How Animal Testing Works

of which is membered by Jerry. That was exciting. I have a bad cold. Yeah, my brain is not functioning quite right. Yeah, but this is not the old days where you have the six weeks of cold. Right, Hopefully this will be just a couple of episodes, right, bear with us, yeah, bear, But to make up for it, I have all my teeth finally, right. It's just this constant pendulum, that's right, swings from one of us to the other. Got all toothed up yesterday, feeling good. The

eight months is over. Like, click your teeth together for everybody, I'm afraid to Okay, you're like they're precious. Yeah, I gotta treat them very carefully and I got fitted for a bite guard, so I when I grind my teeth at night doesn't keep happening. So things are looking good. Everything's coming up, Chuck. That's funny. Jumy has a bike guard too, from grinding her teeth. So two of the most significant people in my life on their teeth, both

kind on their teeth. Did she bought her fingernaut? I don't. Does she bought her fingers? Yeah? I take out my stresses on my body. Yeah, those are short nails. Do they hurt? Do they just ache? Because sometimes if I overdo it, they do. If I when I cut my nails and I file them a little too short, they just ache for a day or so afterward. Yeah. To have it, I've always done it. Yeah, like since you can remember. Yeah, I wore that bitter polish for a while when I was a kid to try and I

just cheered right through it. Yeah. It was like, oh, it's so better. Still must bite if I kind of like it in a weird way. Yeah, the part of me that hates myself loves that taste. So weird. Well, Chuck, Let's talk about another habit, a habit that humans have had for a very long time. Uh. And that is the habit of using animals as models for humans, as stand ins for humans when we want to test new things, find out new things about ourselves, like will this kill me?

Let's put it on an animal, right, does the heart or the lungs actually pump blood around the body. Let's cut a dog open and find out that we've been doing it for a very long time. Yeah, And this article came with its own own intro story, which was pretty interesting. I thought, Yeah, we haven't done one of those in a long time. They used to be like a standard aspect of this. Yeah. Now we just babble the yeah. Yeah, we just share what's going on in

our lives or day pretty much. Sorry, everybody. It must be a real letdown that I think about it. Should we do this though? All right, Well, let's go back in time, back to seven and there was a company called a pharma company called S. E. Matson Gil out of Tennessee, and they had a great, I almost want

to say, wonder drug. Uh. There was an antibiot antibiotic that worked really well in its powdered form, and people started clamoring and said, we love this stuff, but sure it would be great if we could put it as a as a drop under my tongue instead. Right, I like liquids. I'm not big on powders like that weirdo Richard Petty who just takes goodies powder like me. Love that dude. That's my go to. It's got caffeine. That's what helps. Yeah, for migraines too. Really, caffeine is a

big one. Yeah, Emily can't do them, but that it's my I couldn't either. It's my hangover cure. I see that, I say that out loud. Did Yeah it works, wonders. I thought, bloody Mary's where you're hangover again? I'm not. I'm not a hair of the dogger. That's what it was inventive for, you know. Yeah, all right, I'm getting a self check. I apologis. Uh. So they decided we need a liquid form of this. What was the name of the drug, uh, sul fannel man. I just had

it sulfanlu minde yes or stulf vanillamide. I think sulfanla mind Okay, that's how I would say it if I were in nineteen thirties seven Tennessee, and well, uh, they had a chemist named Harold Cole Watkins who went to the lab and said, all right, let's dissolve this stuff and something called uh dieth eileen glycolthlen that one I know worked pretty well. So they added a little raspberry flavoring to make it palatable, and they said, it smells

pretty good, tastes pretty good, looks pretty good. Let's sell it. Yeah, and they did. They sold a bunch of it, and just like one one month after mixing up a batch of the stuff, they had six thirty three shipments all over of the country because there was a huge demand for this, I mean, like syl sylfanum I was already an established drug. The idea of it being in some

sort of palatable form that was gangbusters. Everybody had syphilis that they needed to take care of back then, and this kind of thing would help and if it could be a pleasant experience, well then great. And then uh

that was September when they made their first shipment. Right by October, middle of October October eleventh, to be specific, a group of doctors in Tulsa contacted the a m A, the American Medical Association, and said, um, we think there's something really wrong with this new mass and guild product, which they called Sulfanila Mind Elixir or a lixer of sulfanal of mind. Um, we think it's killing people actually and killing them in one of the worst ways imaginable. Yeah,

