Say No To Animal Testing And Yes To Stem Cell Research
Say No To Animal Testing And Yes To Stem Cell Research
(Excerpted from the article by Kelly Overton” Stop animal testing – it’s not just cruel, it’s ineffective”)
“Animal testing has never really worked. Animal tests proved penicillin deadly, strychnine safe and aspirin dangerous.
In fact, 90 percent of medications approved for human use after animal testing later proved ineffective or harmful to humans in clinical trials. It is humbling to realize that the flipping of a coin would have proved five times more accurate and much cheaper. Animal-tested drugs have killed, disabled or harmed millions of people and lead to costly delays as well. Among the most publicized are the delays of a polio vaccine by over three decades and a four-year delay in the use of protease inhibitors for HIV treatment – after animal testing showed these interventions to be useless.
The use of animals as models for the development of human medications and disease almost always fails, simply because humans and animals have different physiologies.
Adult stem cell research is more effective than animal testing. International researchers using adult stem cells – cells that are present in all growing human tissue – have shown success in treating cardiac infarction, Crohn’s disease and thalassemia. The answers to the mysteries of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s will be found by using stem cells and other modern technologies, not by cutting up beagles.”