Project R&R February E-News
Date:  Tue, 27 Feb 2007 18:11:28 GMT

Study Casts Doubt on Efficacy of Chimpanzee Research

Project R&R has completed the first of a number of studies to
examine the efficacy - or lack thereof - of using chimpanzees in
biomedical research and testing. An initial analysis found that
chimpanzee studies contributed little, if at all, to tangible
human clinical progress and practice.

"Chimpanzee Research: An Examination of Its Contribution to
Biomedical Knowledge and Efficacy in Combating Human Diseases"
evaluated claims of the necessity of chimpanzee experimentation
by assessing the importance of such research to published
scientific papers reporting data obtained from it, and if cited,
the contribution that research made to human clinical progress
and practice.

Between 1995 and 2004 inclusive, 749 studies involving captive
chimpanzees were published; 95 were randomly selected and
reviewed to determine how often they were cited by subsequent
papers.

Of this sample, 49.5% had not been cited at all by other
scientific papers. A further 35.8% were cited only by papers
that did not describe well-developed prophylactic, diagnostic or
therapeutic methods for combating human diseases.

Only 14.7% of our random sample of chimpanzee studies were
cited - specifically, 14 papers were cited by 27 subsequent papers.
An in-depth analysis of these studies revealed that the chimpanzee
experiments had contributed precious little, if anything at all,
to the outcome of those papers reporting advances in human
clinical practice.

For example, the chimpanzee studies had been conducted
concurrently to human studies or to "confirm" previous human
investigations; the results from them conflicted with results in
other non-human primates or in human trials; the cited
chimpanzee studies were peripheral to the human clinical study
and/or cited purely as points of information; they illustrated
historical findings with no direct relevance to current
practice; or, the chimpanzee findings were purely speculative in
nature.

Rather, the methods in those 27 papers that were pivotal to the
development of human prophylactic, diagnostic or therapeutic
methods included: in vitro studies, human clinical and
epidemiological studies, molecular assays and methods, and
genomic studies.

Specific areas of chimpanzee use in research are currently being
systematically reviewed.

To read this and other papers on our website visit:
http://ga1.org/ct/W7s2LN11jj4g/


"Tests on animals have led to around 100 drugs being thought
potentially useful for stroke; not one has proved effective in humans.
You don't need to be a balaclava-wearing animal rights activist to
question the value of animal studies in this area of medical research."

TheFirstPost. 25 January 2007.