Reduction, refinement, replacement: A Tale of Two Javier Burgos

(Beth Clifton collage)

Opposing approaches to a common goal

CASTELLON DE LA PLANA, Spain––A soon-to-launch biomedical research animal tissue supplier called aRukon, founded by Jaume I University scientist Javier Burgos, promises to significantly reduce laboratory animal use by enabling researchers to make more efficient use of each animal killed for a test sample.

The Javier Burgos at Jaume I University in Castellon de la Plana, Spain, is not the same Spanish-born Javier Burgos, still alive, who two generations ago was among the leading advocates of “scientific antivivisectionism.”

But the two men named Javier Burgos share some focal ideas, one of which is that scientists should not be using multi-millions of animals per year in often redundant and repetitive experiments, frequently done just to confirm the findings from past experiments.

Charles Russell & Rex Burch.

Russell & Burch

The Javier Burgos at Jaume I University, knowingly or not, might have been indirectly inspired by British biomedical researchers and professors William Russell (1925-2006) and Rex Burch (1925-1996).

Russell and Burch in 1959 introduced the “Three Rs” approach of replacement, reduction, and refinement of methods to limit the suffering and use of animals in laboratories, in a book entitled The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique.

Though never a big seller and now completely out of print, The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique remains among the most influential books ever published in the biomedical research field, chiefly for stimulating the imaginations of scientists who wish to use fewer animals, whether for humane reasons or just to save money, in an era when a single crab-eating macaque can cost $25,000 and up.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Saving monkeys & money

Scientists around the world who never heard of Russell and Burch know the “Three Rs” approach, if only because their supervisory budget analysts insist they must engineer it into every grant proposal.

Meanwhile, explained science journalist María de los Ángeles Orfila of Montevideo, Uruguay, in the March 8, 2024 edition of Science Insider, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “Millions of tissue and organ samples from animal experiments go to waste, left forgotten in the back of lab freezers or destroyed to free up space.”

The Javier Burgos at Jaume I University believes that aRukon can reduce this waste of animals’ lives and body parts by enabling researchers to sell unused animal samples to other laboratories through an online exchange.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Panic at the freezer

“I have often found myself in front of an open freezer, faced with the challenging decision of determining which samples to discard,” that Javier Burgos told María de los Ángeles Orfila.

“Panic sets in when the freezer reaches full capacity,” Burgos said.

Using a platform developed by the information technology company Semicrol, with funding from Spain’s State Research Agency, explained María de los Ángeles Orfila, “On aRukon—which is free to access—scientists will be able to list a wide range of animal samples for sale, from cerebrospinal fluid to whole organs. A seller is free to set the price, but it should be far less than the cost of buying a ‘new’ animal, Burgos says, to discourage profit.

(Beth Clifton collage)

But no freebies!

“Researchers can’t give away samples for free, however,” María de los Ángeles Orfila added, because “Burgos believes the platform will only succeed if scientists receive a cash incentive to pass on their samples.

“The platform charges a commission for transporting the samples to the buyer,” Burgos told María de los Ángeles Orfila, “and will handle the entire door-to-door journey through specialized companies. Sellers must show that samples submitted to aRukon comply with animal welfare legislation in their country of origin.”

Announcing aRukon in November 2023, Burgos has already attracted pledges of participation from scientists at 30 different universities, research centers, and for-profit companies in Spain, María de los Ángeles Orfila reported, “representing about 10% of the institutes that conduct animal experiments in the country. Two institutions outside of Spain have also signed on,” the beginning of potential international reach.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Each match between researchers is an animal life saved”

Burgos “hopes sharing unwanted samples will reduce overall animal use,” María de los Ángeles Orfila wrote, “particularly if the platform gains traction around Europe.”

Said Burgos, “Each match between researchers on our platform is a life saved for an animal.”

Noted María de los Ángeles Orfila, “The Biobanks & Biomodels Platform of the Carlos III Health Institute, a repository that has so far focused solely on human samples and tissue cultures, will soon allow researchers in Spain to share animal samples, too—though unlike aRukon, scientists won’t be able to sell the samples.

“These efforts are complementary,” Carlos III Health Institute director and veterinarian Alberto Centeno told María de los Ángeles Orfila.

“We are all aligned on this journey to ensure that animals are not unnecessarily sacrificed,” Centeno finished.

“Portrait of a Kleptomaniac” and “Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy,” by Théodore Géricault, from his “Monomanie” series.

Art history detective

Javier S. Burgos Muñoz, as the Javier Burgos of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Jaume I University is formally known, has been “researching and managing research in the field of biomedicine since the 1990s,” his LinkedIn page says, working both within academia and for biopharmaceutical companies, focusing on “neurodegenerative diseases and, more specifically, Alzheimer’s disease.”

In October 2023, however, Ignacio Amigo of The Guardian profiled this Javier Burgos for an entirely different reason, also contributing to his stature within the scientific community.
Back in the winter of 1822, Ignacio Amigo explained, “a psychiatrist named Étienne-Jean Georget commissioned Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) to produce portraits of some of his patients.

