National Antivisection Society
If not animals, then what would you use to test medicines?
Drugs and other medicines need to be tested in a way that predicts the likely human effect – so using methods that focus on human tissues, human receptors for drug molecules, known human data.
Replacement of outdated and clumsy animal tests require battery of alternative methods – we should improve the science as well as replace animals.
For example chemical databases can predict the likely toxicity of a substance; mathematical computer models of the receptors in the human body can predict which molecules in a new drug will link to particular receptors; analytical systems such as high performance liquid chromatography can break down a substance into the chemicals that make it up, for precise analysis; accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) can analyse ultra low of drugs given to human volunteers – in such tiny quantities that ill-effects of experimental drugs do not occur.
Please see the Lord Dowding Fund section of our website for more detail of alternative methods.
