Information about animal testing

We still do not understand many of the processes in the human body, or how various structures function, and their extremely complex interaction. Individual processes can actually be studied in isolation in a living organism. But the specific interactions between the individual organs, cells and cellular building blocks can only be studied in a living animal. Comparative examination in different types of animal often gives rise to entirely new insights. This is why basic research also depends on animal testing. The basic research of today is the foundation of the medically-applied research of tomorrow. At the same time, applied research in turn gives rise to new questions that feed into basic research. In other words: basic research and applied research are mutually dependent and lead to progress in practical medicine. The number of laboratory animals used in research is only 0.5 percent of all the animals that are killed each year in Germany. The other 99.5 percent serve our need for nutrition.

The treatment and cure of many diseases that were previously fatal is a matter of course for us today. It was only thanks to animal testing that antibiotics, vaccines against diseases such as polio, and insulin for people who suffer diabetes could be developed. Around 80 percent of children who develop leukemia can be healed nowadays. The treatments developed to fight this malignant disease came to us partly thanks to animal testing. It is impossible to imagine where we would be today with the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, all kinds of cancer, AIDS, as well as in surgery, without animal testing. Millions of patients benefit from this research every day.

The importance of animal testing to medical progress can be seen in the award of Nobel prizes for physiology and medicine. Since 1900 the Nobel prize for physiology and medicine has been awarded about 70 times to researchers whose groundbreaking discoveries were not least made by means of animal testing. The list stretches from the discovery of insulin and penicillin through to today’s AIDS treatments and discoveries about how the immune system or the brain function.

Domestic and wild animals as well as productive livestock all benefit from animal testing, and the knowledge and products it gives rise to: antibiotics, vaccines, narcotics and painkillers are just a few of many examples. Thanks to a vaccine which was originally developed in monkeys, it has been possible to almost eradicate polio. Today, the same vaccine also protects chimpanzees in the wild from this disease. In addition, medicines and vaccines have been developed that benefit animals, sometimes exclusively, e.g. those against distemper, sometimes as well as humans, e.g. those against rabies. The vaccines against Ebola developed in rhesus monkeys can contribute to protecting the highly-endangered remaining population of West African gorillas.

The components of body cells and the biochemical mechanisms underlying vital processes bear great similarities with humans in various animal species. Molecular genetics can show that all organisms living today have the same origins; the genes that are responsible for the composition of the body and that have modified over time make up the material basis for the evolution of life forms through each geological era. These similarities make it possible to compare human genes and metabolic processes with those of bacteria, fungi and yeasts. Therefore, scientific findings with regard to interventions in the general metabolic pathways can in principle be assumed to be transferable from microorganisms to animals and humans.

Body functions are however far more complicated in more highly developed animals and in humans than they are in more basic organisms, since they arise from a variety of specialized cell types and organs. For instance, an active substance in the liver may have the desired effect, but be chemically altered by the liver cells so that a compound that is harmful to the central nervous system is produced. This shows that the transfer of reaction modes from cell bonds to the entire organism can be extremely difficult. This is why it is always necessary to conduct studies on the entire organism as well as studies at a cellular level (complementary methods). The similarities of cell and organ functions in mammals allow one to assume that they are generally transferable between animal and human. This fundamental assumption applies to both the desired effects of a substance and its harmful and toxic effects. Animal testing makes it possible to predict the desired effects and roughly 70 percent of the undesired effects on humans. One example of this is acetylsalicylic acid (the active substance in the painkiller Aspirin®). This is an analgesic in rats and humans, but in both ingestion can lead to an increased tendency to bleed. The transferability of results from animals to humans also works in reverse: pharmaceuticals that are successfully used for the treatment of humans can also be used for pets.

Alternative methods are valuable and are used wherever possible in biomedical research, and they continue to be developed. In the approval process for animal testing, both researchers and the authorities already check whether an experiment is indispensable or whether the envisaged information can be obtained without the use of animals. However, even alternative methods do not make animal testing unnecessary in biomedical research. Animal testing is necessary when physiological connections and their disorders in the body have to be clarified. This includes studies of the central nervous system and the processing of sensory stimuli, the interaction of the circulatory system, the digestive system, the hormonal system, the immune system and the principles of behavior.

What's more, alternatives such as computer simulations are only possible when we already have information about the system that needs mapping, which can be ‘fed’ to the computer. Until now it has not been possible to obtain this information in any other way than trials in the living organism. In addition, animals have to be killed for the production of organ and cell cultures in any case.

All members of the laboratory staff and in animal care work to safeguard experimental animals' welfare. They are responsible for the species-appropriate housing, feeding and care of laboratory animals. The animals are treated with compassion and respect by the professionals who are in charge of their daily physical and mental needs. Animals are kept at University of Tübingen research institutes with due consideration for all the provisions of animal welfare legislation and international treaties. Many scientific experiments involve scientists at the university in studying the normal behavior of animals. This observation absolutely depends on the focused participation of healthy, happy animals.

Many of the animal tests, such as observing behavior or collecting tissue samples from dead animals, do not involve any pain or discomfort. Nevertheless, there are experiments that might involve pain or discomfort for laboratory animals, when the nature of the experiment make this unavoidable. Researchers do everything they can to minimize any suffering on the part of the animals they use in research. Where it is unavoidable, they take every possible measure to keep this suffering to an absolute minimum, for example by use of suitable anesthetic and analgesia during and after operations. 

We are very aware of the great ethical responsibility that is associated with animal testing in basic biological and medical research. All the animal testing that takes place here is always carefully checked in advance by the committee on animal experimentation and approved by the relevant authorities.

Science relies on critical discourse and that also means hearing different points of view. Scientific models such as the theory of relativity, the big bang theory or psychoanalysis were subject to heated debate, in some cases lasting decades. And scientists are not all of the same opinion on the use of laboratory animals. However, the vast majority of scientists working in basic biomedical research regard the validity of animal testing as beyond doubt. These researchers are nonetheless also aware that the results of animal testing cannot always be transferred to humans one-to-one. The validity of animal testing is – like that of any other scientific experiment – always limited and has to be complemented with other approaches and scrutinized. So animal testing will always be an essential building block of science.

There is no other area in which the use of animals is examined as conscientiously as in animal research. In Germany, animal experiments are subject to the strictest legal controls. Such experiments may only be carried out if there are no suitable alternatives and the expected gain in scientific knowledge justifies any potential suffering of the animals. Every experiment must be assessed in advance by an independent animal experimentation committee and approved by the responsible state authority.

All animal experiments take place under comprehensive internal and external controls. An independent external medical officer monitors all experiments. Animal welfare officers from the University are involved from the beginning - the application stage - and monitor the experiments closely. The researchers carry out an ethical assessment during the application process, which is required by Germany’s animal welfare protection act. Particularly in the evaluation of sensitive or particularly complex experimental projects, there are also internal University ethics/ animal welfare committees which provide advice,