Bone-Breaking Experiments
Anyone who has broken a bone knows it is very painful. After the
pain of the initial trauma, the period of healing can drag on for
months.
Understanding how bones break and heal and developing treatments
are all important and worthwhile medical endeavors. Unfortunately,
some experimenters deliberately break healthy animals’ bones.
Each year dozens of such studies are published; these experiments
are conducted on many different animals, including dogs, rats, mice,
rabbits, pigs, sheep, and goats.
Dogs are used especially often in bone break studies. One recent
study wounded the leg bones of 66 beagle dogs using a circular saw
and also subjected 44 rats to repeated injections into the leg bone
marrow cavity (Paralkar et al. 2003). The resulting paper provides
no information on anesthesia, post-surgical pain management, or
the fate of the unfortunate animals beyond the 24-week study. Another
experiment used a penetrating captive bolt gun to fracture the legs
of nine dogs, then infected the injuries with bacteria (Khodaparast
et al. 2003), while another examined bone cell formation in dogs
whose jaws had been artificially broken (Wei et al. 2003). In yet
another study, the leg bones of 11 large dogs were broken, then
surgically stabilized with metal plates to test the efficacy of
a laser probe for measuring blood flow at the wound site (Jain et
al. 2000).
In all of these studies, the supposed aim was to improve human
bone fracture and repair. But there are many ways to study this
without harming animals. These include:
- clinical studies with human fracture patients (Suzuki et al.
2004, Martinez et al. 2003)
- epidemiological studies (Tornetta et al. 2004)
- working with preserved human bones (Gollwitzer et al. 2004)
- clinical case reviews and reports (Jones & Duncan 2003,
Nocini et al. 2004)
- imaging techniques (e.g., MRI, Takahashi et al. 2004)
- meta-analyses of published clinical studies (Hanson et al.
2004)
- animal cadaver studies (e.g., Halling et al. 2003)
- artificial bone studies (e.g., Sawbones) (Ali et al. 2003)
Human-based methods have several advantages: They involve natural
fractures (not artificial ones like those produced with a circular
saw), they don’t require extrapolation between species, and
patients can verbally report their symptoms. And they inflict no
injury on healthy patients.
With all the options available, one marvels that Institutional
Animal Care and Use Committees can approve animal experiments when
the Animal Welfare Act requires such approval come only if an IACUC
determines “that alternatives were not available."
Jonathan Balcolmbe,
Ph.D., is a PCRM research consultant with background in ethology.
He is the author of The Use of Animals in Higher Education,
as well as many articles on humane life science education and scientific
papers on animal behavior.
References
Ali AM, Saleh M, Bolongaro S, Yang L. The strength of different
fixation techniques for bicondylar tibial plateau fractures--a biomechanical
study. Clin Biomech (Bristol, Avon) 2003;18:864-70.
Gollwitzer H, Karampour K, Hauschild M, Diehl P, Busch R,
Mittelmeier W. Biomechanical investigation of the primary stability
of intramedullary compression nails in the proximal tibia: experimental
study using interlocking screws in cryopreserved human tibias. J
Orthop Sci 2004;9(1):22-8.
Halling KB, Lewis DD, Cross AR, Sammy RJ, Rapoff AJ. Biomechanical
comparison of a circular external skeletal fixator construct to
pin and tension band wire fixation for the stabilization of olecranon
osteotomies in dogs: a cadaveric study. Vet Surg 2003;32:324-35.
Hanson BP, Cummings P, Rivara FP, John MT. The association
of third molars with mandibular angle fractures: a meta-analysis.
J Can Dent Assoc 2004;70:39-43.
Jain R, Podworny N, Schemitsch EH. In vivo assessment of
second generation implantable laser Doppler flowmetry fibres for
bone blood flow determination. Int J Surg Investig 2000;2:89-98.
Jones BG, Duncan RD. Open tibial fractures in children under
13 years of age--10 years experience. Injury 2003;34:776-80.
Khodaparast O, Coberly DM, Mathey J, Rohrich RJ, Levin LS,
Brown SA. Effect of a transpositional muscle flap on VEGF mRNA expression
in a canine fracture model. Plast Reconstr Surg 2003;112:171-6.
Martinez A, Sarmiento A, Latta LL. Closed fractures of the
proximal tibia treated with a functional brace. Clin Orthop 2003;417:293-302.
Nocini PF, Albanese M, Buttura da Prato E, D'Agostino A.
Vertical distraction osteogenesis of the mandible applied to an
iliac crest graft: report of a case. Clin Oral Implants Res 2004;15:366-70.
Paralkar VM, Borovecki F, Ke HZ, Cameron KO, Lefker B, Grasser
WA, Owen TA, Li M, DaSilva-Jardine P, Zhou M, Dunn RL, Dumont F,
Korsmeyer R, Krasney P, Brown TA, Plowchalk D, Vukicevic S, Thompson
DD. An EP2 receptor-selective prostaglandin E2 agonist induces bone
healing. Proc Natl Acad Sci 2003;100:6736-40.
Suzuki T, Kawamura H, Kasahara T, Nagasaka H. Resorbable
poly-l-lactide plates and screws for the treatment of mandibular
condylar process fractures: A clinical and radiologic follow-up
study. J Oral Maxillofac Surg 2004;62:919-24.
Takahashi T, Ohtani M, Sano T, Ohnuki T, Kondoh T, Fukuda
M. Magnetic resonance evidence of joint effusion of the temporomandibular
joint after fractures of the mandibular condyle: a preliminary report.
Cranio 2004;22:124-31.
Tornetta P 3rd, Hirsch EF, Howard R, McConnell T, Ross E.
Skeletal injury patterns in older females. Clin Orthop 2004;422:55-6.
Wei SC, Zheng Q, Liu L, Li SW, Wang HZ, Xiong CD. [Influence
of super high molecular weight poly D,L-lactic acid on viability
and new bone formation of osteoblasts] Zhonghua Kou Qiang Yi Xue
Za Zhi 2003;8:67-9. [Article in Chinese]
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