Article from New York Times on and List of Alternatives to Animal Testing

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The information below was taken from an article published recently in the New York Times: HUMAN skin, eyes, the lining of the throat — snippets of these and other tissues are now routinely grown in test tubes from donated human cells. The goal is not to patch up ailing people, but rather to use the human tissues in place of mice, dogs, or other lab animals for testing new drugs, cosmetics, and other products. The methods for engineering tissue samples are among the most complex of an expanding portfolio of technologies intended to eliminate or reduce animal testing. In other cases, testing is being conducted virtually, using computers and simulation software. And for some tests, people have replaced animals: volunteers get microdoses of potential drugs that can be analyzed but cause no ill effects. For companies, animal testing can be a public relations nightmare involving confrontations with animal-rights activists or less intense but still negative reactions from consumers. The high costs and concerns about reliability have also been

behind the shift away from tests on animals. Industry executives say that as much as 25 percent of the drugs tested on animals failed to show side effects that later proved serious enough to prevent the drugs from being marketed. To avoid such mistakes, companies often test products on multiple species and large numbers of animals. Concern about the costs and questionable benefits of animal testing has been growing since the 1970s. In-vitro tests using human cells have been making headway. Analysts estimate that businesses spent $716 million last year for contract research at labs that specialize in such alternative techniques. The field is crowded with start-up companies like MatTek, Admet, and Xceleron. MatTek, a small company in Ashland, Mass., grows human tissues for testing from donor cells. The tissues take up to four weeks to grow in the test kits in which they are

shipped, said John Sheasgreen, the company’s president. Up to three types of cells might be combined in a single tissue to produce realistic behavior, he said. Admet owns In Vitro Laboratories, which charges up to $20,000 to screen a drug against liver cells and other human tissues for toxic effects. To get the same information from animals, a drug company would have to use much more of the drug, wait a lot longer, and pay for the upkeep and eventual autopsies of the animals it used, said Albert P. Li, chairman of Admet. Endosafe provides an alternative to the testing of solutions in rabbits’ eyes for contamination with fever-producing bacteria. The test, which can be as cheap as $5, has replaced most rabbit testing in quality-control rooms at one drug company. Other small companies, like Entelos in Foster City, Calif., supply computer simulation programs for virtual testing. Such software incorporates hundreds of variables to simulate how humans who suffer from conditions like asthma, obesity, or Type 1 or 2 diabetes will react to a new drug. Those cooperative impulses are being driven by European regulators, who have set 2009 as a deadline for all animal testing on cosmetics. European regulators and industries have a 10-year lead on the United States in adopting alternatives where there have been no similar government mandates to reduce animal testing. But American advocates who want to move from animal testing have been heartened by a recent study from the National Academy of Sciences, which was sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency. “The report says

we now have the tools to look much more closely on how toxicity occurs and that we have to do it on human cells,” said Rodger D. Curren, president of the Institute for In-Vitro Sciences. Some other alternatives to animal experimentation compiled and sent to See You In The Streets: - Autopsies - Post-Marketing Drug Surveillance - Genetic Research - Computer and Mathematical Modeling - In Vitro Research with human cell lines - CAT scans - MRI - PET - X-Ray Crystalography - Single molecule specroscopies - Nuclear Magnetic Resonance - Ultrasound - Blood Gas and Blood chemistry Analysis - Microscopy - Micro dosing - Monitoring Devices - Electrocardiograms - Electroencephalograms - DNA Sequencing - Gene Chips - Drug Delivery Devices - Microdosing - Biocompatible Materials - Separation / Purification Methods - Fast Fourier transforms used in spectroscopy and CAT scans - Fast sequence alignment and database methods used in genomics - Conformational Search and Optimization used in protein folding - Ecological and Population Models of Disease - Epidemiology and Demographics - Clinical Studies http://www.chooseveg.com/meet-your-meat.asp Do You ?