Animal models have little to teach us about Type 1 diabetes: 1. In support of this proposal

Excerpt

Sir Winston Churchill summed up our position in this debate when he said that “Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened”. To our thinking, we (the Type 1 diabetes research community) have stumbled both in terms of the way in which data derived from animal models of Type 1 diabetes have been handled, and in the manner in which the field continues to move forward without proper acknowledgement of what has been learned. Animal models such as the non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse and the biobreeding (BB) rat develop immune-mediated disease with features resembling Type 1 diabetes in humans [1]. Although these animal models of autoimmune diabetes have proved to be valuable tools to study certain aspects of the disease process [2], they have also led to misconceptions and erroneous extrapolations, as well as false expectations with regard to the efficacy of immunotherapy. Hence, on a number of counts, we would argue that animal models have limited value when it comes to teaching us about Type 1 diabetes in humans. …