ATLA::Alternatives to Laboratory Animals

Volume 23, Number 5

Animals, apes, men: equally victims of vivisection.

ATLA 23, 642-643, September/October 1995

Pietro Croce

Contrá dei Torretti 12, 36100 Vicenza, Italy

SUMMARY

Interspecies experimentation is always deceptive, whilst intraspecies experimentation is correct and reliable, though under due limits. Healthy volunteers should not be used in medical research, on either ethical or scientific grounds and, in this paper, very strict rules are outlined for regulating medical testing in humans. Testing anti-AIDS drugs on apes or any other animal species is misleading, due to the enormous differences which exist between the reactions of different animal species to drugs in general.

Keywords: animal experimentation, apes, human volunteers, interspecies differences, primates