Research is performed on live subjects in many ways
Humans value themselves more than animals, hence research gets done on animals more than humans.
In some circumstances, research is performed on humans. Examples include experiments performed in NAZI concentration camps(inhumane), studies with military personel (vaccination trials), or experiments on consenting adults.
Epidemiology studies the development of disease, or drug efficacy in the natural population, or in animals doing their normal work. Examples include studies that follow groups of people over several years to monitor the development of particular diseases, or studying animals at the farm, in barns, in kennels or at the race-track. An experiment involves research in the lab under controlled, artificial conditions.
Animals have played a major role in drug and vaccine development
Edward Jenner discovered a vaccine against small pox after observing that women who received cow pox (milkers nodules) from cows were resistant to small pox.
Horses provided the early antisera against diphtheria
All these species played a role in developing the polio vaccine
Lithium carbonate is an antidepressant
So is Librium
Many animals used in therapeutic testing of new AIDS drugs
Ketamine was developed in cats as an anesthetic for humans. Now it's the standard cat anesthetic
Horses supply for postmenopausal women (controversial).
Mice have been used most to develop the ability to alter genetic defects.
Sheep used to develop heart transplant techniques, dogs used to develop artificial hip surgery.
Animals often have similarities with humans which make them good models for studying human disease.
MIce are the basic mammal used in research, and have many broad similarities with all mammals, including humans.
In many aspects of metabolism pigs have surprising simiularites with humans. (Of course, some humans have similarities to pigs, usually our roomates.)
Same kind of placental attachment as humans (hemochorial)
The group of animals most similar to humans. Rhesus monkeys are used extensively in research.
A deficiency of bone development due to lack of calcium or vitamin D.
Dogs played a major role in research on these endocrine diseases
Insulin deficiency
Low thyroxine
Cannot control salt balance
Mice are used extensively in biomedical research
Clarence Cook Little, founder of the Jackson Laboratory, who originally bred mice for show, noticed that certain tumors appeared in inbred mice of certain colors. This led to the use of inbred mice being used in cancer research.
Severe Combined Immumodeficiency Mice lack B and T cells.
Nude mice lack a thymus (athymic) and therefore don't have T Cells.
Have specific genes deleted
have specific genes inserted
Horses have been used as models of exercise induced stress to determine if such stress suppresses the immune system.
Cytomegalovirus is an important infection of the unborn child. Because the guinea pig has a placenta similar to humans it is used as a model to study CMV infection.
Retroviruses of animals are related to the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. These viruses may induce cancer by a process known as malignant transformation, or they may cause immunodeficiencies and/ or slow wasting diseases. The following are common retroviral diseases of animals and sometimes used as models to study HIV:
MIce have been used extensively to test the ability of various bacteria to cause disease
MIce are used extensively in the production of monoclonal antibodies.
Animals are used directly in diseases of animals.
It can be difficult to justify the use of a mouse, say, for the study of human disease. However, in veterinary medicine it is possible to study the disease directly in the species affected.
Some people will say that a particular animal disease is also a good model for human disease, in order to make a grant more likely to be funded.
Sometimes breeds of animals have particular diseases which do not apply to the rest of that species. This is usually a result of inbreeding.
Combined Immunodeficiency is a genetic disease of Arabian horses.
Different requirements than large pigs
The model research dog, but does not have diseases of some other dogs
Dalmations are prone to deafness
Collies are prone to particular eye problems
Bedlington terriers are prone to copper storage disease of the liver.