I'm not sure what you consider to be obvious when it comes to animals in scientific research. It's not that we did not look at them. There's a vast literature on animal research.
I'll just go back to explain. There's animal research. There is also pure in vitro research; in vitro means in the laboratory, on living cells or insects. Those are the first studies. Then they move on with their findings and apply that to more complicated living organisms like animals, laboratory rats, monkeys, baboons, dogs, and so on. They try to further elucidate their hypotheses. Then finally it comes to humans where it's applied. That's what you usually see with new drugs.
We looked at those animal studies, the ones that were related mostly to the likely candidates for diseases. For example, Dr. McDiarmid did not mention that she was concerned, and her group was concerned with the possible development of cancer in the muscle tissue near the depleted uranium fragments. Studies were made to clear that up. They injected pellets, lots of them, big pellets, a much larger load to the animals, the rats, than would be experienced with the soldiers who had these buried fragments. These animals were looked at. Also, with that higher load, what did it mean? What happened to the animals? Did they develop cancer? We looked at them. There were also a number of studies way back in the 1940s when uranium was used. I'm switching from depleted uranium now to uranium. Yes, they developed lung cancer, fibrosis. I had mentioned earlier in previous testimony that with massive loads of uranium, yes, they had toxicological effects on the kidneys, for sure.
The reason you can't take animal studies and extrapolate them or transpose them to the human situation is the interspecies difficulties. You just can't. They don't behave in the same way. They're close, but not close enough. Even in the animal species, there are differences between how baboons would react, or the mice, so they developed certain strains of mice and so on. It's very sophisticated.
I hope I've answered your question.