it wasn't a just go sleepy time. Now, it was a pretty bad death. Right. You're writhing in agony, you're probably puking your guts up. You're just you're dying from from being poisoned. So the A M A got ahold of some off and they said, you know what, the actual drug is fine, but this, uh, the solution we mix it with is the culprit. It is pure poison. Who knew? Nobody knew. And the reason why no one

knew was because mass and Gill and Cole Watkins. Um there, Harold Cole Watkins and his his group of chemists were not obligated to test this stuff out. Yeah, well people knew though. That was the one frustrating thing is studies out that said this stuff was poison, and I guess they just didn't read them right. They didn't research the literature, which is a big deal. Um, But they also didn't

test it out on human or animal ahead of time. Uh. And they again they just looked at the tech or the appearance, the smell, a little bit of the taste, but no one took a full dose of this apparently, and um, people died. I think a hundred people died in fifteen states in about a month or so before they could get um the shipment's back. Yeah. I think the FDA, the barely born f D A. Um, this is one of its first actions was going and getting

this stuff. Yeah. And the president of the company said, uh, you know, we haven't broken any laws because I guess there weren't laws on the books at the time. And the head chemist, um, very sadly killed himself because of this. Yeah. Um, like the story goes from bad to worse and um, that was pretty Japanese of him. Yeah you know, yeah, we did. We do a full episode on that on suicide on I mean Hardy Cary. But it had another name too, right, Yeah, did we do that or did

we just mention it? I'm sure we just mentioned okay, um yeah, I think in the Japanese Stragglers and probably the samurai Yeah, and the revenge one. Yeah. Boy, it's sorry to keep track these days, yeah, really really is.

So this led to a night Congress in the US enacted the FDA Cosmetic Act, which said that you know what, you need to test these drugs on animals, and that therein sort of started, at least in the US, the official like decree that you can and should do this, right, But it has been going on a long time before that, or Buddy Galen who we've talked about before, well even further back than galen Um, if you look at the Greeks, at least as far back as about five c UM.

The ancient Greeks were using animals for testing, poking around figuring out how to how the human body works, and there was this idea that there was an analogy between all animals that humans shared like a lot of the same physiology of all animals. And there was a great disagreement among the Greeks in particular about whether that was true.

But it didn't stop guys like Aristotle Um and uh Aerosistratus, yeah, and Hippocrates as well from basically poking around inside live animals, which is the the where the term for animal testing came from. The other terms vivisection. Vivisection is cutting something open while it's still alive. Yes, specifically an animal, right or is that no, you can vivisect humans, yeah, because dissection occurs after death. Vivisection is like cutting open I

think technically surgery would be. But the idea behind vivisection is that there's this is just for experimentation actually not like let me heal that oregan right there, right, which, by the way, go back and listen to our human experimentation episode. That was a great one. I remember that one. Uh So flash forward a bit to second century Rome where our friend Galen, who we just talked about him in a podcast Our lives stuff in UK and Ireland,

that's right, which hopefully people will hear him. Yes. Uh, he was a medical specialist and he said, you know what, I going to do a demonstration in the public. I'm gonna rent a hall. Yeah, basically, I'm gonna get this pig and I'm gonna prove that we are all a bundle of nerves by snipping certain nerves of this pig. You want to see him not squeal anymore, watch me snip this nerve. And uh, it was all planned in this philosophers, pretty popular guy. He had punching cookies out.

He was really excited for this day. Philosopher that was in attendance named Alexander. Uh Demascenus, Yeah, Demastinus, one of those two. He Um said, you know what this is, bs Um, doesn't prove a thing. And in fact, none of these demonstrations prove anything, because that's a pig and we're humans. Why are you bothering? Right? And apparently the Romans had adopted from the Greeks the idea that empirical

evidence didn't really prove anything. If you saw something, it doesn't mean it was true, right, which is a weird philosophy. I'd like to understand a little more. I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that, but that's just like such a completely radically different paradigm from what we have now. Um, the paradigm of science we're seeing is indeed,

