Cruel and ineffective?

June 23, 2006

Animal tests proved penicillin deadly, strychnine safe and aspirin dangerous. So why do we continue to continue to use, as Kelly Overton asks in an intriguing op-ed, a process for testing the effectiveness of medications for humans that is “akin to using smoke signals instead of e-mail as a method of communication”?

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.

Overton contends that adult stem cell research is key to our status as the world’s leader in medical research. While such research is indeed vitally important, can it really replace animal testing for the development of human medications?