TY - JOUR
KW - Animal Testing Alternatives
KW - animal welfare
KW - Animals
KW - Humans
KW - Models, Animal
KW - Reproducibility of Results
KW - Research
KW - Toxicity Tests
KW - business
KW - chemicals
KW - drugs
KW - economy
KW - regulation
AU - Lucy Meigs
AU - Lena Smirnova
AU - Costanza Rovida
AU - Marcel Leist
AU - Thomas Hartung
AB - For a long time, the discussion about animal testing vs its alternatives centered on animal welfare. This was a static warfare, or at least a gridlock, where life scientists had to take a position and make their value choices and hardly anyone changed sides. Technical advances have changed the frontline somewhat, with in vitro and in silico methods gaining more ground. Only more recently has the economic view begun to have an impact: Many animal tests are simply too costly, take too long, and give misleading results. As an extension and update to previous articles in this series written a decade ago, we reanalyze the economic landscape of especially regulatory use of animal testing and this time also consider respective alternative tests. Despite some ambiguity and data gaps, which we have filled with crude estimates, a picture emerges of globally regulated industries that are subject to stark geographic and sectorial differences in regulation, which determine their corresponding animal use. Both animal testing and its alternatives are industries in their own right, offering remarkable business opportunities for biotech and IT companies as well as contract research organizations. In light of recent revelations as to the reproducibility and relevance issues of many animal tests, the economic consequences of incorrect results and the reasons for still maintaining often outdated animal test approaches are discussed.
BT - Alternatives to Animal Experimentation
DA - 2018
DO - 10.14573/altex.1807041
IS - 3
LA - eng
N2 - For a long time, the discussion about animal testing vs its alternatives centered on animal welfare. This was a static warfare, or at least a gridlock, where life scientists had to take a position and make their value choices and hardly anyone changed sides. Technical advances have changed the frontline somewhat, with in vitro and in silico methods gaining more ground. Only more recently has the economic view begun to have an impact: Many animal tests are simply too costly, take too long, and give misleading results. As an extension and update to previous articles in this series written a decade ago, we reanalyze the economic landscape of especially regulatory use of animal testing and this time also consider respective alternative tests. Despite some ambiguity and data gaps, which we have filled with crude estimates, a picture emerges of globally regulated industries that are subject to stark geographic and sectorial differences in regulation, which determine their corresponding animal use. Both animal testing and its alternatives are industries in their own right, offering remarkable business opportunities for biotech and IT companies as well as contract research organizations. In light of recent revelations as to the reproducibility and relevance issues of many animal tests, the economic consequences of incorrect results and the reasons for still maintaining often outdated animal test approaches are discussed.
PY - 2018
SP - 275
EP - 305
T2 - Alternatives to Animal Experimentation
TI - Animal testing and its alternatives - the most important omics is economics
UR - https://www.altex.org/index.php/altex/article/view/1134
VL - 35
SN - 1868-8551
ER -