believing that it requires empirical evidence. Used to be the opposite, And that was Alexander's big objection, like, hey man, you can cut that pig's nerve all day long, and sure I saw it, and sure it had that effect, but it doesn't prove anything. And Galen was like, I hate you, I hate that idea, I hate Aristotle. I'm leaving because Aristotle was apparently somebody who said, Yeah, I've I've poked around in a pig or two in my time, and I've concluded that the heart and that the brain is

the center. This idea that a nerve connected to the brain could control anything is hogwash, if you'll forgive the punt. Aristotle is just a big dummy, the dumbest of them all. So, um, Galen did, in fact say I'm leaving. He said, I'm taking my medical bag and I'm going home. And then everyone there was like, boa, I really want to see this pig get cut apart. Please don't leave. He said, okay, you guys, I'll do it. You twisted my arm, came

back in. Uh, performed the experiment in the demonstration, and this was the one of the first recorded um examples of experimenting on animals for science. Yeah, so the ball was rolling. Yeah, And um, I don't know if Galen hadn't done it first. And he he obviously hadn't done it first because he came a few hundred years after Aristotle who had done that. But if Aristotle hadn't done it, eventually somebody who was curious enough would have grabbed a dog or a chicken or something and just cut it

open and started looking at what was inside. Yeah, you know, like it would have happened, but these are the people who are recorded doing it first. Uh. Go forward in time a bit to the late nineteenth century, and there was a microbiologist from Germany, Robert Coke, and he got he got some some anthrax. He got some blood from cows killed by anthrax. Started looking at it under a microscope and said, you know what, something in there looks

funny to me. That might be the anthrax. So let me take that and put it in a mouse and see what happens. The mouse died, and he said, I'm onto something here. I'm pretty sure that was the anthrax. Uh, A big deal. It was a big deal. Again, using an animal to experiment in order to further human understanding and protect human health in life, that's right. And those are the big eats that people have used animals for. Yeah, and that was actual, like medically, let me try and

cure a disease. Yeah, not like the early guys like whoa, what is this? To what happens if I sever this? Yeah? But it it went on my ancient Greek impression Um. The point I was trying to make, I guess was later on in the nineteen fifties, people started, and notably this Russian Dmitri h Bell Jeff, started using research on animals, not necessarily for curing diseases, but to study behavior. Right. Yeah,

we talked about them in our Animal Domestication episode. Yeah, so what he he had the great idea for these cute little silver foxes. He's like, I might like one of those is a pet. I have a niece who would love one of those. Man, have you seen those fox videos or then crying and walk around crying well or calling or whatever. And they shake their little tail when you scratch their belly, and I don't know if

I've seen that one. It's very cute. It makes sort of like a little purring, little chirpy purr and wiggle their tail and wag their tail, and it's just like, oh, man, you're the perfect combination of dog and cats. Foxes are pretty cute, so we want to team them. Well, that's exactly what he did too, And he thought, I know that domestication usually takes many, many, many years, but let me see if I can do it in like years

and Chuck. Speaking of behavioral studies, one of the most famous of all using animals was Pavlov's dogs, And I was researching it and I had no idea. Pavlov didn't just like bring a bell for his dogs to make him salivate. He surgically altered his dogs. He went and got their salivary glands and put them on the outside of their faces so that he could collect saliva samples

more easily. And he created remember that cow in Athens that had a porthole in it, same thing for the dogs, so that he could collect gastric juices digestive juices for samples as well. So what you're saying is that he

was a crazy madman. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. I think the larger point here is that humans have been just grabbing animals or even breeding animals, for the sole purpose of using them to understand things a little more, right, whether it be cutting them open to see how anatomy works, to using them as um as for medical experiments, to de termined that um anthrax is actually blood borne and

can kill you. Um two behavioral studies, right, And we should point out that at work he was able to weed out and by weed out, I mean coal, and by col we mean kill, and by kill we mean probably break their necks. Yeah. I think that's one of the big problems with with this talking about this stuff is so many euphemisms are used, like you just you just demonstrated so Um. What he did was he was able to weed out the foxes that weren't his tame, and eventually he ended up with the fox that was,

by all accounts domesticated, a nice little pet. It said, Dmitri. You and it's not just animals, um, that are cute that we contame. Um. Animals and what most people would say are roughly the lower end of the spectrum as far as life is concerned, are very frequently used, like um nematodes, fruit flies, UM. They come into use largely

