Alzheimer's research on animals a waste of time

[Catherine]

Scientists have finally admitted that all the Alzheimer's research they have done using animals has been a complete waste of time.
We have learned nothing and produced no treatments for Alzheimer's.

Animals do not get Alzheimer's so how could they be used to study the disease?
I wish they had asked the question before they wasted many decades of work,  millions of dollars and a horrible number of animal's lives.

http://news.google.ca/news/url?sr=1&ct2=...t=2&at=dt0

Maybe now they will start to make progress, now that they have admitted that they choose the wrong starting point.
I have to wonder, given that these researchers are supposed to be the best and the brightest, did no one ever wonder if they were on the wrong track. Did their total lack of results not give them a hint that they were wasting their time.

This brings into question the whole use of animals in research. The ethics of using animals in labs aside, the lack of useful results should be enough to end the use of lab animals. Animals do not mirror us. They get different diseases and they respond to drugs in different ways.

Think about it. Decades were wasted studying a disease in animals that animals do not get.
Isn't that like studying the Antarctic polar bears and the arctic penguins?

[LPC]

Very good find, Catherine! I hadn't seen this article before. I felt tempted to "sticky" it, but wasn't sure where to put it apart from the current section.

Yes, you draw attention to a vital point: animals do not have the same bodies as humans, put very simply. They get different diseases to humans, and react differently to treatments. Their diets are different, too.

One example of the stupidity of relying on animal experiments was, of course, thalidominde. That tested OK on animals - but malformations resulted in humans. I won't go into details, as we have discussed that issue in previous threads.

The animal experimenters shout loud when they get an occasional success, but the countless failures get hushed up - except in cases like the article you have cited. A failure rate of 99.6% is, sadly, not that uncommon.

As we have also discussed previously, tissue culture is now widely used in experiments, thus avoiding the use of animals. Use of human tissue cultures means that results are much more likely to work. The trouble is that, whilst many researchers have moved on, some resolutely refuse to abandon use of animals. "We've built these large expensive laboratories with hundreds of cages; we can't give it up....." This attitude can be seen, for example, in the different approach of Cancer Research Wales (only funds cancer research without use of animals) and Cancer Research UK (uses animals).

The sad thing is that most people just don't know. They emotionally raise money for cancer research (e.g. they know a person ill with cancer), but do not go into how the money will be spent. All it takes is a little research and the money can still be spent on cancer research, but without the pointless suffering of animals.

[Catherine]

I admire the researchers for finally admitting they have been on the wrong track for years. That is the first step towards going in the right direction.

I would have thought that studying people who have Alzheimer's would be a good starting point. I am sure they could get tissue samples and do DNA analysis. They could study details of how the people lived. They could study people around them that didn't get Alzheimer's. They could study family members, both of the same generation and decendants. In some cases they could probably study a whole extended family. I am sure some small towns would be willing to participate in detailed studies.

No animals would be harmed by this and they might get some useful results.

I do home care with seniors and so far none of my Alzheimer's people have anything obvious in common. Maybe it is genetic. Maybe it is some odd exposure to something. I am pretty sure the answer does not lie in the bodies of dead mice.

Quote:As we have also discussed previously, tissue culture is now widely used in experiments, thus avoiding the use of animals. Use of human tissue cultures means that results are much more likely to work. The trouble is that, whilst many researchers have moved on, some resolutely refuse to abandon use of animals. "We've built these large expensive laboratories with hundreds of cages; we can't give it up....." This attitude can be seen, for example, in the different approach of Cancer Research Wales (only funds cancer research without use of animals) and Cancer Research UK (uses animals).

We  have invested millions in the wrong type of research, the wrong methods of approaching research. Sometimes when you have invested so much you just can't walk away. It is like a really bad relationship, you hate each other, but you have spent so long together and are so interdependent that you can't think of walking away.
All those people whose jobs involve killing mice in labs don't know how to do anything else. The big labs could still be repurposed, but the hundreds, thousands of cages will just have to be recycled. That is a big loss for a company.
So they cling to methods that don't work. Thalidomide is one of many drugs. It is just the one that was immediately noticeable and could not be ignored.

This is one time where choosing better research methods will help us and it will prevent the deaths of many animals.
Unbelievable amounts of animal suffering could end and we could find treatments for human diseases.
I hope the open admission of Alzheimer's researchers will be the wake up call that the rest of medical researchers need.

We do need to keep pushing them and that means questioning how our donations are used.

[Tobi]

As far as I know, dogs can get a form of "dementia". I only know about dogs I'm afraid, so don't know about other animals.
But all animals' bodily systems are different to humans'. How can making animals suffer help with human diseases?

In dogs, as in humans, dementia is likely to occur in extreme old age. It could be that humans, and many animals are living far longer than they used to, and so such afflictions are becoming more prevalent as the geriatric population in all species is greater than it used to be. The science of aging is more likely to turn up clues, and maybe lab testing on poor creatures won't really help with that.

There may even be a psychological element to development of dementia (inasmuch as "you don't use it -you lose it".)
I notice my mother shut down on many aspects of life at a certain point, and appeared alert and very positive, but seemed to have given up emotionally. Soon after, she developed dementia. But it was made worse, I believe by chemicals -as in a general anaesthetic and sleeping drugs she was not accustomed to, which were given to her in hospital after surgery.
However I recognise that Alzheimers and senile dementia are subtly different.

[Catherine]

Very old animals may get a form of dementia. Certainly the forms that involve mini strokes could occur in other species.
The brain usually shrinks when there is dementia. I think the "use it or lose it" idea is part of it. People sometimes choose to slip into a brain fog. They quit trying.

I can understand why. When a long term partner dies the remaining spouse might not want to go on. It is easier to slip into dementia than to keep remembering the loss. Something like surgery or even a bad flu seems to trigger dementia symptoms. The person might have already had some dementia and the illness makes it worse and noticeable.

Alzheimer's is different and I understand that we are the only species that gets it. Alzheimer's can onset at 40 years old. Early onset is rare, but it happens. It is a weird set of symptoms. It is more than just forgetting things. There are tangles  of fibers and clumps of a type of plaque in the brain. The neurons are increasingly unable to transmit  messages across the brain.

This article will explain Alzheimer's better than I can incase anyone wants to read about it.

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&...OAg2CyBGJA


We are so used to doing our research on lab animals that it has taken a long time to see that the research was going nowhere.
I hope that now they will open up new avenues of research and leave the animals alone.

This is a case where kindness to animals really will have benefits to us.  I want to see other types of research look over their work and ask if using animals is really helping.