Breast Cancer
Breast cancer rates are on the rise—in 2006, more than 200,000 American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and more than 40,000 women will die from the disease. In the same year, the National Cancer Institute will have spent more than $6 billion, much of it on animal research. Despite this unprecedented funding, we’re losing the war on cancer, and animal research is arguably one of the main problems.
Human and Animal Cancer—Different Diseases
Cancer manifests differently in every species, but some researchers ignore this reality. The animals most commonly used in cancer research are rats and mice. In breast cancer research, because animals don’t naturally get mammary tumors, experimenters induce tumors in rodents using crude and painful methods. Dangerous chemicals are injected into animals’ chests, their genes are altered, or human tumors are even surgically attached to their bodies. These methods do cause cancer, but it’s nothing like breast cancer.
Misleading Animal Studies
Animal studies continually produce misleading data. Studies in rats gave rise to the false claim that abortions cause breast cancer. Research on dogs mistakenly reported that safe forms of birth control cause breast cancer, leading to bans that limited contraceptive choices for women for decades until the FDA finally acknowledged that European women had safely used the drugs for many years. Other animal research suggested that pregnancy causes breast cancer, when in fact human epidemiological studies reveal just the opposite to be true—pregnancy can protect against breast cancer. The examples of human data proving animal tests wrong go on and on.
Successful Non-Animal Methods
In addition to reliable research methods such as clinical studies and epidemiology, the field of breast cancer research is currently being revolutionized by a new type of in vitro technology—3D tissue culture modeling. Unlike traditional cell cultures grown on flat surfaces, 3-D cultures grow in the same geometrical forms and structures as actual breast tumors, so that scientists can now experiment on exact models of breast tumors in well-defined and controlled environments. The development of 3-D in vitro modeling renders animal studies archaic and obsolete by comparison.
