When pressed, animal researchers pull out a tried-and-true list of so-called “discoveries” in an attempt to justify the ongoing torture and killing of animals in labs, and this part of their playbook was once again on stark display last week when FOX 6 covered the atrocities taking place at dog breeder and vivisector Ridglan Farms.

Desperate to distract from the everyday barbarities of animal research, industry trade group Americans for Medical Progress (AMP) went back to its list and zeroed in on one of its favorites: insulin!

AMP suggested that research on dogs was necessary for the discovery of insulin – only, that’s a proven lie.

Long before the animal research industry’s 20th-century push for dog experiments, substantial evidence already linked diabetes to the pancreas through human observation and autopsies. In fact: 

• As early as the 17th century, people with symptoms of frequent urination, unquenchable thirst, and wasting were found to have sugar in their urine.
• By 1788, autopsies of diabetic patients consistently showed changes in the pancreas (and, throughout the 19th century, the connection was repeatedly confirmed). 
• In 1833, a physician discovered pancreatic cancer in a diabetic patient, further solidifying the link between pancreatic dysfunction and diabetes. 
• In 1869, the discovery of the Islets of Langerhans revealed insulin-producing cells that are affected in diabetic patients. 
• By 1875, physicians were recommending dietary changes and exercise to manage diabetes — an approach still used today.
• In 1882, a doctor associated acromegaly (a pituitary disorder) with sugar in the urine, and, by 1938, data revealed that nearly a third of acromegalic patients had diabetes.

The truth is that this “nicely progressing course of knowledge regarding the pancreas and diabetes” was actually hindered – not helped – by animal research:

• During the 19th century, renowned vivisector Claude Bernard “threw diabetes research off track for many years” by relying on dog experiments to wrongly conclude that diabetes was a liver disease.
• In 1895, a literature review that relied on dog experiments wrongly dismissed the pancreas’s role in diabetes.

Beyond derailing human research, animal researchers’ claims to fame have centered not on generating human-relevant findings – but, rather, on recreating human findings in nonhuman animals:

• In 1923, two animal researchers received the Nobel Prize for “isolating insulin by extracting it from a dog”, though one of them actually “admitted that their contribution was not the discovery of insulin, but rather reproducing in the dog lab what had already been demonstrated in man.” (Moreover, scientists who “reviewed the entire insulin isolation experiments concluded that the dog experiments [which garnered the  Nobel Prize] had not been vital – rather, scientists had modified the process of isolating and purifying insulin using in vitro techniques.”)
• The 1947 Nobel Prize went to an animal researcher for demonstrating in dogs the connection between acromegaly and diabetes – a connection that had been established in humans decades earlier. (As commentators rightly assert: “Obviously, it is unfair to say dogs were responsible for [the researchers’] kudos, since sizable knowledge predated [these] experiments and any number of human-based methods would have produced the same findings.”)

Indeed, our knowledge and understanding of human diabetes has advanced not because of – but actually in spite of – animal research. It has advanced because of human observation, human research, and human-relevant science.

For example:

• In 1926, insulin was purified and found not to cause birth defects in humans, even though animal research suggested that it would cause birth defects (based on experiments with “commonly used laboratory species”).
• In 1942, researchers discovered that humans with diabetes could be treated without insulin injections – they discovered this through clinical observations of patients and by testing the effects of medication themselves through self-administration.
• In the 1970s, “synthetically-produced human insulin [was] created” thanks to a “combination of in vitro research and technological breakthrough”. (Alternatively, one of 1923’s Nobel Prize winners had given dog insulin to a human “with disastrous results”.)

Yet, animal researchers continue spreading lies. Like the AMP spokesperson featured by FOX 6, they keep denying, and trying to rewrite, history – and we all pay the price.

As a human doctor explains: 

Due in part to dollars misallocated to animal labs, diabetes is still stunningly enigmatic . . . Insulin is a treatment (not a cure); the exact biochemical process through which insulin regulates blood sugar is still not known; and researchers have not discovered how that lack of regulation results in diabetes.

The animal research industry has been lying to us for ages – profiting off animal suffering while holding back real scientific progress; and, they want to do the same going into the future.

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