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Tammy Drake, you're the director of Research and regulatory policy for the Center for Humane Economy. You led the charge in getting the passage to that FDA Modernization Act, and I'm sure it felt really good and it was a heavy lift to get that done. Describe for me what the situation is now in terms of animal testing and experimentation. What kinds of things are done. I know it's tough stuff to hear this. What kinds of things are done to dogs and cats and primates.
And other species.
Yeah, it isn't pretty. And when you're looking at testing for pharmaceuticals, primarily they start with safety pharmacology in general toxicology, right, They're looking at cardiovascular system, the central nervous system, gas are, intestinal, respiratory, all of that stuff, and then they have to try to find a safety margin for a first in human dose. In that process they are using rodents and non rodents.
For instance, if they're looking for acute toxicity, Lu's twenty rats, dogs or primates, And when they do that, everybody dies, right and in most cases, And Zahir can correct me if I'm wrong because I've never worked in a lab. Thankfully, all the animals are killed, you know, they go into sub chronic testing, chronic testing. Over time, they use more and more animals and they kill them because they want to do a nekruptcy to see what the heck happened inside.
So they basically inject them with whatever drug or poison it is to the point where, oh, that's the.
Dose that kills them exactly, and it actually that's exactly what they do, and they have to bring it down to where they have They call it NOEL. Correct me if I'm wrong, a se hair, you're the scientific no no observed adverse effect level, right, So what they do is they'll start as okay, that killed everybody. Let's go down a little bit, Okay, that killed half of them, and then they'll keep trying till they get to a dose where everybody seems okay. It's gruesome, you know, and
as an animal lover, you know it's reprehensible. But then they have other they have to do, uh, carcinogenicity, sometimes they do ocular and skin irritation, photo toxicity, and then they do efficacy testing. And when we're speaking pharmaceuticals, pretty much everybody dies, all the animals, whether it's the monkeys, the dogs, that might the wrap, the cats, whatever they're using as a.
Model and primates, Oh yeah, doctor, yeah, primates.
Doctors are here. Isn't wouldn't primates be? You think that they are? The results from that are more reproducible. Well, what kinds of things are done to primates? I think you mentioned seventy thousand a year that we know of.
Yes, yes, so you would think you would think, George, that primates are. They are believed to be closest to us in terms of behavior and physiology. But the reality is in primates there are fundamental differences between us and them that do not translate when it comes to medical sciences. I give you an example of COVID nineteen, which is, you know, everybody here is familiar with this. We went through that ordeal all of us. In fact, the non
human primates did not get COVID. They have a structural difference in the way receptors work make them more immune to COVID infection, and therefore they are terrible as a
model to study that of infection. Imagine if in fact, there hasn't been a recorded non human primate dying from disease burdens or multifactorial system failure, the hallmark of COVID nineteen DA from the get go, George, again, the translatability is not is not there, But let's assume, uh, you know, given the general belief that the primates are close to us, and there is there is a fundamental issue with with primate in terms of leading us down in a rabbit
hole when it comes to the pharmaco kinetics and the dosage that Tammy has just talked about, and that you know, the lethality and how do you take that that does and apply it to humans. So you have heard recently about the shortage of primates. I you know this this
looking out that story last last year. Basically we need to import a lot of primates from from China and Tammis actually is an expert on this, and I wrote an opinion piece for Without the last last year on that where where I chronicle the issue with the primate and and and and the futility of using using primates. I mean to cut a long story short shortage from from the imports of primate being somewhat compensated from Cambodia.
But then again that has been admired with smuggling issues, and Temmy can actually shed more light on this, to the point that the Fish Life handed indictment several indictment criminal indictments in November of twenty twenty two, again reducing the imports from from Cambodia and the animal enthusiast animals
so enthusiasts for the manument anymore. Research enthusiasts have been trying to increase the breeding programs, the domestic bleeding programs of primates, and that is a that's a terrible idea that has been a quest for decades and they have used this particular instance of the shortage in primate for laboratory testing to kind of promote that agenda.
Tammy, I want to talk about the primate experimentation before we get into the regulatory situation. Can you tell me what is done to primates? Is it the same as with dogs are injected until they die? I ask because I've seen these these horrible photos of where these little monkeys have their heads shaved and their brains are cut open, mother alive and awake.
