– Dr.s Greek and Greek p. 51

“Notably in the identification of central nervous system activity, animal models are unreliable indicators…some drugs of proven value in man have negligible or paradoxical activity in laboratory animals … inconsistencies are an inevitable outcome of fundamental species-determined differences, and doubtless a number of compounds of potential therapeutic value are lost to medicine, having demonstrated little activity in an array of inappropriate animal models.”

– Dr. J.F. Dunne, Textbook of Adverse Drug Reactions quoted by Greek and Greek p. 204

“In recent years, participants in meetings of the American Association of Neuropathologists have heard criticism about the increasing use of animal models to study human neurologic disease…A strong cadre of diagnostic and research neuropathologists believe that only human material can provide relevant answers to many problems about human central nervous system disease. In fact, examination of the data bears out this contention.”

– R.B. Hill and R.E. Anderson, The Autopsy – Medical Practice and Public Policy, Butterworth 1988. Greek and Greek p 205

“I cannot help feeling that the answers to our questions about the functions of the human brain will not be found in that way [animal experiments], but as they always have been found – in the careful collection of clinical facts and their pathological correlations.”

– Dr. Hugh Jarvie, Lancet August 16, 1958 p. 365. Greek and Greek p.207

“The history of the development of both the major antidepressants and the antipsychotic drugs points up the fact that major scientific discoveries can evolve as a consequence of clinical investigation, rather than deductions from basic animal [-modeled] research.”

– J.M. Davis, Antipsychotic Drugs, in H.I. Kaplan, B.J. Sadock, 9 eds. Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, Fourth Edition. Baltimore, Williams and Wilkins, 1985. Greek and Greek p. 243

“Numerical assessments of human risk, even if based on good animal data, seem well beyond the scope of the scientifically possible…The dose-response models now used in numerical extrapolation are quite far removed from biology…In the present state of the art, making quantitative assessments of human risk from animal experiments has little scientific merit.”

– Scientists D. Freedman and H. Zeisel, Statistical Science 1988; 3:1-2, 3-56. Greek and Greek p. 51

“The Federal Register for July 17th, 1992 carries the extraordinary announcement that large numbers of substances, classified heretofore by the National Toxicology Program as carcinogens, are to be removed from that list. This announcement codifies understanding that have been growing slowly- and against bitter political opposition- in the scientific community, to the effect that rodent-to-human extrapolations used in animal screening programs are invalid.”

– Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, Higher Superstition, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Greek and Greek p. 83

William Campbell, president and CEO of Phillip Morris, testifying in 1993:
“To my knowledge, It’s not been proven that cigarette smoking causes cancer…I base that on the fact traditionally, there is, you know, in scientific terms, there are hurdles related to causation, and at this time there is no evidence that they have been able to reproduce cancer in animals from cigarette smoking.”

– Quoted in the New York Times, December 1993. Greek and Greek p. 83

“Mice are actually poor models of the onset of the majority of human cancers despite the reliance of biomedical research on mouse models to understand these cancers.”

– Lab Animal Magazine June 2001, Volume 30, No. 6, p. 13. Greek and Greek p. 85

“It is in fact hard to find a single, common solid neoplasm [cancer] where management and expectation of cure has been markedly affected by animal [modeled] research.”

– Dr. Harrison, oncologist, Clinical Oncology, 1980: 16:1-2. Greek and Greek p. 86

“Extrapolating from one species to another is fraught with uncertainty…For almost all of the chemicals tested to date, rodent bioassays have not been cost-effective. They give limited and uncertain information on carcinogenicity, generally give no indication of mechanism of action, and require years to complete. [They are] rarely the best approach for deciding whether to classify a chemical as a human carcinogen.”

– Dr. Lester Lave, of Carnegie-Mellon University and colleagues Drs. Ennever, Rosenkrantz, and Omenn, in journal Nature vol. 336, p. 631, 1988. Greek and Greek p. 87

“The principal method of determining potential carcinogenicity of substances is based on studies of daily administration of huge doses of chemicals to inbred rodents for a lifetime. Then, by questionable models, which include large safety factors, the results are extrapolated to effects of miniscule doses in humans…The standard carcinogen tests that use rodents are an obsolescent relic of the ignorance of past decades.”

