Thursday, February 6, 2020

I got a job in animal research. Here's what happened.

First, a little background.

I'm a Registered Veterinary Technician and I've been a college instructor for the past 6 years.  I teach vet tech students.  I teach anatomy and physiology, small animal medical nursing, clinical pathology, exotic animal nursing, and laboratory animal nursing.  It's great, I love it, but I never get to do anything medical anymore.  Recently my supervisor left the college, and it seemed like a good time to see what else was out there for me.  Am I even qualified for anything else anymore?  I accepted a job in animal research.

Now, I haven't even started this job yet, but when I told people I had accepted it, I was met with something I should have expected: divisiveness.  I should have expected it because I know this topic is divisive.  I should have expected it because I know most of the public suffers from the same misconceptions about animal research that I used to have.  If you knew 16-year-old me, you would know this is a serious violation of what used to be my very firmly held (if uneducated) beliefs.  But for some reason, I expected the people I'm friends with to accept this about me.  To maybe ask me questions about why I decided to go this route.  To take an opportunity to find out what animal research is really about.

Instead, people have been expressing sentiments that range from supportive and congratulatory to disgust.  The word "disappointment" was used.  Interestingly, none of the negative reactions have been directly to me.  Most of them have been in passive-aggressive comments to other people in my hearing, negative memes posted on social media, and text messages to other people in my circle.

I wasn't aware that I had to consult my friends when searching for a new job.  I wasn't aware I needed their approval.  And I REALLY wasn't aware that some of them would decide not to be friends with me anymore. 

Not one of them asked me why.  Not one of them asked me what kind of work I would be doing.  Not one of them asked me what kind of research was going on.  No one bothered to gather any real information.  And you know what?  I'm fine with that.  If my job is a reason to stop being my friend, then we need to evaluate whether we were really friends to start out with.

So for fun, I found out some stuff we have because of animal research.  And I have to say, I'm pretty excited to be a part of something that may one day save someone's life, cure a chronic illness, or be the Next Big Thing in modern medicine.

1) Organ Transplants: Organ transplants used to be really complicated.  There were a series of genetic markers that had to match up, or the recipient's immune system would reject the transplanted tissue and the patient could die.  Then we found (through animal research) some drugs can suppress the immune response to the foreign tissue and make the recipient more likely to accept transplanted tissue that didn't match all the genetic markers.  The downside to this was that the antirejection drugs had to be taken lifelong, were very expensive, and suppressed other parts of the immune system as well, making the patient more susceptible to disease.  Now (also because of animal research, specifically with mice and rats) we have gene therapy that can target the triggers of the transplanted tissue and make it invisible to the immune system without drugs, and without suppression.

2) Balloon Angioplasty: This is a procedure where a surgeon threads a catheter through a blocked or partially blocked artery and inflates the balloon to open up the blood vessel and restore normal circulation.  The procedure was discovered and perfected using rat and pig models.  Currently, more than 200,000 people in the US receive angioplasty due to heart issues secondary to cholesterol build-up, and more and more babies born with congenital circulatory deficiencies are being "fixed" with this procedure.

3) Epilepsy: This one is a big deal to me, as a person who has a seizure disorder.  Certainly, we know that anti-seizure drugs are developed through the use of animal models.  But did you know that current research with mice has isolated a number of gene mutations that are linked to the cause of epilepsy?  Through this same model (mice) we've learned that certain types of epilepsy can be managed by including more of certain amino acids in the patient's diet, eliminating the need for drugs altogether.

4) Universal Flu Vaccine: Sounds like a pipe dream, right?  I know what you're going to say: "But the flu virus mutates every year."  And you're right.  It does.  HOWEVER, there are certain things in the DNA of the flu virus that make it influenza and not some other virus.  No matter how much the virus mutates, it will always be a flu virus.  That means, if we can find a way to create a vaccine against anything containing those DNA markers, we can create a universal flu vaccine that protects against all strains of the virus.  In 2015, a universal flu vaccine was developed that protected mice from 8 different flu strains.  The next step is to move on to ferret trials.  Why ferrets?  They live longer than mice, so immunity can be tracked over time to see how age affects the efficacy of the vaccine.

5) Parkinson's: Using mice and monkeys, we discovered that the neurotransmitter dopamine (more accurately a lack of it) is largely responsible for the tremors associated with this chronic and progressive condition.  Using that knowledge, we've been able to develop drugs that block certain neurotransmitters and enhance dopamine's action in the brain to control symptoms.  We've also learned using monkeys that Deep Brain Stimulation (a surgical technique used to direct electrical currents in the brain and control motor movements) is successful in patients who don't respond favorably to medications.

6) Stem Cells: I know it seems like stem cells are brand new research, but that's really because it only went public not too long ago, and people are understandably nervous about the ethical implications.  However, stem cells have been studied as far back as 1961 as far as how they may be applied to nerve damage (think spinal cord injuries and paralysis) to regrow nerve tissue and restore its function.  That research has continued, and we now know that stem cells in a certain type of tissue, rebuild that type of tissue.  Researchers are currently trying to develop cell therapies that involve transplanting stem cells into certain organs or tissues to rebuild and repair them in targeted locations.

So that's what I'm going to be a part of.  That's the legacy of this branch of medicine.  It's complicated and messy, and a bit of an ethical jungle.  But on average, humans in developed nations are living about 30 years longer than they did at the turn of the 20th century because of discoveries made using animal research.  And that's worth contributing to.

No comments:

Post a Comment