All this is in preface to the topic at hand, a blog post that Maggie at Okay, Fine, Dammit wrote earlier this week. Maggie is an exceptionally good writer and her post reflects her skills. Like any good writer she seeks to convince the reader of a point of view or to take an action. What she wants her reader to do with this post is to think about scientific research involving animals. Certainly there are turns of phrase and particular questions posed that imply that the author frowns upon animal research, but it is certainly not a rant, not a polemic, not a diatribe. Maggie achieves her goal if the stream of comments that follows is any indication - she gets people thinking about animal welfare. The problem is that I fear Maggie is, perhaps unwittingly, supporting the position of and giving fodder to extreme anti-vivisectionists.

Maggie knows that it is unlikely that we’d be having this “conversation” without animal testing. Prior to the golden age of medicine that began with Alexander Fleming’s discovery of the anti-bacterial properties of penicillin (itself tested on mice) we would both be well past middle-age and perhaps to sick to be typing away into the interspace. The fact that both Maggie’s kids and my kid woke up this morning healthy and uninfected by crippling diseases like polio, which was eradicated by a vaccine that was originally tested on animals, is testament to the necessity of animal research. Most of the academic research done that involves animals is done on critters like nematodes, fruit flies, mice and rats - hardly the warm fuzzies that you see being abused in anti-research ads. Most of this research is done in the interest of gaining a better understanding of devastating human diseases - cancer, Alzheimers, ALS, diabetes, and so on. I’m not a fan of big pharma I can not and will not attest to what happens in corporate labs. This is where most of the horror stories come from - bunnies blinded by mascara and what not. But, as are most of the facts presented by anti-vivisectionists, these are the exceptions rather than the rule. As Maggie points out, all the drugs that are approved for human use must be tested on animals. Some of these drugs make you erect or put you at ease in social situations, but the vast majority save lives on a daily basis. They save your friends’ lives, your family’s lives and, at some point for most people, your own life.

Research scientists are not in the business of torturing animals. I have yet to meet a research scientist that is flippant about his or her use of research animals. I have yet to meet a scientist who approached the animal testing portion of their job with any more than grim determination of something that had to be done. Animal welfare is governed by strict ethical standards. The animals themselves are treated with as much respect and dignity as possible. Both the RSPCA and ASPCA recognize the need for animal testing and focus their attention on ethical treatment of research animals and the search for alternatives. The fact of the matter is that if there were viable alternatives then most researchers that I know would use them. The only alternative in most cases is to do primary testing on human subjects - most people would not consider that a viable alternative.

Many animal rights groups are completely blinded to these realities in their obsession to eliminate animal testing. Someone wiser than me said that opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink. I have no problem with animal rights activists as long as they don’t become like their opinions, as long as they don’t become assholes. An animal rights campaigner becomes an asshole when he stalks and threatens a contractor working on a building that is designed to improve housing conditions for research animals. An animal rights campaigner becomes an asshole when she torches a university building, without regard for whether or not it was occupied in protest of the school’s policy on animal testing. An animal rights campaigner becomes an asshole when he digs up the remains of a Guinea pig farmer’s mother-in-law in some kind of twisted protest against animal testing. I experienced some of this madness first hand. Before a series of court orders silenced protestors that stood outside my building on almost a daily basis, I would have these people hurling abuse at myself and my colleagues. They called us “torturers”, “killers” and “terrorists”. Just a reminder, I work on plants.

So, Maggie, my problem is not with your questions, your qualms or your desire to have people explore a topic that they may not think about enough. I agree entirely, people should be aware of what is happening in animal research labs. My problem is that they are getting junk information and junk science from animal rights extremists. Most animal rights campaigners are earnest, if in my opinion misguided, people with a real concern for animal welfare. Many of them are unknowingly being led by wild-eyed, violent, extremists that have no concern for the truth. They use shock tactics and horrifying images to mislead compassionate people. They have less regard for human life than they do for animal life. They are like climate change deniers, Maggie, they latch on to one or two poorly researched studies that say there is an alternative to animal testing and spout the same crap science over and over. By all means, then, think about animal research but make sure that you have accurate information in hand.

I would encourage people who want to know more about the truths behind animal testing to check out Pro-test and the Research Defense Society.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system turns on the body’s joints. It is a disabling and painful inflammatory condition, which can result in an increased risk in cardiovascular disease. RA is incurable and its causes are unclear, although there are a number of plausible theories.

Suffererers of RA tend to display abnormal lipoprotein (cholesterol and trigylceride) levels, which is often associated with disease symptoms. Bearing this in mind, a Swedish research group hypothesized that dietary changes, particularly those that would restrict intake of saturated fats, that regulate the levels of these lipoproteins may be part of an effective treatment for RA. Led by Johan Frostegard of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, they randomly assigned (sentenced) volunteers to either a vegan, gluten free diet or a well-balanced normal diet for a year. Both diets were composed of roughly the same ratios of protein, carbohydrates and fat with the only major difference being the lack of animal and wheat products in the vegan diet. The researchers then analyzed blood lipid levels after both three months and a year.

