"For 10 years in the early 2000s, 39 researchers across the United States investigated how genes are involved in the human body’s response to sepsis, burns, and trauma.

When they finished, the researchers struggled to get their study published. Reviewers complained that the investigators had failed to show the same gene response in the “gold standard” for examining such questions: mice models. In response, the team conducted comparable genetic work with mice and were shocked to find there were very few similarities between the responses in mice and humans. For example, the comparatively uniform gene expression found in human response to trauma was not present in mice; in fact, when compared to genes that changed significantly in humans, changes to orthologous genes in mice did not mirror their human targets but were “close to random.” Even though responses to burns and acute infections appear similar in mice and humans, the research demonstrated they were underpinned by fundamentally different mechanisms.

These results, published in 2013, helped to retrospectively explain why 150 clinical trials of drugs developed in mice that were intended to block the immune responses to acute sepsis in people had failed to help human patients. The episode also illustrates some of the broader problems with animal testing, namely its weakness as a predictor of human responses to tested drugs, and the cultural forces that keep it entrenched in the review process despite its shortcomings.

This type of complex problem, which has philosophical and ethical dimensions as well as significant real-world implications, is precisely the kind that field philosophers like myself engage with, and through our methods, we can look for useful paths forward."

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