Yep, they and they put them in and not just for you know, if you look at basic research as well as drug development, like NIH funded. We have seven National Primate Research centers here in the US, and NIH funds all of them. And some of the experimentation is so shocking. For instance, they here in Oregon. I live in Oregon. The Oregon National Primate Research Center does a lot of experimentation on drunk monkeys to the tune of probably thirty million dollars. And then they got another grant
to do drunk monkeys and COVID. And there's another experiment that is very famous that happened here in Oregon, and I don't think they're doing it now, but it was a maternal obesity study. They would get, you know, impregnate and I think these were Reeseu's macaque monkeys, feed them a high fat junk food diet, and then when the offspring is born, that'd take it from their mother and scare the monkey and then cut the baby monkey's brain
open to see what happened. And I don't know, George, I don't know about you, but tell me how does that benefit us. I'm trying to figure it out, because if you think most of the research for HIV AIDS vaccine has been done on non human primates. Many were done on chimpanzees. We don't experiment on chimpanzees in the US anymore, but thirty to forty vaccines in approximate ninety clinical trials involving more than twenty thousand human volunteers. Every
single one of the vaccines failed, every single one. It costs our tax dollars billions and it's been thirty years.
You know, the NIH then National Institutes of Health. That sounds like a respectable outfit. I've just read, you know, working on cancer and really big stuff, but reading about the things that they allow that they permit there, it's a terrible blemish is a here. You must work with these folks over the years. Can you give me the broad picture on what they approve?
Yeah, yes, and I was you know, I was funded by an ihe and I so I So, first of all, it's and I know folks the NIH personally, and I've worked with different program officers, and I can tell you that the staff of the NIH are some of the most dedicated people will you will ever meet in your life. So the issue is not about the talent at the NIH, or the issue about the politics that interfere with the work of the NIH and the special interest groups. So the NIH is, as you know, a forty five billion
dollars a year. That was the budget of twenty forty five billion. This is we are talking a huge number. And for the last seven years, George, the budget of the NIH have been consistently increasing. So it's wonderful to have to be an ecity where science is funded and appreciated. Our position is that a lot of the science that is funded, particularly the science that is going into to animal research, which is by some estimate is forty seven
percent of the total NIH budgel. So we are talking about what you like, twenty five billions, twenty to twenty. This is not a small part of body every year.
You know.
We believe that a lot of that is actually supporting wasteful research, and that is a tragedy because the mission of the NIH is really to promote human health and to advance the innovation and discovery of the molecular basis of the diseases in order to translate that into remedies and cures and treatments. So there is an issue there
to a fundamental issue. Probably twenty two billion dollars you a year in terms of using the proper modeling and funding innovative research that needed to be funded so that we do not get a ninety five percent failure late when we translate the or based basic science experiments and mostly on animals into human human action and outcomes. So so so there is there is a huge issue there. But I I mean, I give the the folks at the NIH, you know, credit for for for being so
dedicated to to to to finding yours. One thing that the public does not know is that actually the NIH does not fund science. Now you know, let me explain what I mean by that, because that sounds like blasphemy. What the NIH does it ensembles on committees and studies sections members from the academic committee community, so they bring, you know, scientists to review these grants and drank them. So who really decides at the end of the day. The committee is made up of scientists in ranking and
evaluating grants. It's really not the nihe it's a scientific community. And that scientific community is ninety nine percent a bias
towards animal experimentations. So you can, you know, you can do the math and get to the conclusion that unless that changed radically, unless we have a radical change in the process of how we evaluate grants, and you know, spike these committees with individuals who really understand what we are talking about when we talk about alternative methods to animal testing, innovative technology to artificial intelligence, orgaedoids, organized ship
and these type of new technologies that are more human relevant. We are going to continue to per pitch with the error and and and then continue to fund, unfortunately, projects that will lead us nowhere.
Well, you would think ni H, with all their expertise, must know that these billions of dollars are being wasted. You know that it's it's not producing what they want, that that money could be put into something that is far more productive and may actually make some progress on these issues.
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