Saturday, June 21, 2014

Animal Testing Might Do Something!

Since I've decided to stop advocating animal rights, I felt that I should learn about the benefits of current uses of animals in our economy.

First mission:  research whether animal testing is effective.  It was hard to find objective information, because most of it comes from PETA-like bands of simpletons who couldn't tell you the difference between ethanol and petroleum.  I kept seeing the statistic that 92% of drugs that pass animal testing fail human trials, but that seemed like it was impossible.  And I'm always wary of numbers that don't come from a reputable agency, like our government. (Yes, I'm going to assume that the government is reputable.)

After scouring various webpages about animal liberation and hippie conspiracies, I finally found a solid article, written by a highly esteemed professor at London's National Institute for Medical Research, that purported to debunk the importance of this statistic.  Thankfully, it referenced the original FDA Report on the "Critical Path" towards Medical Products, which had the number I was looking for:

"...a new medicinal compound entering Phase 1 testing, often representing the culmination of upwards of a decade of preclinical screening and evaluation, is estimated to have only an 8 percent chance of reaching the market."