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An increasing number of doctors and researchers, as well as a growing segment of the public, are voicing their opposition to animal research based on scientific reasons. Surgeon Jerry Vlasak has said, "As a physician, I always like to tell people who think we are winning the 'disease war' through vivisection that, since the 1970's, when this 'war' began, cancer rates have gone UP, strokes are UP, heart disease UP, diabetes UP, addiction UP, alcoholism UP. There is more suffering, more disease, and more death from these causes than ever before." Groups of doctors and scientists are speaking out against the use of non-human animal models as a means of researching human dysfunction and disease. They argue that the cellular differences between species are too great to extrapolate experimental results from one species and apply it to another. They cite examples where the experimental results of animal studies were devastatingly different from the way human systems behaved under the same circumstances. An extensive (but still limited) sampling of these instances is available here. Evidence for the invalidity of animal research as a means of studying human maladies is so great that many researchers are confident in concluding that findings from animal models can *never* be reliably extrapolated to humans. Rather, they advocate human-based research methods that pose no hazard to humans and provide accurate results including clinical studies, in vitro research, autopsies, post-marketing drug surveillance, computer modeling, epidemiology, and genetic research. The perceived consensus supporting animal research comes largely from PR firms that work tirelessly to create this consensus. They manufacture and advertise support for animal research, but abandon critical debate and lack cogent scientific arguments. Additionally, they shy away from offers to debate scientists opposed to animal research. Americans for Medical Progress is one of the largest of these PR firms. A quote by the head of the National Cancer Institute demonstrates what is revealed when those who profit from animal research slip up. Dr. Richard Klausner stated in the Los Angeles Times, May 1998, "The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn't work in humans." This is just one in a long line of telling statements from the other side. Animal rights advocates are not exempt from having friends and family members who have suffered injury, disease, and terminal illness, and they want nothing more than than for these people to be free of this suffering. Unfortunately, an inordinate amount of money continues to be poured into the multi-billion dollar a year industry that is animal research and hence, is diverted away from the more reliable methods listed above.
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nimal
rights advocates are not anti-human or anti-science. The desire to see
non-human animals free from the suffering of being unwilling experimental
subjects in no way renders them insensitive to the suffering of humans.
On the contrary, animal rights advocates are concerned about non-human
animals because their circle of compassion extends widely and includes
both humans AND non-humans. In fact, it is precisely because of this compassion
for humans that many people (including but not limited to animals rights
advocates) are opposed to animal research. 
Read scientific critiques of animal experiments conducted at HLS here: