Abstract
Laboratory animals have been used for the prediction of the safety of medicines for more than 150 years, and it has become traditional to expose animals to potentially toxic new medicines before they are administered to humans. In many quarters this is argued as being only ethical and fair. It has been stated from theories of evolution that “rodents should give every bit as valid indications of human reactions as dogs”, suggesting that results obtained from simple laboratory mice and rats may be as directly translatable to man as those from more highly developed non-primate animals. In practice, carefully designed and executed animal studies often do provide the investigator with valuable information as to the likely safety profile of new chemical entities in humans. However, it must be said that medicines are designed for sick people, not for healthy animals. There are considerable limitations in extrapolating experimental animal data to man. These studies are often wasteful in numbers, particularly when they are faulty in design. Unnecessary sacrifice of animals is a cause of widespread public concern.
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© 1980 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Folb, P.I. (1980). Animal testing and early studies in humans. In: The Safety of Medicines. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3103-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3103-8_1
Publisher Name: Springer, London
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