The Animal Research Wars

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The article in the last issue, "Animals and Medicine: Do Animal Experiments Predict Human Responses?' teeter-totters between faulty logic and one-sided referencing. Either way it is neither a fair nor balanced critique of animals in research. Its central thesis, "We will argue that there is not strong scientific evidence to support the use of animals as predictive models in drug testing and disease research," is buoyed up by anecdotal instances in which animal studies were flawed in moving drag research forward.

To use similar logic: X-rays are no good for diagnosing allergies and antibiotics can't mend broken bones, so we should discard those from hospitals. The fact is that animal studies may not be perfect predictors--who but the authors …