because they have some similar processes. Like if you're studying a very ancient process or a very ancient part of the body like um insulin regulation, that you're gonna find it throughout the animal kingdom. It's gonna be pretty widespread. So the idea is, if you can track insulin regulation and a fruit fly, you could conceivably extrapolate those findings

onto a human and a humans insulin regulation. And the advantage of a fruit fly or a nematode is that they're really easy to breed and they reproduce very quickly. So if you're like Dmitri BALLETV and you're studying foxes, it took him twenty five years to go through twenty generations, it would take you roughly a month, I would guess to go through about twenty generations of fruit flies. So therefore you can track mutations much more quickly, much more inexpensively.

So UM, the fruit flies, the humatodes, other again lesser life forms UM have been used extensively in medical testing as well. And they and they count, they qualify. It's a live organism that's being used for experimentation purposes. Yeah, and uh, it kind of depends on what you're trying, what your aim is, what your goal is, to what animal you do use, because you can't just use any animal for anything. UM. And here's a fun fact. I did not know that the armadillo is an animal that

can actually get Hanson's disease a k A. Leprosy. We knew that we talked about in the leprosy episode. I don't remember mentioning the armadillo. I am scared to death of armadillos now because of really oh yeah, when I see it, I just look at him like leprosy. You don't hug him on any longer, you know, and like you'll see him on the side of the road, you know, hit by a car or something like that. Texas, I always double check, um. Well here in Georgia too, Yeah,

a little bit. Um. I always check to make sure that my air recirculator is on when I pass them by. That like the leprosy didn't waft into my car as I drove past the roadkill that I was damaged by the leprosy episode. Uh well, they actually have the perfect body temperature to allow study on vaccines for leprosy. Um And speaking of by the way, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I just found out last night that koalas Carrie chlamydia really and transmitted sexually and can die from it.

Oh man, yeah, and are actually partially endangered in some ways because they have chlamydia. M think about that next time you want to hug from that cute little critter, you know, well, they'll tear your face off too. Uh. Should we take a little break here, all right, let's take a break and we're kind of we're gonna come back and talk more about the different animals used and why Chuck. Before we get back to I want to say this is UM this this episode and the other

one that's coming out Thursday. Yeah, and they're kind of done in conjunction with these guys, UM Joe and Tim who run a site called primer Stories dot com and UM they do seasons. They're like animators, um web dudes, and it shows they know what they're doing and they've basically taken They'll they'll take essays. I wrote an essay, then they take it and they break it up into

chunks and they animate it. Right, so as you're going scrolling down, you're you're reading, but you're also experiencing, um, the the art, the animation that really kind of brings out the ideas of each one. It's really really neat site. They they contacted us after our San Francisco show last year, you know, early this year, and UM, they said, hey, do you want to do one of these? And I went and looked and I was amazed and said, yes,

I totally do. So you can go, UM check out the s A I wrote at a primer stories dot com slash s y s K and that one is the one we're releasing after this one. Correct, Well, it ties into both. It's it's kind of this essay about UM humans changing attitude toward animal rights. But it was fun to do and they're cool. They're cool dudes for sure, and I like what they're doing. UM. This is the fourth season, fourth season, nice plug, nice work. Thanks all right.

So we were talking about UM using different animals and how if it's you know, fruit fly or a nematode, people don't get their hackles up too much. No, it's true. UM, if it is a rat or a mouse, people start getting their hackles up a little more. UM and mice are very famously used. A lot um of our genes

overlap with this mouse. UM specifically this one, which is it mouse or amuse genus mice mices genus mice, So that's the one that they use most often that has the overlap UH, and their cell structure and organ organization are basically the same as ours, so UM they do a lot of testing with these mice as a result, everything from you know, disease and stuff to genetics. Two behavioral that they kind of run the gamut right on mice, Yeah, for sure, and from that point up they tend to,

I think, run the gamut. Some are a little more specific than others, like beagles apparently. Yeah, really come in handy when you're testing prostate cancer um or muscular dystrophy both. Yeah. Um, because they can contract those or develop those, so they make great and mole models. Yeah. The these cats because their site and they're hearing and their balance. I have to ask, how are you feeling right now about this episode? Well, what do you mean like about the topic? Uh? Because

you're holding it together really well? You mean I'm not crying yet? Yeah? Yeah, I've checked my emotions out of this one. I think this two parts sweet will get points across. I'm just relying on that. I'll get weepy later tonight. Do you remember the Secret of Nim? Yeah? Sure, I had forgotten what the secret was, or I don't think it ever dawned on me what the secret really wasn't I went back and was reading about the those were mice, right, there were rats and the secret of Nim.

