A better way than animal experiments (From Daily Echo)

A better way than animal experiments

10:00am Tuesday 12th December 2006 in Readers' Letters

I am sure that most people would prefer medical research not to involve animals, but accept it because we are told again and again that it is necessary to find treatments for human illness.

But what if that is not true?

Programme makers, eg BBC2's documentary Monkeys, Rats and Me (November 27), seem to accept without question the claims of people like Tipu Aziz that it would not have been possible to find treatments such as Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson's Disease without his experiments on monkeys.

Yet, when pushed, even Aziz admits that DBS was, in fact, developed by French neurosurgeon Alim-Louis Benabid, entirely without animals.

Aziz's work merely identified a different site in the brain to implant the electrodes. Oh, but that sort of research cannot possibly be done without animal experiments, he assures us.

Thankfully, while Aziz is so loudly exclaiming that it can't be done, more innovative researchers are busy doing it.

Highly sophisticated, safe, non-invasive technologies enable scientists to study human volunteers directly.

A combination of scanning techniques can be used to provide a detailed, real-time picture of electrical, magnetic and chemical activity in the brain and nervous system.

In addition, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) allows researchers to momentarily (and safely) apply a precise electrical signal to any given site in the brain, showing the effects of stimulating or suppressing activity in that area.

In Parkinson's, this not only allows doctors to assess the potential of DBS before surgery, but has even been found to be effective as a treatment in its own right - normal research with TMS employs only a brief pulse after which normal brain activity resumes immediately.

However, in some patients regular sessions of extended TMS stimulation can be as effective as implanted electrodes, without the risks of surgery.

Not only does this sort of research avoid the appalling suffering endured by the primate victims of Tipu Aziz, it also avoids the (extremely common) potentially worse effects of species difference misleading and delaying progress. It is, however, hampered by a deperate lack of funding.

If places like Oxford University would invest in state of the art facilities for human-based research, instead of building yet another outdated animal centre, those of us who suffer from serious neurological diseases could only benefit.

J OAKLEY, Romsey