Animal Experiments at Palmer: Questions & Answers
Palmer: “It will be impossible for the chiropractic profession to fully realize its positive potential for humankind without rigorous basic science research.”
PETA’s Response: Research that will ultimately benefit people can be done without cutting off rats’ legs and tails and mutilating cats. Even as Palmer insists that it must be allowed to use animals in its experiments, many in the scientific community are turning away from animals and embracing sophisticated technologies using human cell-line tests, tissue cultures, computer virtual organs, mathematical models, clinical and epidemiological studies, and—most importantly—prevention. Studying animals tells us a lot about animals but not much about people. Why would the science of chiropractic want to go down the path of animal experimentation, which scientists have termed “methodologically flawed,” “grossly misleading,” and “scientifically invalid”?
Palmer: “Over five (5) years 140 rats and approximately 600 cats will be involved in ground-breaking chiropractic studies at Palmer. To put these numbers in perspective, consider that biologists estimate that over one million animals are killed every day by vehicles, over 365 million per year. … The American Humane Association estimates that animal shelters and pounds put 10-17 million abandoned pets to death each year, mostly dogs and cats.”
PETA’s Response: That’s like saying, “Many people are killed in traffic accidents every year, so what does it matter if we murder a few more men and women?” Defending the premeditated violence of Palmer’s labs by pointing to tragic situations that are entirely unrelated is an attempt to draw attention away from the truth—that hundreds of cats and rats are being surgically mutilated and killed in experiments that physicians have called “appalling.”
Palmer: “[Animal] studies [conducted at Palmer] adhere to extremely stringent regulations and ethical guidelines for humane care.”
PETA’s Response: In the United States, there is only one federal law, the Animal Welfare Act, that offers any protection to animals in laboratories, and it deals only with housekeeping issues such as cage size. Worse still, it entirely excludes rats and mice, who make up 80 percent of the animals killed in laboratories. The AWA does NOT stop experimenters from hurting animals. Burning them, breaking their bones, shocking them, starving them, crushing their skulls, poisoning them—all are perfectly legal. When an inspector from the U.S. Department of Agriculture does visit Palmer—at most, once or twice a year—he or she will be looking at cages, food, and disinfectant, not at the animals’ pain or the experimenters’ mutilations of the animals.
Palmer: “[W]hat could be more important to the chiropractic profession than fundamental research on the underlying principles of chiropractic theory and philosophy!”
PETA’s Response: Any research undertaken by chiropractic laboratories should, first and foremost, be relevant to human patients. Cats, rats, and other animals are not tiny people. They stand on four legs rather than two and move their bodies in entirely different ways. The “underlying principles of chiropractic theory” came from a study of the human form, not other species. Furthermore, a significant draw for patients to chiropractic is its conservative approach to health restoration with an emphasis on the holistic view. The integrity of this view is undermined by Palmer’s insistence on harming animals for questionable and painful experiments.
Palmer: “Even convicted criminals are legally protected from being involved in research.”
“The experiments are extremely misguided, will not achieve any of their stated goals, and are extremely detrimental to Chiropractic in image, substance, and direction. My concern is that limited scientific, academic minds cannot see past their noses (or perhaps their wallets!) at the larger picture and realize that far more harm than any supposed good is occurring.”
—Tom Clunie, D.C.
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PETA’s Response: Palmer seems to
be saying that animals are so unimportant that they don’t even have the same rights as convicted criminals. Yet, with this statement,
Palmer highlights one of the most poignant arguments against using animals in experiments. The only “crime” committed by animals is that they have not been born human. But even though animals are physiologically different from people, like us they do feel terror under the experimenter’s knife and pain when their bones are broken. Surely all beings capable of suffering deserve the same consideration.
Palmer: “[S]ome of the very research we are pursuing [invasive experiments on rats] will yield data that will eventually allow us to create a mathematical finite element model of the spine.”
“The vertical, lateral and sheer stresses placed upon the spinal cord and the spinal nerves that emanate from it are uniquely human. To assume otherwise would contradict the central concept of healing in Chiropracty.”
—Lester Y. Ichinose, Ph.D.
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PETA’s Response: As the computer adage cautions, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Invasive experiments conducted on rats will move the experimenters toward a model of the spine of a rat, not the spine of a human. It is a simple fact of biophysics that the spine of a rat is fundamentally different from the spine of a human. Palmer seems to be motivated more by research dollars than by good science.
Palmer: “The most exciting feature of this model is that it enables us to evaluate biological effects predicted by chiropractic theory. In addition, we may use the model to directly examine important clinical questions.”
PETA’s Response: The greatest advances in health care have come from methodical and exhaustive recording of observations of human patients in clinical and epidemiological studies. No matter what Palmer does to animals, observations of people will always yield more meaningful research results. Palmer will help more people by putting resources into building a registry of clinical observations than by hurting and killing animals.
Palmer: “PETA had obtained a grant proposal from Palmer that had originally discussed this methodology [cutting off the legs and tails of rats] at one time. However, during the … period of scientific review at NIH, new studies were published describing a new behavioral model of rat bipedalism. When these became known to NIH program officers and Palmer investigators, the protocols were changed.”
PETA’s Response: The only reason why Palmer didn’t carry out the gruesome procedures proposed by its own experimenters is that the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW), a body which reports to NIH, "expressed concern" over the experiments.