– Philip H. Abelson, Deputy Editor, in his editorial in Science, vol. 249, p. 1357, 1990. Greek and Greek p. 87

“There is at present no hard evidence to show the value of more extensive and more prolonged laboratory testing as a method of reducing eventual risk in human patients. In other words the predictive value of studies carried out in animals is uncertain. The statutory bodies such as the Committee on Safety of Medicines [Britain’s counterpart to the FDA] that require these tests do so largely as an act of faith rather than on hard scientific grounds. With thalidomide, for example, it is only possible to produce specific deformities in a very small number of species of animal. In this particular case, therefore, it is unlikely that specific tests in pregnant animals would have given the necessary warning: the right species would probably never have been used.”

– Prof. George Teeling-Smith, A Question of Balance: The Benefits and risks of pharmaceutical innovation, p.29, publishers Office of Health Economics, 1980. Greek and Greek p. 109

“Yes, I think it is very clear to all of us who are engaged in the business of assessing toxicity data that, when volumes of data are proudly presented to us after a carcinogenicity study [on animals] showing that there was a tumour in this organ or that, we look at it and we scratch our heads, and we wonder what on earth we can make of it…I think very often the carcinogenicity studies are a waste of everybody’s time and a fearful waste of animals. They are conducted partly because we are not sure what to do instead, and partly because they are a political gesture and a very miserable one at that.”

– Professor Andre McLean, Department of Clinical Pharmacology, University College, London speaking at a conference reported in Animals and Alternatives in Toxicology, p. 86, ed. M.Balls, J. Bridges and J. Southee, publisher Macmillan, 1991. Greek and Greek p. 109-110

“[Animal carcinogenicity tests on new drugs are] inaccurate, often insensitive and generally misleading.”

– Dr. John Griffin, Director of the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry, quoted in the pharmaceutical magazine Scrip, p. 23, February 10, 1991. Greek and Greek p. 110

“As a very approximate estimate, for any individual drug, up to twenty-five percent of the toxic effects observed in animal studies might be expected to occur as adverse reaction in man.”

– Dr. A.P. Fland, writing in Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vol. 71, pp. 693-696, 1978. Greek and Greek p. 110

“Unfortunately this use of animal models for predicting risks for man is beset with difficulties, it is rarely possible to be sure that the animal model properly represents the relationship in man…Even if it were possible to improve the accuracy of the present-day test procedures, so that the risk to the test animals were known with greater precision, this would not necessarily bring about a corresponding improvement in the assessment of potential risk to man, because of the uncertainty regarding the relevance of the animal data for man.”

– From Risk Assessment: Report of a Royal Society Study Group, publishers the Royal Society p. 72-73, 1983. Greek and Greek p.110

“The extensive animal reproductive studies to which all new drugs are now subjected are more in the nature of a public relations exercise than a serious contribution to drug safety.”

– Prof. R.W. Smithells, Monitoring for Drug Safety, ed. Inman, pp.306-313, 1980 Greek and Greek p. 112

“The weakness and intellectual poverty of a naïve trust in animal tests may be shown in several ways, e.g. the humiliatingly large number of medicines discovered only by serendipitous observation in man (ranging from diuretics to antidepressants), or by astute analysis of deliberate or accidental poisoning, the notorious examples of valuable medicines which have seemingly ‘unacceptable’ toxicity in animal, e.g., griseofulvin producing tumours and furosemide causing hepatic necrosis in mice, the stimulant action of morphine in cats, and such instances of unpredicted toxicity in man such as the production of pulmonary hypertension by Aminorex and SMON. The rapidly increasing interest in clinical pharmacology, and the drive to better means of measurements in man, also reflect the uncertainty of animal experimentation and realization that the study of man alone can ever prove entirely valid for other men.”

– Dr. Anthony Dayan of the Wellcome Research Laboratories, in Risk-Benefit Analysis in Drug Research, ed. Cavalla, p. 97, 1981. Greek and Greek p. 92

“Unfortunately, there is no absolute certainty that a substance that has not been found to produce any adverse effects in animal models will also be safe for humans…Examples have been frequently presented in the literature as to how medically important drugs were discovered by luck in humans that would not have been found by current testing procedures had the initial studies been with animal models…There are inherent problems in trying to make interspecies comparison. By taxonomic definition, a rat is a rat and not a human. Human beings have been reproductively isolated for millions of years, and in addition to reproductive differences, numerous other metabolic differences have also developed.”

– Principles of Animal Extrapolation. Calabrese, Edward J. Lewis Publishing 1991 p. 5-7. Greek and Greek p.118

“The comparative pharmacodynamics and kinetics of most agents are unknown for many species, especially the smaller laboratory animals. Extrapolation of data from one species to another is fraught with error and should be avoided.”