“Portrait of a Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Command” and “Woman addicted to Gambling” by Théodore Géricault, from his “Monomanie” series.

Three of five missing portraits found

“When Georget died, the series [of ten paintings] was lost – until 1863, when French historian Louis Vardiot rediscovered five of the paintings. They were in an attic in the German city of Baden-Baden and belonged to one of Georget’s disciples, known only as Doctor Lachèze.

“Today these paintings are exhibited in five museums around the world. Experts praise them as some of Géricault’s best works of his final years.”

Beginning in 2018, the Javier Burgos of Jaume I University went looking for the five missing paintings, believing he has found three of them, two in the possession of private collectors and one in the Louvre art museum in Paris.

His findings, while disputed by some art historians, principally because they conflict with traditional belief, have been published by The Lancet Neurology, one of the most prestigious of peer-reviewed medical journals.

Left, Javier Burgos of SUPRESS. Right: Javier Burgos of aRukon. (Beth Clifton collage)

The other Javier Burgos founded SUPRESS

The other Javier Burgos, now age 79 and living in the Los Angeles area, was born and raised in Barcelona, Spain, about 170 miles northwest of Castello de la Plana and Jaume I University.

After studies at Barcelona University and the Universite de Paris (La Sorbonne), the other Javier Burgos emigrated to the U.S., where in 1986 he founded SUPRESS, standing for Students United to Prevent Experiments on Sentient Subjects.

SUPRESS was one of several U.S.-based quasi-affiliates of CIVIS, the Center for Scientific Information on Vivisection, founded in 1974 in Switzerland by former auto racer and novelist Hans Ruesch (1913-2007).

(See Fauci vs. the White Coat Waste Project: did Hans Ruesch sire the conflict?)

Hans Ruesch. (Beth Clifton collage)

Burgos split with Ruesch

Two book-length Ruesch exposés, The Slaughter of The Innocent (1978) and The Naked Empress (1982) were instrumental in boosting support for the early animal rights movement, despite Ruesch’s own personal antipathy toward most of the animal rights movement and almost everything it stood for besides anti-vivisectionist views that helped his book sales.

CIVIS chapters and quasi-chapters including SUPRESS lost much of their momentum and leadership to other organizations by the late 1980s, as Ruesch became embroiled in often one-sided disputes with perceived rivals, including the Javier Burgos of SUPRESS, whose organization eventually retitled itself The Nature of Wellness, then disappeared, having last filed IRS Form 990 in 2011.

SUPRESS under Burgos produced the 1986 antivivisection documentary Hidden Crimes. An updated version of Hidden Crimes called Lethal Medicine appeared from The Nature of Wellness in 1997.

Henry Spira. (Beth Clifton collage)

Both Ruesch & Burgos split with “animal rights”

Like Ruesch, Burgos argued that, “The slogan ‘animal rights’ was created in the late 1970s by the biomedical research industry in order to defuse any credible opposition to animal experimentation and testing on medical and scientific grounds.”

The term “animal rights,” however, was chiefly popularized by Animal Rights International founder Henry Spira, whose signal accomplishments included the 1976-1977 campaign that ended 18 years of sex experiments on maimed and disfigured cats at the American Museum of Natural history, persuading the cosmetics makers Avon and Revlon to quit animal testing in 1980, and winning a 1984 pledge from Procter & Gamble to fund the development of alternatives to animal testing.

Through 2023, Procter & Gamble had spent $480 million toward fulfilling the pledge, introducing more non-animal testing methods approved by governmental agencies than all other institutions combined.

(See Henry Spira, 71, founder of the animal rights movement.)

(Beth Clifton collage)

Predicted “impending total collapse of health care”

The Javier Burgos of SUPRESS and The Nature of Wellness contended in public statements at least through 2013 that an “impending total collapse of health care in the U.S. and in Europe is directly linked to the fact that, for more than 150 years, medical research has been based on the unscientific concept of ‘experimental research,’ rather than on clinical research and prevention.”

Like Ruesch, this Javier Burgos held that animal experiments are invalid predictors of the effects of drugs and medical procedures on humans because animals are inherently too different from humans to permit accurate cross-species extrapolation.

Hans Ruesch at age 94.

Outlived the premise

Introduced by anti-vivisectionists more than two generations before Charles Darwin authored The Origin of Species (1859), this approach was eroded by advances in genetic research which have increasingly established how closely humans are related to other species––even mollusks.

Thus, while whole organisms may respond very differently to particular conditions or substances, specific tissues or systems sometimes respond identically.

Beth & Merritt Clifton.

As the science of the “scientific” argument that Ruesch and Burgos favored changed, the emphasis of anti-vivisection campaigning tilted heavily toward making the case that animals should not be experimented on because they are sentient beings, enough like humans to deserve equivalent moral consideration.