AIDS and Animal Experimentation
Dr Ray Greek Interviewed

By Claudette Vaughan

Dr Ray Greek is a pioneer in speaking out against animal experimentation and calling for its abolition. He is President of the organisation Americans For Medical Advancement (Los Angeles) and Europeans For Medical Advancement (London) www.curedisease.com. He is also Science Advisor, National Anti-Vivisection Society (Chicago)

Abolitionist: Please provide a broad overview of the redundancy of AIDS testing on animals.

Dr Ray Greek: HIV is unique to humans. There are viruses that are similar to HIV such as SIV that can infect non-human primates like monkeys but HIV only infects humans and therefore the only subject that can really give us information on HIV is human beings. Researchers have tried to infect chimpanzees with HIV with essentially no success. When we study SIV in monkey’s, we find that SIV is very different monkeys than HIV is in humans. In fact a lot of vaccines that worked well in monkeys but did not work well in human beings. So HIV is uniquely human and we need to start treating it as such.

Abolitionist: In speaking with Ed Hooper from “The River”(book on the origins of AIDS) he said that SIV is so similar to human HIV-2 that there’s not a lot of difference. I noticed in your book “Sacred Cows and Golden Geese” you said that HIV-2 is kind of rare. Most HIV comes from HIV-1. Is that correct?

Dr Ray Greek: Yes that is correct. Now in some parts of the world HIV-2 is actually more common but I’m not sure where those areas are. It doesn’t really matter though because let’s assume that HIV-2 and SIV are identical it still doesn’t matter in terms of testing things on monkeys because monkeys are a very different system than human beings. A good way to think about this is to think about the keyboard on your computer. You and I each have the same keyboard but yet we type out every different things. Monkeys and humans essentially have all the same genes. The way those genes are turned off and on, the equivalent to typing on a keyboard, is very different in humans than it is for monkeys even though we share a lot of the same genes and are susceptible to a lot of the same illnesses the way we react to the illness varies because the power of the genes are turned off and on.

Abolitionist: How many ways is animal experimentation for AIDS/HIV testing unsound?

Dr Ray Greek: Pretty much every way. You are talking about two entirely separate systems. Human beings differ even amongst ourselves in how we respond to HIV. Some people can become infected with HIV and progress to AIDS very slowly if at all. Other people can become infected with HIV and progress to AIDS very, very rapidly. Again, there are very small differences in our genes and how these are regulated or turned off and on. So, if one human being cannot even predict what another human being will do in terms of drug response, testing on an entirely different species is utter foolishness.

Abolitionist: The differences you quote in your books are profound in their differences. One of the major differences you spoke of is the number and ratio of helper T-cells to killer T-cells in chimpanzees is different as AIDS selectively attacks the helper T-cells. Another difference is unlike humans, chimpanzee helper T-cells counts do not drop to zero with infection. Another thing, chimpanzees lack some of the killer cells that humans have and so on (see “Sacred Cow’s and Golden Geese” chapter 10, page 191). What do you think the motivation is in the continual consuming of tens of thousands of chimpanzees for AIDS research?

Dr Ray Greek: I think the logic behind that is really traditions which of course is not logically. Historically the way medical research has been done was on animals. Now I would argue that the track record of that research is very poor. A lot of institutions have been built up around animal based research and when you talk about very large institutions, you’re then talking about a very large amount of money. I think the vast majority of people no longer use chimpanzees in HIV. Most people have now gone to monkeys. If you think about it for a minute that alone really negates their argument. Their argument is that chimpanzees should be used because they are the closest living relative to human beings but if the closest living relative to human beings is not a good model in AIDS research, then going another step in evolution away from humans, is in all likelihood to be an even worse model. If chimpanzees are a bad model, I don’t think there is a good model out there. That’s really what the theory of evolution predicts. It predicts that we are all alike except where we are different and it’s those differences that count.

Abolitionist: How have your ideas been accepted by the medical-industrial complex on the whole?

Dr Ray Greek: They have totally been ignored.

Abolitionist: Is this because your ideas would shake up the system to such a degree and researchers would never risk shaking public confidence in their work say, in the safety of vaccines, or do you think you are just a direct threat to their pay home packets?

Dr Ray Greek: I think primarily it’s because I am a direct threat to their salary. Again, there’s a huge amount of money involved with medical research. In the United States there’s hundreds of billions of dollars in animal based research and that’s a lot of money. So, if somebody comes along and says that what they are doing is a waste of money, there’s going to be an all out effort by some very powerful groups to see to it that that person is silenced. There is some good news though. There are a lot of smart people in the world and a lot of people have come to the same conclusions that I have and they are at very powerful places like drug companies, the Food and Drug Administration in the US, The National Institute of Health and more and more people are speaking out that modeling human drug reactions in an animal is really nonsense. It is really just a waste of time and money. A good idea always prevails. It just takes it a long time and I think this is going to be the case here. I think there’s a call for the end of animal experimentation. The question is will it be 5 years or 500 years? I hope that it’s closer to 5 years myself.

