" [Peter Tatchell]. Thus it is clear that animal models provide unreliable and often contradictory results for pharmaceutical research experiments and also delay the development of vital drugs that could potentially save millions of humans.
New Testing Methods
Advancements in biotechnology have drastically impacted our understanding of diseases and the development of appropriate pharmacological interventions. 'Science-Based Toxicology' (SBT) enables us to study toxicity at the cellular level. There is definitive hope that SBT
would replace cumbersome and often misleading animal studies in the near future. The ability to use parallel screening methods imply that SBT research can expedite drug synthesis by avoiding the long delay involved with the animal testing phase. The use of 'Structure Activity relationship Models' makes it possible to accurately predict toxicity of the test drugs.[Animal Aid] in vitro testing methods such as EYTEX, Skintex can replace painful and cruel animal tests such as the Draize test. [Animal Liberation Inc. ] Europe is at the forefront of banning animal testing and the European Center for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM) has already approved alternative tests such as Agarose Diffusion Method', a standardized test for measuring the toxicity of synthetic chemicals, 'Corrositex test' and the 'Transcutaneous Electrical Resistance Assay', for analyzing skin corrosivity and the AMES test for studying carcinogenicty, etc. [Animal Liberation Inc.] One of the new European standards is a pyrogenic test to replace the costly Litmus assay and Rabbit tests. According to Dr. Thomas Hartung, PhD, head of the ECVAM, this new alternative testing method would "eliminate the need for 200,000 rabbits a year that were used to test biological compounds" [Gunjan Sinha, 2006]
Conclusion
There is enough evidence that clearly point out that vivisection has to be abolished. The recent comparative studies have revealed the inappropriateness of using animal models for human therapeutic experiments. So far, animal models have been faulty indicators and have caused much delay in the development of the much-awaited drugs to combat HIV. Animal models have also proved dangerous...
The rapid development of Toxicogenomics has allowed for alternative, cheaper and more accurate toxicology studies. It is time to replace cruel animal testing with in vitro testing methods. There is no question of doubt that the inhuman, morally repugnant and unreliable animal testing practice should be totally banned.
Bibliography
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