Reading time: 6 minutes
“It will cost you..every time you change careers it will cost you.” My manager’s words echoed in my thoughts long after I left that job. These words lingered; like an unanswered question or a threat meant to stop me from treading a new path. Although I didn’t know what direction that path would lead me at the time, I knew the job I was in was unsuitable, unethical, and completely unnecessary. And, by any conventional rulebook, I wasn’t supposed to find my true calling in such a short space of time.
I decided to leave my career in medical research before it had even really begun. In three months, I knew I was the square peg trying my absolute best to fit a round hole. It’s not that the team weren’t wonderful, or the office space wasn’t conducive to a relaxed working atmosphere – it was the principles of the work I was doing that didn’t sit right with me. I was not OK with experimenting on animals and couldn’t see how it was going to be “valuable research” to finding a treatment for the disease I was working on.
I had never felt comfortable with the use of animals in research but from a young age it was instilled in me that it was a necessary evil to produce treatments. If animal experimentation in medical research was summed up in a sci-fi movie, the world would be on the brink of destruction and there’d be a mad scientist telling the hero it was “for the survival of the human race”. Many people honestly still believe that and, after having worked in a children’s hospital, I can tell you families will do anything for the love of their children suffering with life-threatening diseases – the “necessary” and the “unecessary” evils. That gut-wrenching pain alone is enough to make you want to raise hell if it meant saving a loved one.
But what’s even more disheartening is the fact that these families are living in hope that the UK Government is funding cutting-edge biotechnology to help find answers to complex diseases. I no longer believe this to be true. What is predominantly funded here in the UK is animal testing in medical research and there’s a wealth of information proving why they are not only ineffective but also dangerous for humans. As you may be aware, in order to study parts of- or the whole process- of a disease, scientists require a reliable model of a disease which they can then test potential clinical drugs. They can then trial this treatment on a disease model to ensure it’s a safe to use before testing it out on healthy humans and finally the ones affected with the disease in question.
It has long been the role of laboratory animals to fulfil the purpose of a disease model and there have been countless drug trials on animals which have felt to be at first supposedly safe and has later caused harm to human health. A notable example is Vioxx, an arthritis drug which was found to be safe for monkeys and other animal species [1]. Yet it was estimated to have caused approximately 320,000 heart attacks and strokes and 140,000 deaths worldwide. This is just one of the countless examples of animal testing being detrimental to human health and there have been so many indications that a potential treatment will not work in humans due to the sheer number of differences in humans and non-human animals. However, many UK university research institutions and well-known companies have not backed out of the animal testing game because it is far cheaper to choose animals.
To date, the success rate of translating a therapeutic drug from research & development to the clinic is less than 10% [2] and there are two main reasons for this:
· Issues concerning safety of the drug in humans
· When the drug is finally tested on humans it’s not effective enough at treating the disease
A failure rate of over 90% is frankly appalling and patients are desperate for innovation. So, what’s the alternative to using animals you ask? Treatments for human diseases needs to be tested on humans, from the very beginning of drug development, and in a completely safe and effective way. It’s all possible if we understand the science behind it all.
There is a whole community of scientists and laboratories actively developing alternatives to animal testing and it’s a vast field to keep a close eye on. With the use of samples from human volunteers we can better understand disease processes [3]. This can be scaled up to create a 3D model of a human organ in the laboratory to test new therapies. Researchers have developed devices called “organ-on-chip” [4] to study disease processes and can even link multiple organs on the same chip. This innovation has the capability of mimicking the human body and enables the study of how safe a potential drug will be in humans.
Even with all this knowledge finding my voice was harder than I thought. After a decade of listening to other people tell me “this is the right way forward” and, let’s face it I did a lot of people-pleasing and fitting-in, it was easy to lose sight of my own opinions. Getting to grips with this again was the end of my last job and just the beginning of my new journey. I then needed to look at my career to date and recall what am I passionate about and what truly brings me peace? It was then clear as day – every role I ever had included teaching and it was something I actively sought after in every job. Not only do I want to teach science, I want to teach people to have an investigative mind, ask a million questions behind scientific discoveries and have them decide whether it could be done better or put to better use. I could educate the next generation and show them the opportunities that lie in their career that can be completely free from animal cruelty. I finally understood my vocation should celebrate my strengths in life and being able to educate was one of them.
In the case of medical research what we need to do is drive the development of better models of disease and rigorously test the current human-relevant models we have. Money should be spent on true solutions to save lives and we must learn to co-exist peacefully with animals on this planet.
I look forward to educating you, dear readers, in subsequent articles about the fantastic communities and researchers we have in the world that are supporting and providing better methods to cure diseases.
And, to answer my manager’s question, did it cost me to change careers? Well, the sheer cost of my mental health being in a job I didn’t enjoy is by far outweighed by the abundance of bravery, joy and freedom in the new ethical career path I’m on.
To anyone on a similar road, I wish you success and the very best of luck!
Savita Nutan
Founder of Medicine Without Cruelty
1. https://www.idausa.org/animal-testing-medicine/
2. Lowe, D. (2019). The Latest on Drug Failure and Approval Rates. In The Pipeline [Online]. Available from: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/05/09/the-latest-on-drug-failure-and-approval-rates 2019.
3. https://crueltyfreeinternational.org/about-animal-testing/alternatives-animal-testing
4. https://wyss.harvard.edu/technology/human-organs-on-chips/