Specious Science: How Genetics and Evolution Reveal Why Medical Research on Animals Harms Humans (review)

In this book, C. Ray Greek, an anesthesiologist, and Jean Swingle Greek, a veterinarian, offer what they claim is an examination of animal experimentation from a purely scientific point of view. As the title indicates, their conclusions do not support the use of animals in research—not surprising, since the Greeks are well-known animal advocates. They are also the authors of Sacred Cows and Golden Geese (Continuum, 2000), which closely resembles the present book. In both books, the Greeks argue that animal experimentation leads to results that are in most cases inapplicable to humans. Unfortunately, their argument has developed no additional nuance. Their method is to choose cases that fit their criteria and simply omit conflicting data. They argue that while animal experimentation may have revealed useful information in the past, progress has made it simply unnecessary; high-tech techniques can replace animals at every level of research. Science, they say, employs animal methods because the system is built to support this sort of research, not because it is scientifically superior to other methods.

The Greeks begin Specious Science with a chapter on the philosophy of science that can best be characterized as confused. The Greeks equate theories with laws, and talk about something they call "axiomatic-deductive reasoning," which looks like the hypothetico-deductive reasoning of most philosophers of science. By referring to a hypothesis as an axiom, they make science seem much more dogmatic than it is, which is perhaps their intent. Their discussion of Karl Popper's concept of falsifiability ignores Popper's contention that some theories are more testable than others and that no theory is completely irrefutable.

The Greeks look at several examples of animal use in science: cancer and blood diseases, surgery, drug testing, pediatrics, and brain diseases. In each case, they conclude that animal models have positively hindered medical progress in humans. How can they make this claim? In most cases, their use of evidence is extremely selective. For example, they describe Fleming's discovery of penicillin as pure serendipity, noting that he tried the drug on rabbits in the 1920s but that it was ineffective. They attribute its eventual adoption to his later last-chance use of it on a human patient. They fail to mention the work of Howard Florey, Ernst Chain, and Norman Heatley, who, by means of their experiments on mice, did far more than Fleming to demonstrate penicillin's therapeutic potential. They cite lists of drugs withdrawn from the market for various reasons, as evidence for the lack of effectiveness of animal testing. But what of the hundreds of effective drugs that remain on the market? The Greeks often argue in this manner, by innuendo and omission. Although they are correct to assert that reliance on the Rhesus monkey as a model delayed progress in the early years of polio research, they go on to argue that this reliance "resulted in a flawed vaccine that causes disability and death" (p. 151). Although the Salk and Sabin vaccines, both developed in monkeys, are not perfect, the near-eradication of polio from the world testifies to the vaccines' effectiveness.

While the Greeks cite many references from the scientific literature, they also rely heavily on antivivisectionist sources for their information. Scientific literature is at times cited out of context, and the citation method is inconsistent; page numbers are not always given. They mingle anecdotal material, historical references, and scientific evidence, often in the same paragraph, with no indication of the different levels of credibility.

As a longtime member and current chair of an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, I am fully aware that animal experiments are not always perfect models for human disease and that researchers can be...