Well we probably shouldn't say, would that be a spoiler? Yeah? I think so it's like the spoiler, like that's in the title. What if the secret of nim was that Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense was dead all along? You know what I think was an even Wait is that a spoiler? Yeah? I think it was. It was years ago at least. If you haven't seen the sixth Cents by now, t s for you go see the others, though a lot of people haven't seen the others. Sixth Sense,

the one thing cool Kidman, that was good Man. That was great, very atmospheric Moody film, that one. And the Orphanage. Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. The Orphanage is maybe even the better of the two. Yeah. Yeah. Uh So monkeys primates, um, well, non human primates, we should say, specifically, the maccaque monkey is used a lot because there, uh there's a lot of them, and they're widely distributed and uh have a robust population. So you know, they made a lot of

advances into neuroscience thanks to the maccaque monkey. And then, um, there's some animals that will just do because they contain flesh, like pigs and goats are used a lot, and what's called live tissue trauma training, which is exactly what it sounds like. Um, it's used to train battlefield medics in

the military. Uh, and the Coast Guard apparently, and um the animals innesthetized deeply to like surgical plane levels and um shot or blown up or um just weird stuff done to it to stimulate a battlefield trauma so that medic can do live what it's called live tissue trauma training, so they can save a life on the battlefield. Yeah, but then they euthanize the they kill the animal afterward. But yes, on the battlefield. That's the whole I mean,

that's the whole point there. And they're saying there's no substitute for that, well, which is sort of the what they scientists and doctors say. Well, well we'll get into all that, okay. Uh. One thing we should mention though, is that if you look for labels say this was not tested on animals. Uh, it's sort of like the whole free range chicken myth. Um, it's not exactly what you think it is, right, Well, free range chickens, it doesn't have to have like a porch attached to the structure.

They don't even have to have access to it, and you just have to have the door open so they can leave if they want. Um. But you have people have images I think of these chickens running around the fields, idyllic countryside. Yeah, but they don't they they're in the barn where the food is and they kind of don't leave. But the doors they are, so they're technically free range unless something's changed. When I worked in the chicken industry, those sad that sad year or whatever it was, I

would guess absolutely nothing's changed. Probably so, But if you look for labels to say cruelty free or not tested on animals, it may not mean what you think because technically there's no oversight on a label like that, and it could mean that we did not in the final product of this cosmetic tested on animals. We didn't tell us this rouge, but all the raw ingredients that went

into this from our suppliers were tested on animals. Or back in the sixties or seventies, they tested these same ingredients on animals, and there's no need for us to test them again. So now we can say not tested on animals even though these things, right, these things were tested on animals years back. UM, And actually China has changed things recently, as um, the West was getting further and further away. I think the EU banned imports of

of anything that have been tested on animals cosmetics wise. Um, and China has gone the opposite direction. It is mandated that anything important into China cosmetics wise must have been tested on animals. So kind of reset things here in the West because there's a lot of Western companies like I want in on that Chinese market, and China saying well, you got to test your like, the whole thing on animals before it comes in here. Interest thing. Uh So

here's the deal. Over the twentieth century, Um, we've made a lot of medical advances. Life expectancy, this is kind of a neat stat has gone up about three months per year in the twentieth century, largely due to stuff like this testing for disease. Well, yeah, people who are advocates of animal testing say that would not have happened maybe at all, had we not used animals. And life expectancy was extended three months a year from I think like eighteen forty to two thousand six or something like

that every year. UM. And and that was advanced by finding things like antibiotics and vaccines, and all of the things that um not just extend the human life, but make the the extended years more enjoyable as well more healthy. UM. And that's a huge rallying cry for people who point to animal testing and say this is this is necessary

and has to continue. And actually there is a two thousand eleven poll of biomedical researchers by Nature, which is no slouch of a scientific journal, and they found that agreed with the the sentence use of animals in research is essential. There's two eleven. So that's not that sentiment isn't going anywhere. No, I think that's probably pretty much accurate. Today.