– Veterinarians Gordon J. Benson and John C. Thurmon, JAVMA 1987;191: 1227-30. Greek and Greek p. 124

“…it is impossible to establish the reliability of animal data until humans are exposed.”

– Op Flint of Bristol-Meyers Squibb Pharmaceutical, Neurotoxicology In vitro, Pentreath, V.W. (ed.) Taylor & Francis 1999 p. 9 G Greek and Greek p. 124

“…the best guess for the correlation of adverse reactions in man and animal toxicity data is somewhere between five and twenty-five percent.”

– Dr. Ralph Heywood, former director of animal research laboratory Huntingdon Research Centre (now Huntingdon Life Sciences) 1989 Greek and Greek p. 125

“What I am trying to get at is a situation where we do not automatically accept the traditional toxicology…I think I am saying that the present tests are well known to us but that does not make them good. There may be better tests around, but we have no incentive whatsoever to look for them at the moment. In fact, quite the reverse…”

– Dr. R. Brimblecombe, Vice-President of Research and Development, Smith, Kline and French Laboratories, in Risk-Benefit Analysis in Drug Research, Cavalla ed., p. 153, 1981 Greek and Greek p. 129

“Today the subject and practice of toxicology have become exalted to the eminence and influence of a religion. It is, moreover, an established form of worship, actively supported by the State. It has its creeds and its commandments, and its hierarchy of high-priests, worshipers, adherents and novitiates. Again, like a religion, it relies more on faith, than on reason.”

– Dr.Roy Goulding, clinical toxicologist, formerly head of the Poisons Unit at Guy’s Hospital, London, in a speech given on November 12th, 1990. P. Botham and I. Purchase in News Scientist May 2. Greek and Greek p. 129

“My [animal] experiments had done little but unfit me to operate with the human intestine.”

– Sir Frederick Treves, respected surgeon, Br Med J, 1898 2; pp. 1385-90 Greek and Greek p. 147

“Has not the contribution of the [animal] laboratory to surgery of the stomach, for example, been almost negligible when it has not been potentially dangerous because divergent from human experience and therefore inapplicable.”

– Dr. Moynihan, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, Lancet 1930, October 11, 784). Greek and Greek p. 147

“Nobody has become a surgeon because of having operated on animals. He has only learnt wrongly through animals. I have been able to see this over my many decades as a surgeon, also as a director of hospitals. I have carried out tens of thousands of operations on people without ever performing them first on an animal.”

– Salvatore Rocca Rossetti, surgeon and professor of Urology at the University of Turin, Italy. Greek and Greek p. 169

“I have been a surgeon for 51 years…If I had had to learn surgery through animal experiments I would gave been an incompetent in this field, just as I consider those of my colleagues to be incompetent who say that they have learned surgery through animal experimentation. It’s true that there are always advocates of vivisection who say that one must first practice on animals in order to become a surgeon. That is a dishonest statement, made by people who reap financial benefit from it.”

– Dr. Ferdinando de Leo, professor of Pathological and Clinical Surgery at the University of Naples in a television interview with Hans Ruesch , May 6, 1986 Greek and Greek p. 188

“Of the twenty-six industrialized nations, the United States ranks twenty-second in infant mortality. Although our nation spends more money per person on health care than any other country, only four developed nations have worse statistics than the United States. Moreover, the rate of premature births continues to increase here, while it decreases in other industrially developed nations. A major part of the reason for this is, as we shall see, that scientific resources go to animal studies here instead of human health care and education.”

– Drs. Ray and Jean Greek, Specious Science p. 172

“The great majority of perinatal toxicological [animal] studies seem to be intended to convey medico-legal protection to the pharmaceutical houses and political protection to the official regulatory bodies, rather than produce information that might be of value in human therapeutics.”

– Prof. D.F. Hawkins, Professor of Obstetric Therapeutics & Gynaecology, Hammersmith Hospital, London, in Drugs and Pregnancy: Human Teratogenesis and Related Problems, publisher Churchill Livingstone, p. 451-49, 1983. Greek and Greek p 180

“Experiments with animals have yielded considerable information concerning the teratogenic effects of drugs. Unfortunately, these experimental findings cannot be extrapolated from species to species or even from strain to strain within the same species, much less from animals to humans.”

– Dr. S.J. Yaffe, American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine 1980, p. 13. Greek and Greek p. 185

“The animal researchers would have us look at a drowning child in the water. We are with a hundred dogs in a boat. They suggest we throw the dogs into the water so they can die with the child.”

– Dr. Neal Barnard on the futility of animal experimentation for children, quoted by Drs. Greek and Greek p. 201