In a sense, the Johns
Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing began
with a bunny costume.
In the late 1970s, activist Henry Spira, founder of
Animal Rights International, organized a campaign against
the cosmetic industry's use of animal tests to ensure the
safety of new products. Specifically, rabbits were commonly
used to test for irritancy and hypersensitivity to the skin
and eyes.
On April 15, 1980, Spira and ARI organized a protest
march at Revlon headquarters in New York and that same day
ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times
with the headline "How many rabbits does Revlon blind for
beauty's sake?" At the march, Spira came dressed in a bunny
suit.
The media took notice — as did Revlon and the
rest of the industry.
Less than a year later, the Cosmetic, Toiletry and
Fragrance Association put together a pool of $1 million and
asked the Johns Hopkins
School of Public Health to help them find alternatives
to animal testing. An academic center, one of JHU's first,
was born.
Since the mid-1990s, due in large part to the center's
efforts, the cosmetics industry no longer uses animals for
testing of its final products.
For 25 years now, the Johns Hopkins Center for
Alternatives to Animal Testing, known as CAAT, has been
working to bring about the best, most humane science
possible at Johns Hopkins and around the world. CAAT is
dedicated to improving both animal welfare and the quality
of research by using the latest techniques.
The center will celebrate its first quarter century on
Thursday, Nov. 2, with an anniversary symposium to be held
in the School of Public Health's Sommer Hall. The event,
titled "A Celebration of Progress in Humane Science," will
bring together hundreds of individuals and organizations
from around the world to discuss the past, present and
future of humane science and alternatives to animal
testing.
Alan Goldberg, the center's founding director and a
professor of
environmental health sciences at the School of Public
Health, says that the center's initial funding, which was
"a huge figure at the time," offered the first real sign of
hope that in vitro methods (using cells and tissues outside
the body in an artificial environment) could be used to
determine the safety or effectiveness of a drug or
ingredient.
Today, CAAT continues to dedicate itself to improving
both animal welfare and the quality of research and has
become a world leader in the development and use of
alternative methods in biomedical research, product safety
testing and education.
Each year, the center funds research in laboratories
throughout the United States that seek to develop in vitro
and other alternative techniques, such as the use of
computer modeling or animals lower on the phylogenic scale.
Through CAAT, Goldberg says, Johns Hopkins has led the way
in greatly reducing animal use and, in some cases,
replacing animals entirely. Currently, many industries
— household goods, consumer products, pharmaceutical
and food — incorporate a variety of in vitro and
alternative methods.
As the anniversary approaches, Goldberg says that he
can't help but look back with pride at what the center has
accomplished.
"We have created a field — actually legitimized
a field of science," he says. "You cannot go to a
toxicology meeting anywhere in the world these days and not
have alternatives talked about."
From its inception, CAAT has operated under the "3Rs"
philosophy that seeks to make science more predictive and
more efficient, as well as more humane. The three R's
— replacement, reduction and refinement — ask
to not use animals if a nonanimal method can answer the
scientific question at hand, keep the number of animals to
the minimum necessary to answer the question and minimize
any pain or distress the animals may experience.
An example of this philosophy at work, Goldberg says,
is the increasing use of zebra fish and nematodes in human
safety testing.
"The beauty of both of these organisms is that we know
their complete genome, so we can determine what changes are
taking place when we study them, and we can study them as
whole live animals because they are transparent," Goldberg
says. "Their use has opened up the opportunities to
noninvasive approaches to testing."
As part of its mission, the center also seeks to
foster dialogue and collaboration with individuals from
industry, government and academia in addition to
"stakeholders," advocates for animal rights, children's
health and the environment. Goldberg says that CAAT serves
as a forum for these diverse groups to find ways to
facilitate acceptance and implementation of
alternatives.
"We work with groups, some of whom bring different
agendas, and try to reach a consensus on how to move
forward and determine where animal tests are necessary," he
says.
In terms of education, the center presents symposia,
workshops and every two years takes part in the World
Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life
Sciences. CAAT initiated the world congresses and hosted
the first in 1993. The sixth such congress will be held in
August 2007 in Tokyo.
CAAT also looks to provide reliable information on the
science, philosophy and public policy of alternatives. To
this end, it developed AltWeb
(altweb.jhsph.edu), a
global online clearinghouse for information on alternatives
to animal testing.
In 1999, CAAT introduced TestSmart, an approach to
risk assessment intended to provide a new model for
toxicology, one that is both more humane and more
predictive.
Currently, one focus area for TestSmart is on
developmental neurotoxicity (the impact of chemicals on the
developing human nervous system), an area of high need in
the development of alternatives to current animal-testing
protocols and guidelines. Goldberg says that current
methods for developmental neurotoxicity testing are complex
and expensive and will require vast increases in the
numbers of animals to be used unless alternatives can be
found.
Looking forward, Goldberg says that the alternatives
field will be forced to move forward by the push for
translational toxicology — the understanding of
biological changes induced by a chemical used in human
disease research — and the establishment of Reach
(Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals),
a European program whose aim is to improve the protection
of human health and the environment through the better and
earlier identification of the properties of chemical
substances. The program will evaluate more than 30,000
chemicals for all potential toxic and environmental impacts
and could require studies using 40 to 100 million animals
and costing some $13 billion.
"This will be a huge program, and at the end of all
this testing, it's not sure if they will have all the
answers," he says. "We need to begin to look at better and
more effective ways of doing these studies to better
predict what will happen in humans. This is what we do."
The anniversary celebration will involve a number of
events during the week, including a meeting of all 16 "3Rs"
centers from around the world. It will be the first meeting
of its kind. Following the symposium on Thursday, a gala
dinner celebration will take place at the American
Visionary Art Museum.
For more information about the anniversary symposium
and gala, go to
caat.jhsph.edu/programs/workshops/25th/program.htm
or contact Betsy Nessen Merrill at
bmerrill@jhsph.edu.
For more information about the center, go to
caat.jhsph.edu.