations, whereas non-animal models will only continue to improve. So why do we continue to put such a huge investment in these animal models, and very little in alternatives?”
More here.