Your Mantreal Gazette
Killing them with kindness
Research takes toll; Quebec leads the pack in its use of animals
MAX HARROLD, The Gazette
Published: Sunday, June 17, 2007

A squeak, a tail flick, quicker breaths: these are the signs Jim Pfaus looks for in his lab rats to see if he's hurting them too much.

"There are signs of pain," Pfaus, a professor of neuroscience in Concordia University's department of psychology who studies rats' sexual behaviour, said last week.

"If they struggle, or vocalize, I know they're feeling it too much." That's when he either reduces the medication he's testing, increases the anaesthetic or stops.
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People who object to animal research - as Air Canada passengers did recently after it was revealed the airline was regularly shipping dozens of live, healthy beagles at a time to Paris for medical research - should consider the contribution to scientific progress, Pfaus said.

Following complaints, Air Canada halted the beagle shipments, but their U.S. breeder, Marshall BioResources, simply switched to another airline.

For Pfaus, whose lab "goes through" about 500 rats a year, the rodents are crucial partners in his quest to unlock some epic secrets of human physiology.

"Sex is the most important thing we (humans) do, aside from taking care of our bodies," said Pfaus, 48, who has been teaching at Concordia for 10 years. Because of his lab's research, a promising female sexual enhancement drug, PT-141, is now being tested in humans.

"Believe it or not, the areas of the female rat brains that get turned on for sex are the same areas in a human woman's brain," he said.

If scientists could avoid using animals, they would, he said. "We just can't go around cutting people's heads open to study their brains." He makes sure he and his students follow guidelines for humane use of the rats and their euthanasia - protocols issued by the Canadian Council on Animal Care, a publicly funded agency that monitors animal research.

Pfaus is part of a CCAC ethics committee that reviews research projects at universities and private research facilities.

"We can't keep our grants if we don't follow the ethics guidelines," Pfaus said.

Although rats, he said, are fairly cognizant of pain and are capable of empathy toward other animals and even recognizing different humans, they are not viewed as equal to cats and dogs.

"Because of the sentiment people attach to them, cats and dogs are very highly protected" by the CCAC's guidelines, he said. Primates like monkeys are also protected with more stringent guidelines for research, he said.

But Michael O'Sullivan, executive director of Humane Society of Canada, criticized the CCAC, whose 22 member organizations include many more research-driven groups than those centred around animal welfare (the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, a rival of O'Sullivan's group, is a member of the CCAC, however).

"All they do is scratch each other's backs so they can get the funding they need to continue their projects," he said, adding that the apparent veil of secrecy surrounding animal research confirms that the industry is up to something it doesn't want the public to know about.

Quebec attracts more than 50 per cent of all investments in pharmaceutical research in Canada, according to Francois Lessard of Rx&D, a pharmaceutical industry trade group.

More than 30 drug companies have head offices in the province, and the industry creates more than 50,000 direct and indirect jobs with $450 million invested in research and development, including $30 million allocated to universities and hospitals.

The muscle of Quebec's pharmaceutical industry relative to the rest of Canada probably explains why more cats, dogs and primates are used here than in our larger neighbour, Ontario (see box). Several Montreal-area drug companies contacted declined to discuss animal testing. The Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal, affiliated with the Universite de Montreal, also declined to comment.

John Pippin, a cardiologist in Dallas who is also senior medical and research adviser for the anti-animal testing group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, based in the United States, said it is precisely to do more and better business that the pharmaceutical industry should move away from testing drugs for humans on animals. The yield of good results is very low because of the anatomical differences between species, he said.

"Testing on animals is a great tradition, but it's outdated," Pippin said. Because of anatomical differences, only one of every 100 drugs tested on animals produces a safe treatment for people. "Remember, aspirin kills rabbits and penicillin kills cats," he said. "And thalidomide didn't make animals have deformed babies (in testing), just humans."

Pippin, 57, said he waits five years after a new drug comes out before giving it to one of his heart patients. "That way I can see extended results in humans who took it." Instead of testing on animals, researchers should use relatively new computer programs to simulate tests (the computer compiles data from tests on humans who took similar drugs, he said, and has the added benefit of being able to predict how human hosts may react to new drugs). The industry could also use a technique called microdosing, whereby a tiny amount of untested drug is injected into a person and closely monitored

Michelle D'Antoni, 26, a second-year doctoral student in experimental medical research at McGill University, said new, less animal-centred research may one day come along and that would be fine with her. Meanwhile, she and everyone else in the research field has to test in live bodies, and animals are the most practical and safe hosts available after initially testing out a theory in a Petri dish.

"I agree in a sense that you can't literally take data from a mouse and apply it to a human," said D'Antoni, who is currently doing asthma research on mice. "We just don't have a realistic option right now. We have to start somewhere."

mharrold@thegazette.canwest.com

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MILLIONS DIE ACROSS CANADA

Animals used for research, testing and teaching in 2005, the last year for which such data are available:

Quebec

Dogs: 5,610 Rats: 134,162 Cats: 1,379 Non-human primates: 3,136

Total of all species used: 489,033

Ontario

Dogs: 3,052 Rats: 105,935 Cats: 1,178 Non-human primates: 146

Total of all species used: 893,045

Canada

Total used in 2005, including frogs, cats, cephalopods, chinchillas, dogs, chickens, horses, pigs, fish, ferrets, gerbils, guinea pigs, hamsters, seals, mice, African green monkeys, macaque monkeys, rabbits, rats, snakes and turtles: 2,316,285

Canadian Council on Animal Care

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007