NEW TECHNIQUES MEAN ANIMAL TESTING IS TOTALLY OUT OF DATE - OBSERVER NEWSPAPER

Sunday, 5th August

The acrimonious animal testing debate should be over ("Inside the lab where animal testing staff live in fear")

New scientific techniques give better information than animals. Questions previously tackled by animal tests can now be answered with real human tissues interconnected in "body on a chip" devices or by volunteers taking a small, safe microdose of a new medicine.

The debate is prolonged by spokespeople for animal testing, including Professor Roger Morris, making claims such as: "If we didn't test drugs on rats and mice, there would be a lot more dead people."

The tragedy is that we already have better tests, but they are not used routinely because the government does not require it. Instead, the government still mandates animal tests, despite the fact that nine out of 10 drugs that pass animal tests go on to fail in human trials. There is a global scientific consensus that animal toxicity tests are inadequate and must be replaced.

How many more deaths will it take to make the government listen?

Kathy Archibald - Director, Safer Medicines Trust, London SW2

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/aug/05/letters-animal-testing-wrong-and-outdated

For more information about Safer Medicines, see: www.safermedicines.org