Animal testing does no good, just harm

The failure of Merck's V520 HIV vaccine highlights a serious problem in HIV/AIDS scientists' heavy reliance on animal testing. According to the National Institutes of Health, all of the more than 80 vaccines for HIV/AIDS developed using animals and brought to human trials have failed. V520 is only the most recent in this string of failures. It showed promise in preclinical trials on mice, rabbits and monkeys, but in clinical trials, it actually increased human susceptibility to HIV.

A 2005 article by an animal experimenter at the Washington National Primate Research Center provides insight as to why these vaccines continue to fall short. It stated that "SIV [the form of the virus that affects nonhuman primates] models do not allow direct testing of HIV vaccines" and that "because of the complexity and limitations of the nonhuman primate models, it remains difficult to extrapolate data from these models to inform the development of HIV vaccines."

In other words, HIV/AIDS experiments on monkeys don't work. Yet, because they are convenient - monkeys are bred and imported to the United States by the tens of thousands every year - and because federal funding is copious, studies on animals continue.

Concerns about the flaws of animal testing and the virtues of human-based medicine are nothing new. As far back as 1987, renowned AIDS researcher Dr. Allen Goldstein of George Washington University stated, "The sooner we begin testing on humans, the sooner we'll hopefully be able to develop a vaccine." Epidemiological, clinical, in vitro (non-animal) and computational research methods have provided science with some of its most important insights into HIV and AIDS and will continue to play an integral role in the discovery of an effective treatment. Some of the most widely used AIDS treatments, such as AZT, 3TC and protease inhibitors, were developed using non-animal methods.

Animal-based HIV/AIDS research prolongs the suffering of humans and animals. Hundreds of millions of federal dollars are squandered every year on these dead-end studies, as are the efforts of thousands of researchers, which should be focused on developing new human-relevant methods to treat and prevent HIV/AIDS.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2008-04-01/news/0803310268_1_hiv-vaccin...