Do you think animal testing is right?

[Scoobes]

Reasonable said:

Scoobes said:
Animal testing is needed for medical drugs. We don't have a better alternative (although testing on pedo's sounds like it could work :P). What other alternative is there? Can anyone come up with one? because testing straight to human beings would essentially be murder. If the animals are treated well before and as well as can be during the tests I see no problem.

We don't have a suitable foolproof model for testing new drugs, but animals are the closest we have. We already have to test drugs on up to 5000 people before it gets to market. Animal testing is there to ensure that when we get to test on humans, the risk factor is low.

I'm actually an animal lover, have 2 cats and love them to bits. I still see the necessity for animal testing for medical research.

The two alternatives I could see (eventually, given enough research and assuming the fruition of certain lines of thought) are:

1 - greatly improved understanding of chemical responses and very accurate simulation models of likely response of a body to different inputs - i.e. better computer modelling of what will happen if you do X with drug Y to a human body.

 

2 - genetically created organs developed purely for research - i.e. want to test a drug on human heart?  Here's a 'grown' heart surrogate organ to use.

 

Both could work together however I suspect they are a bit in the future, so if we want to cure certain diseases now, we're still going to have to combine animal testing with simulation and research activity - or decide certain crimes automatically 'volunteer' you for the role as you suggest!

 

I agree with the alternatives but I think they're far into the future, especially 1 as our understanding of the body barely scratches the surface of all the different reactions occuring in the body (even though its come a long way in recent years), not to mention all the little variations between one person and the next. The other problem is lack of computer power, but I think this will be fixed by the time it becomes viable.

2 is more plausable in the nearer future, but still a long way off. And the problem with this is that a drug might be designed to target the heart, but can have very bizzare and potentially dangerous side effects on other organs that no-one would have been able to predict. Example: Viagra was designed as a heart drug... it had some other useful (if you're old at least) side effects!