Specious Science: How Genetics and Evolution Reveal why Medical Research on Animals Harms Humans

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A&C Black, 2002 M01 1 - 288 pages
There is a great divide between species that makes extrapolation of biochemical research from one group to another utterly invalid. In their previous book, Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Cost of Experiments on Animals, the Greeks showed how an amorphous but insidious network of drug manufacturers, researchers dependent on government grants to earn their living, even cage-manufacturers have perpetuated animal research in spite of its total unpredictability when applied to humans. (Cancer in mice, for example, has long been cured. Chimps live long and relatively healthy lives with AIDS. There is no animal form of Alzheimer's disease.) In doing so, the Greeks blew the lid off the "specious science" we have been culturally conditioned to accept. This persuasive book takes these stunning revelations one step further. In accessible language, it provides the scientific underpinning for the Greeks' philosophy of "do no harm to any animal, human or not," by examining pediatrics, diseases of the brain, new surgical techniques, in vitro research, the Human Genome and Proteome Projects, and an array of scientific and technological breakthroughs.>

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
9
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
15
THE THEORETICAL BASIS FOR THE FAILURE
45
Follow the Money
52
GENES TECHNOLOGY AND INTERNAL MEDICINE
63
Diseases of the Blood
71
Where Drugs Come From
100
Drug Testing with the Animal Model
106
Alternatives to AnimalModeled Testing
125
SURGERY
133
PEDIATRICS
170
DISEASES OF THE BRAIN
204
BEYOND THE ANIMAL MODEL
244
POSTSCRIPT
261
REFERENCES
267
INDEX 285

Why the Animal Model Fails
119

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About the author (2002)

C. Ray Greek, M. D., is a board-certified anesthesiologist who has devoted himself to the message of this book. He and coauthor Jean Swingle Greek, D.V.M., speak at national and international forums on the subject of animal experimentation and have recently established Americans for Medical Advancement, a nonprofit foundation based in Los Angeles. Jean Swingle Greek, D.V.M. and co-author C. Ray Greek, M.D. speak at national and international forums on the subject of animal experimentation and have recently established Americans for Medical Advancement, a nonprofit foundation based in Los Angeles.

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