On the other side of the coin, you have animal rights activists and and even if you're not an activist, just your average Joe on the street or Jane UM might say, you know what, this is unethical. Uh does a lot of harm, it's wasteful, and there are better ways to do it. In fact, some people say it's not even doing the job that it should be doing. For instance, Uh, they can cure cancer and mice, and we have been able to do this for a while,

can't cure it in humans. UM. Of the HIV AIDS vaccines that were tested uh successfully on primates, they don't work on humans, and one of them may have even made humans more susceptible. Yeah yeah, so it's uh, you know, there's two very strong sides to this argument. The f d A has said that nine tenths of all drugs and development don't work in humans after they worked in animals because you just can't tell, right, And actually I looked that up there. It's it's a little bit of

a fallacy. It's more like fail in clinical trials. But that's all pre clinical trials that so not just animal testing but also non animal testing where it passed that the first stages when it made it to clinical trials, of all drugs failed to work or actually harmed humans. There's another side of the coin, though, too, Chuck, how many sides are on this coin. There's it's like one of those hundreds to die that you see a D

and D but never know how to use. Um. There are probably a lot of drugs out there that harmed animals and were shelved right then didn't make it into clinical trials because the animals were harmed, that may not have harmed humans that actually could have cured things. So there's people saying no, we we we need to be testing on humans because we're using this for humans. That's that's what some some prob I guess protesters against animal

testing would say. And then, um, another thing that I saw is that you you tend to think like, Okay, well, it's advancing science, so I can't really get in the way of that. But there are One of the critiques of that argument is not all the science is is good, that's being done and like a lot of animal lives.

If you agree that animal lives are are valuable, and but that use seeing an animal life to advance scientific understanding to protect human health and life is worthy, it's a worthy use of an animal, then that you would also probably agree with the idea that wasting the animal's life and scientific testing is unforgivable. Right. So there was a survey in two thousand nine p l OS one Proceedings of the Library of Science one, the Journal of

two one Animal Studies. I found that forty one percent failed to even state hypothesis are objective to the tests umtent failed to describe the statistic methods used uh in the study, didn't randomize scent, didn't use blinding, and those are basic scientific efforts that you have to make in any experiment, right, those are very basic um, which means that those things were wasted, which means those animals lives

were wasted. And the suggestion is is that a lot of publicly funded science is just not very good science and it's wasting the lives of the animals involved. Well, that's sad. I'm starting to get emotional. Okay, all right, let's take a break then and we'll come back and talk a little bit about our old buddy, Charles D Chuck D. Darwin. Alright, so I teased everybody with Charles Darwin. Oh is that who you're talking about? Which is what I do every Halloween. I dress up as Charles Darwin

and tease the local teens. Oh what are you going to dress up as for our show in d C on October twenty night. I don't know, but I'm glad you mentioned that, because we're doing a show at the Lincoln Theater and we're turning it into a Halloween ball. It's a Halloween bash, not even a ball. Yeah, it's a wrong above the ball, including a reading of a of a Halloween story like we do just for their ears only. Yeah, Plus we'll be dressed up. We're encouraging

everyone who comes to be dressed up. Maybe I'll go to Charles Darwin. And as far as I know, it's an all ages show, but it could get spooky and our shows do get a little blue. So just f y, I you've been worn So Charles Darwin, who I made dress up as I've got. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going as I'd rather not reveal it at the time. Um, he was kind of in on this game a long time ago, and he was he loved animals, but he also wanted to study animals, but he also

wanted to treat them humanly while he studied animals. Sounds sounds like Charles Darwin kind of approach. Yes. Uh So there was a eight seventy four there was like people were actually starting to get in trouble for some of these things. Uh. In eighteen seven, any for these scientists were actually put on trial for torturing dogs because they wanted to see how absent and alcohol affected their nervous system. So they cut them open and exposed them to these liquids.

