At the University of Iowa, we strongly support the development of non-animal alternative approaches for research.
Although advancements are being made every day, at this time, alternative approaches cannot accurately replicate or model all biologic, physiologic, and behavioral aspects of human disease.
Alternative research methods, such as modeling and studying cells in a dish, are routinely used to reduce the number of animals that must be used. However, the current technologies cannot yet fully replace a whole, complex biological system. Therefore, the research community must still conduct humane and responsible animal research in order to discover and implement new cures for diseases, for animals and people.
As a part of the process for applying for federal funding, researchers are required to address the possible use of non-animal alternatives before the use of animals can be approved. Projects for which alternatives are identified and available are required to use those alternatives to the maximum extent possible.
To understand how a given disease arises at the most basic level and how it progresses through various stages, researchers must induce the disease in animal models—something that would be neither ethical nor possible to do in humans.
Certain experiments are simply impossible in humans. For example, researchers who study the gut microbiome must often feed different groups of animals strictly controlled diets. They must keep them in an entirely sterile environment free of any germs or engineer them to have guts completely free of any microbes. None of this is possible in humans.
For some types of research, animals must be engineered to have or lack certain genes (or the proteins made by these genes) in order to determine what role a gene and its protein might play in disease development. This is not possible to do in humans for legal, ethical, and scientific reasons.
Researchers often recreate many serious diseases — including cancer, neurodegenerative conditions, and autoimmune diseases — in animal models to study a condition in detail and to test possible treatments. Doing so in humans would not be ethical, legal, or possible.
