Animal Research Is Misleading
Lithium and Other ‘False Positives’
When animal tests suggest that certain treatments will help humans but those treatments turn out to be useless, the test results are referred to as “false positives.” False positives occur very frequently when animals are used to screen antidepressants because the animal tests that are used don’t actually measure depression in animals—instead, they measure neurotic stress behaviors brought on by various forms of torture.
The testing of lithium is just one example of animal research that produces misleading results. Researchers have extensively tested lithium on animals and have found that in forced-swim tests, animals who are given lithium struggle to escape for a longer period of time than do “control” animals who have not received the substance. However, when lithium, which is used to treat bipolar conditions in humans, was given to depressed people, it had no positive effects. Nothing from human trials suggested that lithium was appropriate for treating depression, and today, studies of lithium as a treatment for depression have been abandoned.23 It’s just one of the countless cases in which false animal data have adversely affected the direction of scientific research. In fact, no less than six classes of drugs have displayed false positive results in animal models of depression.24
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23. J.P. Redrobe and M. Bourin, “The Effect of Lithium Administration in Animal Models of Depression: A Short Review,” Fundamentals of Clinical Pharmacology 13(3) (1999): 293-9.
24. Bourin, Fiocco, and Clenet 17.