They just dowsed them, And is what I what I'm taking from I have no idea, I guess, so they're actually acquitted. But um, it sort of brought things into the UH in the front of everyone's minds and Darwin. People were saying, let's not do this at all, and Darwin stepped in and said he was a little more moderate and said, you know what, let's craft a bill here in the United Kingdom where you can do this, but do it humanely. And that resulted in the Cruelty

to Animals Act of eight. It's pretty great. It was advancement, it was, but the UK actually has long led the way in the West for animal rights. Um, even even before that, as we'll see, they they were trying to protect animals, as we'll see in the next episod So that's right. And then a little later in ur the University's Federation of Animal Welfare said, let's get these two dudes zoologist and a microbiologist, Russell and Birch, and just do a lot of research, guys, and come back with

some findings that we can use. And boy did they. Yeah. They they were like, there's a lot better that we can do in protecting animals. They um, scientists are typically dumb and can only remember things through a literation. So these guys came up with the three RS, something that could be put on a p s a poster um. The three RS. I'm just teasing about the scientist thing, our replacement, reduction and refinement. Right, yes, so your first goal is to to find a replacement of the animal.

Is there any alternative to the animal in this experiment? Yeah, well, like, uh, a sentient animal with a not like with a worm perhaps instead of a mouse, or you know, if you can find uh willing robot. Right, you know that it's the bill. The second one's reduction. You want to reduce the number of animals used to the absolute minimum. You don't want to have any spare bang utangs hanging around. You want to know how many you're gonna use, and uh,

those are the ones that you can kill. Correct and then finally refine, which means and and this is you know, sort of the opposite of what you were talking about with those awful stats that you said, like, let's refine this and at least get your technique down. Uh so well that the suffering is minimized to its bare minimum as well the waste is reduced. Yeah yeah, Um, and that that uh, that was nine that Russell and Birch released the three RS. This is two thousand nine. That

that one study I cited was conducted years later. So, uh, Peter, you know the people for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, We've talked about them quite a bit on the show. They are down with the three RS, of course, but they say, you know what, that's not enough, though. We have a lot of studies that show that they're way better ways of doing things these days than using animals with the computer modeling that we have now and software

and humans. Yeah, and um, they're they've figured out techniques using stem cells um to grow organs or organs cells or like say, skin cells in vitro, and then exposing them to the chemicals you want to test, and then not only will you have your reaction or non reaction, you'll also have it with like a human human cells. So it's not like, oh, it messed this rabbits face up pretty bad. Well, we'll just assume that it will

mess up a human skin as well. It's you know, this stuff really burned through that that human skin tissue that we sent the sized, So now we know for sure not to give it to humans. There's also something called because a big objection to that is well, that's just a it's a skin. It's a group of skin cells in vitro that doesn't really replicate you know, these really intricate interplays that make up organs and systems of organs.

And there's a company out called um OH. I don't remember what they're called, but their invention is organ on a chip. It's amazing, dude. I watched this video about it last night, which that's the only way it could be better. It's if you could eat it afterwards, but it'd be pretty messed up if you did so. It's like a USB stick size module. That's the word I'm

going with. It's transparent and um say, the long on a chip has some branching stuff, and inside there is a layer of um lung cells and the that replicate and simulate human lung So you have human lung cells growing in the and arranged in the way that they would in the human lung. And then the this device allows you to pass air over the top and blood over the top and introduce bacteria and introduce white blood

cells and study what they do. So you're replicating the function of a human lung on this little thing, which is all simulation. It is, but it's a real simulation, Like it's it's using real lung cells and they're functioning like a lung normally would, except you don't have to you don't have to use it. You don't have to say here and and inhale this. We'll just pass this antibiotic across the lung cells and it will treat it

like the human lung would. It's amazing. And then yeah, if you could eat it afterwards, eat the human lung cells with some guacamali, you'd be like this, this is

the circle of life is complete. Well, that's sort of one of the big points so that Peter and a lot of organizations uses that we're we're so vans now with our computer modeling and these simulations that they're actually they are better ways than like it's sort of archaic to experiment on an animal like these are not only cruelty free, but it's smarter and better, Right, that's the argument they make. Yeah, and I mean the statistics cut both ways. Like if you look at Peter's stats, they're

like animal models are predictive. It's in this dismal range right for you know, human outcomes, and then the people who are in favor of animal testing stay, well, these these computer models are actually the ones that have dismal results. So both sides. I guess it's just too new, maybe it's unproven. Yeah, but there does seem to be a movement a foot in uh bio medicine to replace as

