Alternatives to Animal Research (Vivisection)

There is no good reason for research labs not to utilize current non-animal testing modalities and develop more. Besides the obvious fact that extrapolation of data to allow for species differences is not needed in alternative testing, it is also faster and cheaper. A drug company in England called Pharmagene already uses exclusively human tissue along with computer technology to study how drugs affect genes and proteins.

In vitro testing occurs in a flask or other controlled environment and uses human cells and tissue culture. Already proven to be a hugely promising area of research, it can be used to make vaccines, antibiotics and stem cells; in developing cancer, AIDS and other drugs; and as a replacement for current animal toxicity studies. In genetic research, in vitro testing has been successfully employed to find clues to the mysteries of inherited diseases like Alzheimer's, muscular dystrophy, and schizophrenia.

Specific in vitro tests include Eytex (using the jack bean) to measure eye irritancy and Skintex (using pumpkin rind) to measure skin irritancy. The 3T3 Neutral Red Uptake Phototoxicity Test is another skin irritancy test. EpiPack tests on cloned human tissue. Neutral Red Bioassay uses cultured human cells to measure toxicity. Testskin uses human skin to test for irritancy. The Ames test is 90% effective in finding animal carcinogens. The Agarose Diffusion Method tests for toxicity of synthetic devices such as heart valves and artificial joints with human cells and agar (derived from seaweed).

Discarded human skin from surgical procedures or donated cadavers is also used to measure chemical toxicity. Human volunteers participate in clinical patch tests to confirm irritancy and allergy potentials.