Dr. Aysha Akhtar’s statement about “Cruelty 101” at Ohio State University
Hello, my name is Aysha Akhtar and I am a neurologist. In my hand,
I have petitions signed from 300 neurologists and neurosurgeons
throughout the country, including some alumni and a professor emeritus
from Ohio State University.
By signing this petition, we are asking the President of Ohio
State University, Karen Holbrook, to demonstrate compassion and
good science and cancel this course in which students are trained
to injure the spines of about 270 mice and rats each summer. Our
reasons for this request are twofold. First, this class is just
simply cruel. Helpless animals are being subjected to extremely
painful and traumatic experiments. As Kristie has described, the
pain they experience can so excruciating, that they commonly chew
through their own muscle. Animal experimenters even have a scientific
term for that--it's called autophagia, meaning to literally eat
oneself.
Our second reason for this request is that as physicians, we know
that experimenting on animals is not an effective way to
understand human spinal cord injury. I have rotated through many
hospitals and clinics and have had the opportunity to meet and
care for many patients who suffered from spinal cord injury. Unlike
experimental animals whose spines are injured in controlled, precise
and sterile conditions, my patients suffered from far more complex
injuries. Unlike experimental animals, my patients typically had
infections, bone fractures, shock and organ failure- all of which
affect how well a treatment will work. For most, the causes of
their injuries were vehicle accidents or gunshot wounds. Animal
experiments do not recreate these types of injuries.
In addition to the differences in the type of injuries between
humans and other animals, there are some profound differences in
the anatomy and in the way our spines work. Sure- we share some
similarities, but anyone can look at his dog or cat and notice
some obvious differences between our spines and theirs. Their spines
are horizontal- ours are vertical. Their spines work to coordinate
4-legged locomotion, ours to coordinated two-legged locomotion.
When you think about it- it's really quite ludicrous to think that
the spinal cord of any other animal is like that of a human.
Animals are not miniature people. And the differences you can
see with your own eyes are just some examples. At the molecular
level, there are numerous differences in how we react to spinal
cord injury. These differences exist not only between people and
other animals, but also between species and even between two different
strains of rats. And it is at this molecular level, that the disease
process and treatment effectiveness take place. Small differences
at this level can have a profound effect on whether a treatment
works or not. Unlike humans, mice do not form a central cavity
in their spinal cords after injury. Parts of the white matter of
the human spinal cord are almost as large as the entire diameter
of the rat spinal cord. The nature and extent of secondary injury
and wound healing vary in different strains of mice. Monkeys absorb
and metabolize drugs differently from humans.
Due to these differences, animal experiments have led us astray
on a number of occasions. For example, studies conducted on patients
who died from spinal cord injuries demonstrated that, contrary
to what animal experiments suggested, blood does not flood the
human spine after injury. Animals have what is called a Central
Pattern Generator, which allows them to have movements independent
of input from the brain, humans do not have this. How can we possibly
sift through this conflicting information and know which of it,
if any, applies to human beings? Rather than providing clarity,
animal experiments just add to the confusion.
It's time we wake up. Researchers have spent more than 40 years
injuring the spines of thousands of animals, from mice to cats
to dogs to monkeys and yet we have not come up with a single proven
effective therapy to reverse human spinal cord injury, despite
numerous so-called breakthroughs in laboratory animals. According
to the Journal of the American Paraplegic Society, at least 22
agents were found to improve spinal cord injury in animals, but
not one of these was helpful in humans. Oh yes- we have come up
with some great ways to treat spinal cord injury in the rat and
in the cat. But there is little that we can offer to patients with
spinal cord injury because while we know a great deal about animal
spinal cord injury, we know very little about human injury.
I don't want to have to tell patients with spinal cord injury
that we are going to spend another 40 years trying to find ways
to injure the spinal cords of other animals, rather than focus
on human spinal cord disease.
The smarter researchers understand this. More and more studies
are taking place that allow us to understand how the human spinal
cord works and how to best treat human spinal cord injury. For
example, researchers at Miami University are working on the Human
Spinal Cord Injury Model Project. They use imaging techniques,
post-mortem analysis and nerve conduction methods to understand
human spinal cords. Researchers at the Banner Good Samaritan Hospital
in Arizona are helping partially paralyzed patients to walk through
electrical stimulation and weight-bearing exercises. We can grow
human neural cell lines and use them to test the toxicity of drugs.
Functional MRI and SPECT scans allow us to visualize and monitor
disease and treatment effectiveness non-invasively in living human
patients. Human cadavers are being used to perform impact studies
on spinal cords. We need to use this wonderful technology to the
fullest.
Our patients deserve better than more wasteful and misleading
animal experiments. Rather than teaching young researchers to come
up with new ways to crush, slice, and smash the spines of helpless
animals, the faculty at Ohio State University needs to teach their
students human-based research methods. Forty years of animal experiments
have proven that this is an ineffective, unreliable and inefficient
way to help our patients. On behalf of my 300 colleagues and on
behalf of our patients who suffer from spinal cord injury, I urge
Ohio State University to replace their animal spinal cord injury
class with one that trains their students in the development of
far more effective and clinically relevant human-centered research.
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Action Alert: Help Stop Inhumane Spinal Cord Classes at OSU