If Not Animals, Then What? Better Science, Better Results fMRIs and other neuroimaging techniques allow researchers to study the structure and function of human brains, including emotions, memories, and how we learn and process language as well as brain diseases and disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and the effects of different drugs on the brain. This research can be done non-invasively in diverse groups of patients and healthy volunteers. Researchers can safely and non-invasively simulate various conditions such as pain and evaluate brain activity up close. Human imaging studies can be coupled with tissue and cell sampling, micro-dosing, interviews, epidemiological analysis, and other human-centered research methods to glean valuable information from humans—unlike inferior, archaic data derived from crude and inapplicable experiments on animals.
Not only are animal experiments ineffective, their results can also be dangerous when applied to humans. Corticosteroids, for example, were used to treat head injuries in animals, yet in human trials, the treatment increased deaths in newborn babies. Human-based studies spare countless animals’ lives and provide human-relevant data. What are we waiting for? Please sign PETA’s lifesaving Research Modernization Deal petition asking your U.S. legislators to replace the use of animals in experiments with human-relevant methods.
