Do 9 out of 10 drugs tested on animals really fail when applied to people?
Yes, it’s true. An overwhelming majority of drugs tested on animals fail in human patients. Foes of animal research cite this fact as unimpeachable proof that biomedical research is an outdated and inaccurate practice that should be tossed into the dust bin of history. Some animal rights groups, like the Humane Society International (HSI), take this argument even further, provocatively asking if animal research is “actually holding us back from realizing the promise of 21st-century science?”
The activists are correct in stating that the failure rate is very high. Does this mean that animal research is a dead end?
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Checkmate, researchers!
Interestingly, the failure rate cited by opponents of animal research are inaccurate, but not in the way you might expect: The failure rate is actually a little higher than what is often quoted. But it is the omitted information that is most important.
There are three important things to keep in mind when evaluating the activists’ claim. First, just as relevant as the failure rate of drugs tested on animals, it should be noted that 86% of drugs used in human trials also fail in later human trials. Second, the alternatives touted by anti-animal research groups — the computer models and cell cultures, e.g., that are employed prior to clinical trials with humans — yield a success rate that is also well under 10%. The failure rate of alternatives is seldom pointed out, though, perhaps because the desire to develop alternatives to animal testing is shared by researchers and anti-animal research activists alike. Third and finally, consider that the first stage of testing drugs is largely about seeing if they are safe to use in human beings, rather than testing for efficacy. Searching for a cure must begin with proof that the drug won’t be worse than the illness itself!
The bottom line is that all testing, by its very nature, is a search rather than an end in itself. At this time, living systems – such as those of rodents – provide better models than the alternatives. Life-saving drugs discovered in recent decades, such as Herceptin, a breakthrough drug for fighting HER2+ breast cancer. simply would not have been possible without animal testing.
Who’s saying the failure rate of animal-tested drugs in human patients proves animal research is bunk?
Questions:
- Why are drugs used to treat humans first tested by other means, such as animals?
- Is a “9 out of 10” failure rate acceptable when it comes to finding treatments and cures for diseases using animal research,
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