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Choose a category:
More Alternatives | High Welfare | Strict Controls | Greatest Benefits | Other
Or, if you cannot find the answer you require, ask us your question...
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Greatest Benefits
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If animal research is so useful, why are so many medicines found to be dangerous?
Animal research cannot "prove" a new medicine is safe. Nor can epidemiology, cells, tissues, computer screens or even clinical trials with patients. Animal research gives unique information that complements all the non-animal results to help scientists and doctors decide whether a new medicine can be given to people.
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Revelations that (animal tested) drugs are major cause of death (JAMA 18.4.98), and majority of drugs do not work in most people (Allen Roses Glaxo open secret among drug companies!), isn't it time to abandon animal experiments and adopt accurate methods?
All medicines are tested on people - volunteers and patients in clinical trials. The purpose of the animal safety tests is to protect these people from major threats. Coupled with non-animal safety tests and the very high level of medical supervision that is demanded of clinical trials, this is highly successful.
More people are involved in drug development than animals, but side effects may still not be seen in the clinical trials phase. That is why new medicines are prescribed very cautiously.
So don't blame the animal tests for something they are not designed to do. The reality is we are all different, which is why some medicines work for some people and not for others. As more is known about the genetic reasons for why this is the case, it will be possible to prescribe medicines that are better targeted for individuals.
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Scientists have been working on diseases like Alzheimer's for ages. Why is there so little progress?
There has been significant progress but it's about slowing the disease not curing it. I am quite optimistic in the not too distant future we will have drugs that get closer to root cause of the problem. (Prof Ray Tallis, clinician)
Alzheimer's is so complicated. It progresses over years. One of the reasons why we haven't made so many advances is because until very recently we didn't have animal models for aspects of the disease. (Prof Nancy Rothwell, brain scientist)
It's like a huge jigsaw puzzle that you don't know how big it or even what it depicts. We put pieces together that seem to fit, and a picture starts to emerge. Then along comes another piece and the picture changes. (Barbara Holgate, vet)
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What's being done for epilepsy? (Manchester meeting)
For many years, many patients had to pay the price of quite significant adverse effects in order to control their seizures. As a clinician who runs an epilepsy clinic I've now got more shots in the locker. New drugs based not on luck and accident but on an understanding of the basic mechanisms of epilepsy. (Prof Ray Tallis, clinician)
The new drugs have been critically dependent on animals who spontaneously get seizures. Research can also induce a seizure in an animal for a brief time, in order to test possible medicines. (Prof Nancy Rothwell, brain scientist)
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[From the London brain research webinar]
If the public knew that drugs do not cure and are a major cause of death they would be appalled and demand immediate abolition.
Medicines are biologically active chemicals and none is side-effect free. Patients understand there are risks, which are well publicised.
It is often quoted that medicines are the "fourth biggest cause of death", accounting for 4.6% of adverse drug reactions (ADRs).
In fact some three quarters of those ADRs are not unexpected side effects, but the medicine performing exactly as predicted. In many instances, better monitoring of the patient would have avoided the ADR.
Nearly all the remaining ADRS are due to unpredictable allergic responses or genetic predispositions of individual patients.
It is also interesting to note that the drugs causing the ADRs are older ones, such as digitalis glycosides, for which there are, as yet no replacements. Newer drugs cause very few ADRs.
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[From the London brain research webinar]
You predict a rise in diseases so surely if animal research was succesful diseases should be falling.
Diseases rise for a number of reasons. People live longer, their environments worsen, they travel, new diseases emerge.
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