September 18, 2012 – 6:01 pm
(ASCA) - Rome, September 18 - "After more than 50 years, vivisectionists continue to use thalidomide to convey partial and misleading information". The biologist Michela Kuan, head of Vivisection of the Lav, reiterates this in a note, thus returning to the controversy relating to the usefulness or otherwise of experimenting on animals with the molecule which caused the birth of many children affected by phocomelia.
"In response to the belated 'apologies' of the managing director of Grunenthal, the company that produced and marketed the drug that caused thousands of newborns affected by phocomelia, Senator Giovanardi did not miss the opportunity to exploit the due ethical implications towards the victims of this drug to support the causes of the trial – underlines Kuan -. However, Silvio Garattini replied to the reply from the LAV addressed to the Senator, accusing the undersigned, in her role as LAV manager of the Vivisection sector, of having to read the scientific literature”.
And he specifies: "Garattini cites some examples of animals in which thalidomide has had teratogenic effects, but does not clarify how it is possible to resort to hundreds of species to test drugs or, in general, new molecules - to which are added the genetically modified animals whose strains due to mutations are very numerous - and no reference is made to the dosage necessary to induce the malformation".
Kuan then retraces the stages of the story: ”Widikund Lenz, a German pediatrician, was the first to suggest a correlation between thalidomide and teratogenesis. The pregnant women who had taken thalidomide gave birth to phocomelic children, that is, without developed limbs. The first recorded case of phocomelia caused by thalidomide dates back to December 25, 1956, but in 1957 the drug was still triumphantly put on the market. Other cases of phocomelic births followed, followed by new animal experiments. Scientists looked in animals for evidence of what was already known in humans. None of the laboratory animals treated with thalidomide produced phocomelic fetuses and this delayed its withdrawal from the market”.
"Only after the catastrophe - continues Kuan -, with massive doses of thalidomide tested in countless species of animals, some phocomelic offspring were obtained in one of the (approximately) 150 breeds of rabbit, the New Zealand white rabbit, at doses between 25 and 300 times higher than normal for humans. Furthermore, malformations were obtained in certain species of monkey at doses ten times higher than normal. Dr. Lenz's assumption, based on an epidemiological finding with hundreds of phocomelic cases, was ignored for five years, and the drug was only withdrawn in 1962, by which time more than 10,000 phocomelic children had been born”.
“Animal studies – reiterates the manager Lav – played an active role in spreading this tragedy. In vitro human tissue research would have prevented this. The case of thalidomide therefore confirmed, unfortunately in retrospect, an already known teaching: it is absolutely useless to test the teratogenicity of a substance in animals. Yet another support for these considerations
