Organ Chips (with Human Tissue) Could Replace Animal Experiments
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This is one area which I personally feel very strongly against – animal testing. Not only is it extremely cruel, results obtained through animal testing is often not replicable to humans. Let’s face it, we are not rodents. Biologically, we are so different.
With so much advancement in technology, it is about time that animal testing is replaced with using cultured human tissue.
Read all about this new technique called “organ chips”:http://www.care2.com/causes/organ-chips-could-replace-animal-experiments.html
Animal testing is a terrible and horrible suffering for the animals. It is still being practised due to legislation requirements. That has to change. And it looks like animal welfare groups and the public have to lobby for that to happen.
ANIMALTESTING: A terrible suffering, and it tells us almost nothing
Around 3 million tests were carried out on animals in the UK alone in 2005 in the name of medical research and a new study suggests that most of it was needless suffering.
Researchers studied six separateanimaltrials, and found that none of the results were replicable in humans.
In two of these, corticosteroids for head injury helped the problem, according toanimalstudies, and yet were of no benefit when they were tested on humans, while a heart drug that was extremely effective inanimalstudies actually made the condition worse in humans.
The research team, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, also found that manyanimalstudies were poorly prepared, and most ignored even the basic parameters for proper scientifictesting.
They also point out the very obvious fact that the biological differences between animals and humans are often so great that any results become meaningless.
Meanwhile, groups such as FRAME (Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments) continue their good efforts to convince scientists to use organs, tissues, cells grown in culture and even mathematical modelling instead. Even most drug companies agree that animaltests are useless, but form a necessary part of the licensing process.
Solution? Change the requirements for a drug licence.
(Source: British Medical Journal, 2007; 334: 197-200).
Source: http://myanimalcare.org/2012/07/29/organ-chips-with-human-tissue-could-replace-animal-experiments/
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