First, it’s amusing that about one quarter of the patients that found themselves involuntary vegans quit the study before the three month time point. That would have been me. But for those that struggled through, the Swedish group found that a vegan diet induced decreases in total cholesterol, body mass index and in the ratio of LDL:HDL cholesterol. These changes in lipoprotein profile are more similar to those seen in healthy, non-RA individuals.

Frostegard’s group concludes that a gluten-free vegan diet are potentially anti-inflammatory and protective against RA. What they do not show is any alleviation of RA symptoms - probably the bigger issue for the patients. However, the biggest problem with this study is that it gives vegans, who already think that they’re saving the planet and all its fauna, something else to be smug about. Nonetheless, the results are compelling as the only difference between the two diets was in the amount of saturated fat. Dietary changes alone are probably not an effective treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, but the changes in lipoprotein levels that they can induce are certainly not going to hurt.

I wonder if the researchers are vegans? Ah well, never mind, all this talk about foot has made me hungry and it’s nearly lunch - today it’s that great British dish bangers and mash.

-Jay Farrar - “Feel Free”

There is nothing to induce a simmering fury in me on my morning bicycle commute like following a diesel exhaust spewing, and inconsiderately piloted, bus. The narrow streets of Oxford barely allow for two cars to pass side-by-side - nevermind buses, vans and trucks - and the dark stains on the beautiful sandstone buildings attest to the long term effects of pollution from vehicle exhaust.

A study that I found this week at BioMed Central explores the shorter term effects of one type of vehicle exhaust on peoples brains. It seems that there may be a biological reason for my frustration at tailing a bus into the Oxford city center. Writing in Particle and Fibre Toxicology, a group led by Paul Borm at Zuyd University in the Netherlands looked at brain activity of volunteers exposed to diesel exhaust and found some interesting changes. (more…)

One of the several things that I will miss about working in academia is unfettered access to academic journals. The cliche of academics locked away in ivory towers is reinforced by the unfortunate fact that many, and certainly the most important, of our journals are protected by a heavy subscription fee. An annual personal subscription to Nature, for example, is $200 (US). It’s kind of a hefty cover charge to get into the club. Effectively this prevents the general public from participating much in the scientific discussion - particularly unhelpful for those lay people that are slightly suspicious of scientists and their work.

To counter this ivory tower attitude, groups of scientists got together in 2002 and 2003 to push for open access to scientific literature online. Currently about 10 percent of academic journals offer free access to all of their contents. The primary criticism of open access journals is financial. Because they don’t receive subscription fees, OA journals charge a higher publication fee to researchers. This is kind of a bogus argument as nearly all journals, OA or subscription, use a pay to play policy. (more…)

The problem is that an increasing number of scientific studies are indicating that corn-based ethanol may not be the green giant that folks thought. Just before Christmas a letter to Science by a respected ecologist suggested that the jump in corn farming in the U.S. has led to increased Amazonian deforestation. Grain prices hit record highs in the summer of 2007 due at least in part to the massive increase in demand for ethanol. This week, two papers in Science propose that the real costs of the ethanol boom may not be an increase in food prices but, ironically, an increase in atmospheric carbon. (more…)

Bob Moore (the lead author on this study), Carter and their colleagues describe Chromera velia, now the closest-known photosynthetic relative to apicomplexan parasites - including the one that causes malaria. The discovery and phylogenetic characterization of Chromera illuminates a murky step in the evolution of photosynthesis. This close evolutionary relationship also means that Chromera will be a powerful model system for studying apicomplexan diseases.

Carter took a seat on the virtual couch to discuss her group’s recent discoveries:

CDV: My readers run the gamut from working scientists to lay persons. Can you clearly and concisely explain to the latter class why they should pay attention? (more…)

The Drive-By Truckers - “The Deeper In”

Geneticists love nothing more than a good inbred organism with which to work - yep, we’re fun people. When you’re trying to determine the genetic source of a particular trait, the less genetic variability the better. With a nicely inbred genetic model organism, the researcher can assume that when a interesting heritable trait is found that everything else is the same except for the mutation that causes that trait. So, the laboratory strains of model genetic organisms that most researchers work with tend to be highly inbred.

That’s fine for your average laboratory fruit fly, but inbreeding tends not to work so well in the wild - just take a look at the guests on the Jerry Springer Show or your average pug. (more…)

-The Velvet Underground - “Pale Blue Eyes”

The instant that my blue-eyed son Zach was born - to a green-eyed mother and brown-eyed father - I became interested in the genetics of human eye color. I now know, of course, that most Caucasian babies are born with blue eyes and that most of them change color before their first birthday. Nonetheless, an upcoming paper (more…)

A sizable chunk of the “junk” is made up of transposable elements (or transposons) - genetic elements that can move around the genome. Transposons were first identified by maize geneticist Barbara McClintock (more…)