Animal Farm must give way to doublethink when studying addiction

摘要

A recent editorial in Nature, entitled Animal Farm', argued against a lobbying campaign that aims to prevent animals from being used for addiction research [1], rebutting the view from the lobbyists that 'addiction is a social problem' and claiming instead that it is a 'brain disease'. It seems to us that the authors of the editorial mirrored the mistake being made by the lobbyists in ignoring a large body of research that does not fit their world view: evidence showing that addiction is socially patterned, and that prevalence responds to influences that do not need to assume pathology, such as social marketing campaigns (in the case of smoking), price rises (tobacco and alcohol), recovery without treatment arising from a change in personal circumstances and restrictions on availability [2].