Testing drugs on animals won't cure cancer

R.I.P Dad 

My dad died this year. He had a rare type cancer. He was only 62 and its hard to imagine that someone with such a big personality who could light up a room and make everyone laugh, is gone.

My dad didn't die of cancer. No, he died of kidney failure and starved to death.

The drugs to "cure" him, destroyed his kidneys.

The drugs they gave him to "cure" him, gave him a condition that meant even the mere smell of food made him feel violently ill, so he couldn't eat.

Cancer drugs kill people not just cancer 

How many times do you hear people who've lost loved ones to cancer say they died from cancer, when if you looked at many of their death certificates you'd find the drugs killed them, especially the chemotherapy which basically poisons people's bodies?

The trouble with cancer drugs is that they still continue to use the same chemotherapy drugs that have been killing people for decades. 

The main reason is these drugs work on some lab animals. 

**That's animals who are not the same as humans; who differ in many biological ways. 

**Animals who are kept in tiny cages, in artificial, controlled environments unlike the human patients who are allowed to live normal lives. 

The trouble with cancer research

Every time you hear about "advances in cancer research" and "the next cancer wonder drug," what they don't usually tell you (and journalists are too lazy to ask) is that too often this new, amazing breakthrough has been made by testing on animals only. Testing that is not reliable for so many reasons. Yet, the only way you can tell if a drug is going to work on humans is by testing it on humans - that includes using it on human tissue.

"Testing on animals, isn't just cruel, it also wastes time when more reliable methods should be used."

Considering the billions that have been spent on cancer research (so much of it donated by people who've lost someone who had cancer and who are conned into believing cancer research on animals will find a cure for humans) and the millions of animals who've died in the name of so called cancer research, little progress has been made on finding a cure. Sure, many patients are living longer, but how many people are actually cured?

I've known people to go into remission, but the cancer has always come back and either killed them or the drugs have. That seems to be what happens in most cases.

I look forward to a day when there is a cure, but this won't be achieved by experimenting on animals.

How can you help?

***Make sure your relatives know where the money most cancer charities raise goes and how it doesn't help to find a cure and causes needless animal suffering.

***Donate to cancer charities that don't fund animal experiments like hospices.

****Donate to charities that fund non-animal research like the Dr Hadwen Trust. They award grants to researchers who use alternatives to animal testing. 

What do the experts say? 

"I'm a cancer researcher, and the traditional model for testing drugs which are used for cancer therapy is to use a mouse. But recently, there have been great advances made in the laboratory in growing cancer cells in dishes, and I think it's got to the stage where, in many situations, this provides a much more accurate model than the mouse." 

Professor Ian Mackenzie, Professor of Stem Cell Science, Blizard Institute, London, BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, 31 July 2013.

"Because oncology (cancer) drugs have a success rate of only 5%, it is clear that animal models are only marginally effective. " 

M.B. Esch, T.L. King and M.L. Shuler, The Role of Body-on-a-Chip Devices in Drug and Toxicity Studies, Annu. Rev. Biomed. Eng. 2011. 13:55–72 (doi:10.1146/annurev-bioeng-071910-124629)2010

"Animals don't reflect the reality of cancer in humans. We cure cancer in animals all the time, but not in people." - Fran Visco, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987 and four years later founded the National Breast Cancer Coalition, an advocacy group.