Abolitionist: Your latest work is titled, “What Will We Do If We Don’t Experiment On Animals?” so let me ask you that question. What will they do?

Dr Ray Greek: That’s the most common question that I get and that’s why we wrote a book around it. There are really two answers around that question. One of the answers is it’s really not incumbent upon us to provide parallel alternatives to animal experimentation because if animal experimentation doesn’t work, if it’s not functional, you need to get rid of it regardless of whether you replace it or not. The second part of the answer however is there are numerous things we can do instead of doing research on animals. Mainly that’s all the things that we are doing today including nanotechnology, personalized medicine, pharmacogenetics, epidemiology research, clinical research etc. Basically all this boils down to two things and that is; research on human beings using either the entire intact human tissue or advances in technology. And number technology-based research.
Advances in technology are really the difference between how medicine is practiced today and how medicine was practiced 50 years ago. We certainly know a lot more about illnesses, drugs and so forth but it’s the technology that really makes the difference.

Abolitionist: You have consistently spoken out against animal based models on scientific grounds saying that “the affliction of suffering on animals in medical research is not a biomedical evil, of necessity to save human lives, but is a real betrayal of the scientific method”. Everything you have written about therefore is revolutionary in essence?

Dr Ray Greek: I would like to think that it’s revolutionary. Actually, the theory of evolution, which Darwin discussed in the 19th Century, really contains everything that you need to predict that research on animals is not going to be very fruitful. In the 19th Century, research on animals told us some very simple things like what is the function of the pancreas. Two hundred years ago you could study animals and draw very simple conclusions that would in all likelihood be true but when you start talking about disease and drug testing, those are not very simple things and that’s where the variation comes in. All mammals have a heart, all mammals have a pancreas, all mammals are put together essentially through connective tissue, bones, heart and so forth. How they respond to pathogens is very different and HIV is a very good example of that.

Abolitionist: You have said that the HIV virus particles are far more ubiquitous in humans than in chimpanzees. Chimpanzees seem to confine HIV blood cells where as in humans it is also in the plasma, saliva and cerebral spinal fluid. You said, “Imagine the transmission implications these differences could make” which is so true.

Dr Ray Greek: In the early 1980’s, France had HIV in their blood products and because of experiments on animals they went ahead and let those blood products be given to people who needed red blood cells and plasma and so forth. A lot of people came down with HIV and eventually AIDS and then they died. So the problem with looking at a non-human species and trying to predict what will happen to a human is when you are wrong, people die. That’s the biggest reason to stop experimenting on animals. It doesn’t matter if you are an animal rightist, or an animal welfarist or if you positively hate animals. If the paradigm is flawed you should get rid of it.

Abolitionist: How much opposition is there to animal based vaccine development?

Dr Ray Greek: There’s really not that much opposition. The question really is: Are the animals really effective with vaccines and again, HIV is a good example. We’ve had a lot of vaccines that worked very well on monkeys but have been no good on humans. If you look at the history of vaccine research you find that occasionally a vaccine works in the animal and it will also work in human beings. Vaccines have been developed that worked in animals, but not in humans, worked in animals and killed humans and so on. E.g., if you invented one hundred vaccines then maybe five of them would work really well across the species line. The problem is you don’t know which five. It would be much better to get rid of the animal model entirely. You’re not going to lose the five vaccines that worked in animals and humans. There’s another way to discover them and so on. We’re not saying that animals and humans have nothing in common, the fact that we have a little bit in common is what caused these people to stray. Today the differences out weigh the similarities.

Abolitionist: Whats you’re latest project to date Dr Greek?

Dr Ray Greek: Right now Niall Shanks who has a PHD and co-authored the book, “Brute Science” and I are writing a very scientific book about animal models and animal experiments. The first 3 books that my wife and I wrote were really geared towards the general public and the book that Niall and I are writing is geared towards people at the top of the science pyramid.

Abolitionist: Annually there's a large AIDS Conference event where scientists, doctors, campaigners and interested parties gather to discuss the AIDS/HIV crisis. Have you ever been invited to one of these events and if not, why not?

Dr Ray Greek: I have never been invited nor do I anticipate being invited. Researchers and AIDS activists alike buy into the animal model and look to it for cures, vaccines, and treatments. All this despite the failure of the animal model in HIV/AIDS research. One should keep in mind that many of the researchers are making their livelihoods from research with animals and are not keen to hear why doing so is not scientifically sound. The situation is similar to that of the polio vaccine where animal models led scientists astray for decades. Further when the polio vaccine was produced it was contaminated with a virus that originated in animal tissue. SV-40 has been linked to human disease but even if it is not causing the diseases the point is that viruses do jump the species barrier and that is a big reason not to use animals in vaccine production.