I post stories such as this from time to time to counter the lies told by many within the animal rights movement that animal research offers no value. Scientists looking for a malaria vaccine have discovered an important problem by testing potential vaccines on mice and then infecting them. From the New Scientist story:
In 2004 Read tested this by passing mouse malaria repeatedly between mice made immune by natural infection. Those parasites indeed became more virulent, but it wasn’t clear how. Read has now repeated the experiment using an AMA-1 vaccine. His team passed blood-cell-stage malaria parasites 10 times between mice that had been given the AMA-1 vaccine. By the end, the parasites reached higher densities, and caused more anaemia, than those passed between unvaccinated mice. Parasites from vaccinated mice were more virulent in unvaccinated mice as well. “The real eye-opener was that there was no immune escape,” says Read. “Parasite AMA-1 was unchanged.”
This was very important information to discover and illustrates the crucial nature of animal research in obtaining basic biological knowledge. You couldn’t do that with cell lines or computer models. Scientists need to study them in living organisms.
Animal research is not done for frivolous reasons but to save lives. So, it’s either animal research or quit trying to find cures for diseases. I support the Three Rs—reduce, replace, refine. But the choice is a no brainer from my perspective.
HT: Bioedge
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
