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Americans For Medical Advancement (AFMA) is a not-for-profit, science-based, patient advocacy organization dedicated to improving healthcare through biomedical research. It was founded by Ray Greek, MD and his wife, Jean Greek, DVM.{7}

The organization opposes the use of animals as causal analogical models {11}, or predictive models, for human response, and believes that using animals as a basis for the human response to drugs is not a safe method of development.{6} For example, efficacy testing, medical research, and ADMET (absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination, and toxicity) are results from animal-based research that were assumed predictive for humans.

Americans for Medical Advancement conducts its experiments through critical thinking and the use of evolutionary biology, complexity science, genetics, and personalized medicine.{1} None of these methods require testing on animals.

AFMA hopes to improve policy and decision-making regarding the use of the animal model in the testing of drugs and treatments for the safety of human use. The organization does not oppose the use of animals in other aspects of science, and stresses that it is not an animal rights group.

President, Ray Greek MD, says, “There are areas where animals are very useful in science and areas where they are not,” and that the organization “explores the differences between the two.”{8}. What sets it apart is that it focuses “on the harm that is done to humans” and that animal protectionists are concerned about the harm done to animals.

Objectives[edit]

Americans for Medical Advancement targets their work to improve healthcare. The way the organization hopes to do so is by developing safer, more efficient techniques to use in labs. Since AFMA believes that animals do not give an accurate reading of how drugs will make a human react[3], the first step would be eliminating animal testing in the development of drugs and treatments meant for humans. As a result, drug development should be quicker and more affordable.{6}

AFMA also wants to see medical research funding directed to more relevant areas of research that are often forgotten and not used. Some examples of scientific fields that AFMA believes are not applied enough when researching and creating drugs include complexity science, developmental biology, evolutionary biology, genetics and personalized medicine.

Additional goals that the organization has are to have the requirements for animal testing reevaluated through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and United States Environmental Protection Agency. AFMA also wants influential institutions such as the National Institutes of Health to stop encouraging animal models for research, so that other scientific organizations will steer away from animal testing.

Trans-Species Modeling Theory

The Trans-Species Modeling Theory (TSMT) was written by Ray Greek MD, the president of Americans for Medical Advancement. It states, “while trans-species exploration is possible when perturbations concern lower levels of organization or when studying morphology and function on the gross level, one evolved, complex system will not be of predictive value for another when the perturbation affects higher levels of organization.”{9}

In other words, when studying higher level organisms, the predictive value to drugs is not accurate because there are too many differences between their complexities.{11} These differences mean that there are different responses to treatments. Higher level organisms are so complex that there is a variation in responses, even within organisms of the same species, depending on each individual organism’s initial state.

Greek wrote the Trans-Species Modeling Theory using modern science and newer information. More commonly than not, the methods that scientist use today are based on findings from scientists from centuries ago. Many of those findings are outdated and no longer valid, but continue to be the basis of regulations for procedures used in scientific labs today.{10} Old findings suggested that there were more similarities than differences between similar mammals, so a monkey, for instance, would be tested for a certain heart condition in humans. Up to date science can now prove that although similar, a monkey's heart differs from a human heart, and therefore would not provide precise data in comparison to a human heart.{12}

Important Figures

Ray Greek, MD

President and co-founder. He is a board-certified anesthesiologist and is a published and peer-reviewed author in scientific writings such as journals, research, and books. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Thomas Jefferson University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Jean Greek, DVM

Vice-President and co-founder. She is a board-certified veterinary dermatologist and has taught at the University of Missouri School of Veterinary Medicine. She is also a published author in scientific writings.

Mark Rice, MD

Secretary Treasurer. He currently works at the University of Florida's Department of Anesthesiology.

References[edit]

1. Jump up^ For more on what AFMA stands for see website for Americans For Medical Advancement at http://www.curedisease.com
2. Jump up^ see Animal Models in Light of Evolution by Shanks and Greek. Brown Walker 2009
3. Jump up^
4. Jump up^ Shanks and Greek. Animal Models in Light of Evolution. BrownWalker. 2009.
5. Jump up^
6. Americans for Medical Advancement https://www.afma-curedisease.org/
7. Americans for Medical Advancement https://www.afma-curedisease.org/do.aspx
8. Americans for Medical Advancement https://www.afma-curedisease.org/tsmt.aspx
9. Greek, Ray. “Animal Rights and Medical Research.” Skeptic (Altadena, CA), no. 2, 2008, EBSCOhost, .ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/loginurl=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direc   t=true&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.182976240&site=eds-live.
10. Greek, Ray. “Comment on “Lessons on Toxicology: Developing a 21^st -Century Paradigm for Medical Research.” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 124, no. 5, May 2016, p A84.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4858404/
11. Greek, Ray “The Nuremberg Code Subverts Human Health and Safety by Requiring Animal Modeling.” BMC Medical Ethics, vol. 13, no. 1, Jan 2012, p16. https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6939-13-16
12. Greek, Ray and Mark J. Rice. “Animal Models and Conserved Processes.” Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, vol. 9, no. 1, Jan. 2012, p. 40. https://tbiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4682-9-40

External links[edit]

• Americans For Medical Advancement

This article is under-developed and the level of writing could be improved in some areas to sound more professional. Although the information provided gets to the main point of AFMA, this article needs more information in order to be more effective. The information provided is relevant to the topic. A couple of things that distracted me were grammatical mistakes, which interrupted the flow of my read, and the writer's choice of words in some areas of the article, which made me feel like a was reading a high schooler's paper. There are five citations listed at the end of the article. All of the provided links work. The link to the first source only takes anyone who clicks on it to the home page of the website, not to the article that was used to gather information for the Wikipedia page. Two other sources listed are hardcopy sources that I cannot access at the moment. The two sources that are left are from a web archive. The website itself looks outdated, but after briefly reviewing the information it seems to match up with information that I previously gathered about AFMA prior to reviewing this Wikipedia article. None-the-less the information in the article does match the information in the provided sources that I was able to read. The sources seem reliable and the cited book was written by the founder of the organization. Throughout the article the writer properly included reference footnotes after each fact or group of facts so that readers can have immediate access to the cited sources. The tone of the article is neutral. However, the last sentence of the article mentions a critic of AFMA, and quotes a harsh, opinionated sentence from this said critic. I think that in order to keep the article in focus, this portion could be revised to mention the critic, but not go into detail about what this organization's opinion of AFMA is. Going back to the sources, I did notice that at least four of the five sources are directly linked to the founder of AFMA. This could mean that the information that the writer of this Wikipedia page could be biased. The article does not seem to have a biased tone, but gathering information from other sources could give another viewpoint and provide stronger information to better develop the page. There does not seem to be any over-representation of any aspect. The goal of AFMA was made clear, as it is the main point of the article. There was no under-representation of any information that was written in the article, but I believe there is information that can be added to develop the article to sound more scholarly. While it is good for there to be a balance on information, the length of the page may suggest that this could be due in part because the article does not have a lot of information to begin with. If the author went more in depth, there could have been a possibility that he or she wrote too much or not enough of some aspect of AFMA. The article provides a good start to developing this Wikipedia page. The information it true to date. What would greatly help this article is more information.