much as possible computer models with animals with computer models. Yeah. Uh. Some of the other things that animal rights groups lobby for, things like, well how about you do like CT scans or m r s you're not actually harming the animal, or this thing called micro dosing where you actually give humans just very very small doses of these medicines that won't be enough to hurt them if things don't work out, but you could tell if it's going to be effective

or not. Yeah, it still produces that reaction on a molecular level. It's just not going to have a system wide toxic effect on it. That's pretty that's pretty neat. Um and and they're there. There's some change, but at the same time there's also um some digging in on on both sides as well, Like, for example, with that live tissue trauma training. Um, there was a there's a movement to replace uh, any live animal with a dummy

or a mannequin or something like that. And the people who are proponents of using animals and live tissue trauma training say, man, there's something that can happen to a battlefield medic during common at and that's called freezing. When they're presented with a human being with you know, a major trauma, they can just sit there and freeze and freak out because this is the first time they've been exposed to it. One of the aspects of you know, blowing the leg off of a pig is that this

person is having to work on a pig. And yeah, it's a pig, but it's a live pig. It's not a right exactly, and maybe they made they made the person care for the pig for like a week first, so that it has even more Well, I just made that up, but you could you could see how the how that would like that would be tough to replace. That's a tough one to argue with. But I think ultimately the question is race chuck um, And this is

what we're gonna address in the next episode. Is is probably the largest question of all and is do humans have or have humans ever had the right to use animals for our own means? And that's uh, we'll talk about that one on the next episode. Boy, that's a nice cliffhanger, I think, so too well done. Do we have listener mail this one? Yeah? And you know what, not only that, we have a two part listener mail awesome that has its own cliffhanger. Man. All right, well,

let's get to it. So if you want to know more about animal testing, you can type that word in the search part how stuff works dot com and it will bring up this excellent article. And since I said search bar, it's time for part one of listener Mail. That's right. This one was so robust. It's an unprecedented to part from Evan, not Ivan, but Evan, will you grow up to be a good man? I hope? So now that's Levi on. Oh yeah, well the else silent um and those were weren't the right words anyway, but

it's adorable. All right, here we go. First off, guys, gotta say you're not only my favorite podcast, but you're also my ten year old son's favorite podcast. Listen to every episode at least twice how about that. And my son is also a big fan of your TV show and the animated shorts why they're in deep. However, my

beautiful fiance is not. In fact, there have been times when I will be sitting next to her and she's reading a book and I'll have my headphones listening to the podcast so I don't disturb her, and I'll burst out laughing like a crazy person. In her words, uh this quote crazy end quote. Behavior of mine is directly uh related to listening to you two, So thanks for that anyway. One of the reasons are right is to

call your attention. You said on the Sugar It Powers the Earth podcast, Chuck says, one day we're gonna rerecord a show and not realize it, we're gonna hear about it. Well, you managed to do it. You probably heard from someone else by now. But you have covered the topic of customs twice, the most recent one and all gets the previous one in September. Don't get me wrong, both were great. Honestly think that both of you legit only forgot. I was waiting for either of you to acknowledge at the

second time, and that never came. And Ivan, you are right on the money. Bou Josh emailed me and said, hey, buddy, guess what we've done this. It finally happened, we released it, and um, at first I was like shoot, but then I thought, you know what, We've got a nice bit of trivia. Now it was bound to happen, and now people have. It's It's almost like an easter egg, right that listeners and fans can say, like, you know which one they did twice? You're a true fan, you know

you know it's weird. Though, UM, at no point during the research and recording of the Customs episode was I like, this sounds really familiar? Or did we talk about this nothing, no point whatsoever. Nope. So that might make the first Customs episode the least memorable episode we've ever done. Perhaps so Part two you can look for in the second part of this sweet coming out from Von wherein he made a list of all of our band names over the years. He also made a list of your puns.

I am not puny. I take issue with that. I'll talk about it in the next episode. Great, that's a great set up if you want to get in touch with us, like lev On Evon and what is his son's name? Did he say. He didn't say, but Evan and son. Yeah, it'sund like a funeral home. Uh. You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast

or hang out with me at Josh um Clark. You can hang out with us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know and check out Chuck at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and me it's super Josh Clark both on Facebook. We're on Instagram. We're on social media that hasn't even been invented yet. Plus, you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, the newly updated Stuff you Should

Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com. H