Never Forget: We Get To Live Longer, Thanks To Sacrifice Of Dogs, Mice & Chimpanzees

Medical research isn't an easy thing to do. Researchers have to study the causes and effects of a condition, develop a drug, test it, and only then can they start making them. And almost every stage of that research pipeline involves animals in a lab setting.

An estimated 26 million animals are used every year for scientific and commercial testing in just the US alone.

That's because the ones used for testing share a remarkable amount of similarities with us, like mice and monkeys. They also suffer from similar health conditions and, since they have shorter lifespans, researchers can monitor a disease through their whole lives and across generations.

And over the years, they've contributed to a number of medical breakthroughs:

Mice

It's estimated the 95 percent of all animals used in biomedical research are rodents, specifically rats and mice. These are specially bred in labs, most often to have certain necessary genetic traits. Mice also share 98 percent of their DNA with us, making them very useful for disease and drug research.

1. Reversing aging

Last year, researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham were able to pinpoint the source of aging in a body using mice. Apparently a decline in mitochondrial DNA content and mitochondrial function is what causes things like wrinkles and hair loss to occur. After sapping lab mice of this trait, causing wrinkles and more to appear, they were then able to use gene editing to restore the mitochondrial DNA, reversing the visible signs of aging. This has yet to be tested on humans but, aside from making us look younger, it could also be used to reverse age-related conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, neurological disorders, and certain cancers.

2. A thin drug

In 2018, researchers from Flinders University and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center were working on a drug to help people lose weight. It's not just a vanity drug, but rather meant for people with things like thyroid issues, that force them to gain weight without the most stringent of lifestyles, which can be very restrictive.

They identified a specific weight-gain gene, gave the mice drug inhibitors to shut it off, and then fed them high-fat diets for prolonged periods. And since the mice didn't show any discernible weight gain, that means the drug could probably work wonders on humans too.

3. Artificial night vision

This one is less of a "cure" and more of an enhancement. Chinese researchers injected nanoparticles into the rodents' eyes which anchor to the photoreceptor cells. Then they act as photoreceptors specifically for infrared light, which let the mice see in the dark. Pretty handy tool to have when looking for your dropped keys outside the bar at closing time eh?

4. Same sex reproduction

Using a combination of stem cells and gene editing, Chinese scientists were able to facilitate reproduction in both male-only and female-only mice pairs. Unfortunately offspring from the former kind didn't fare too well, but the female pairs did just fine, with their babies even able to reproduce normally when they reached maturity. It's certainly not a medical condition to be fixed, but it's definitely a breakthrough homosexual couples that want their own progeny will appreciate.

5. HIV cure

Probably the biggest entry on this list, researchers were able to wipe out 100 percent of the HIV virus from lab mice. They were able to achieve this in 30 percent of the mice tested on, but that's still good news considering around 4 lakh people die of AIDS every year.

Llamas

Researchers at the Scripps Institute have been working with llamas, and specifically their antibodies. Flu has so many different forms, which is why you can catch it multiple times during your life. Unlike in humans however, llama flu antibodies provide them a means to resist the infection for more strains. So all you'd need is an intra-nasal administration of the eventual drug and you'd be flu-free for the rest of the year.

Dogs

Dogs aren't used right now in medical research, but they were a century ago. In fact, Frederick Banting and John Macleod removed the pancreas from dogs in 1921, in order to prove that it helps regulate blood sugar. That directly lead to the discovery of Insulin, which saves millions each year.

Chimpanzees

In the early 2000's chimpanzees were being used to research and test drugs for Hepatitis B. They were also instrumental to developing a drug for Hepatitis C, which kills hundreds of thousands each year.

There are plenty of other instances of animal research too, each as important to medical advancement as the next. For instance, the polio vaccine was tested on animals in the 80s during development. Since then, it's reduced the number of cases from approximately 350,000 a year to about 27 as of 2016.

Animal research has also contributed to the treatment of a vast number of conditions like breast cancer, brain injuries, cystic fibrosis, malaria, tuberculosis, and more. And the testing probably won't stop anytime soon.

We don't have many alternatives

Let's leave aside the fact that countries mandate that human testing be carried out only after successful animal trials, usually multiple phases of them. After all, you don't want people dying in the name of science right? Moreimportantly though, we don't have any other effective way to study diseases and ways to treat them.

We have as yet to come up with an artificial system that can closely resemble the complex, whole-organ, system that is the human body. Though we can to some extent replicate individual parts, it's not enough to know a drug or treatment just does its job. Researchers also need to study any side effects it might have on other systems.

At the very least you can be sure that animal testing, when done well, is meant to be humane and ethical. Animals have to be taken care of, because any mistreatment could skew the studies, rendering the findings worthless. So even if you're worried that companies and universities may have no special feelings towards their lab animals, they at least have incentive to care for them.

The only way we can stop animal testing permanently, is if we advance enough in creating artificial biology. Perhaps then one day we could simply grow an interconnected set of biological systems in a lab to test our drugs. Of course, that does raise a different set of ethical questions.