There’s an infection called Hand-foot-and-mouth disease, which is common among young children and is caused by a virus. Lately, there seems to be another illness, Foot-in-mouth disease, that’s been going viral, at least socially. The main difference between these diseases is […]
I’ve written previously about the fact that because of the lobbying efforts of the animal experimentation industry, at least 95 percent of all animals in U.S. laboratories — mainly mice and rats — are not considered “animals” under federal law. […]
Fact: The CIA’s torture program was directly inspired by animal experiments. In the 1960s, dogs were subjected to random electric shocks from which they could not escape. Eventually the dogs gave up trying to avoid the painful shocks, not even […]
Here’s my list of five headline-grabbing stories in 2014 that show just how connected human health and animal protection are: 1. Chris Christie Sells Out Humans and Animals After reports of his bridge scandal, the New Jersey Governor’s 2016 presidential […]
Pamela Anderson has made a media splash by refusing to take part in the ice bucket challenge in support of the ALS Association because of its history of funding animal experiments that she describes as being cruel and fruitless. Her […]
Dr. Akhtar featured in Nick News with Linda Ellerbee discussing animal experimentation and the need to use more effective human-based testing methods:
I once attended a neuroscience conference featuring a talk about spinal cord injury. The presenter showed a brief video clip that haunts me still to this day. The presenter showed a clip of his experiment in which he had crushed […]
Want to know more about the problems with animal experimentation – how it harms humans and animals and about alternatives? Listen to my presentation on Xtalks. The presenters discuss scientific and ethical imperatives associated with the use of animals in […]
The false-positive and false-negative results of the animal bioassay can be considerable. Ennever and Lave analyzed the data on known human carcinogens with the animal data for cancer predictability. They found a disturbingly large proportion of incorrect predictions, ‘potentially allowing […]
Dr. Akhtar’s Position: Con to the question, “Should Animals Be Used for Scientific or Commercial Testing?” Reasoning: “Regardless of any role animal experiments may have played in the past, the mounting evidence shows that using animals today is largely ineffective […]
Recently, PBS’s Frontline aired a disturbing documentary chronicling the National Football League’s history of downplaying and distorting the evidence that football-related head injuries cause long-term brain damage. The film included footage from a 2009 Congressional hearing in which lawmakers compared […]
Your child, my father, and all of our loved ones who may be suffering from illnesses are not rats or dogs or monkeys. So why do animal experimenters keep treating them as though they are? Suppose you are an experimenter […]
My father suffers from diabetic peripheral neuropathy. His diabetes led to nerve damage that causes him severe, constant pain. I want the best medical treatments possible for him and, as a neurologist, I am always on the lookout for good, […]
Imagine you are a monkey in a laboratory and a person dressed in a white coat walks into the room with a catching net. How do you think you would react? You would probably not be surprised to learn that […]
Recently, former NIH Director, Elias Zerhouni (director from 2002-2008), returned to address NIH and made a startling comment: “We have moved away from studying human disease in humans,” he lamented. “We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included.” […]
I am an absolute space geek. The only time I ever skipped high school was to hear a panel of astronauts give a talk about space exploration. I owned a topographical map of Mars before it was ever considered cool […]
A hunter from North Carolina who believes animals are here for our use must live with an animal activist family for 30 days. Watch him change his view after Dr. Akhtar discusses animal experimentation.
Multiple neuroprotective agents have shown benefit for the treatment of acute spinal cord injury (SCI) in animal studies. However, clinical trials have, thus far, been uniformly disappointing. This review explores reasons for discrepancies between promising animal studies and disappointing clinical […]