The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7384 p71
21 January 2006

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

PDF 45K, Acrobat Reader

· Vitamin D and Cancer
· Animals in testing
· Out-of-hours services
· Medicines use reviews
· Prescribing
· NEL LPC
· Pharmacy workforce
· Overseas pharmacists
· Statutory Committee

Letters to the Editor

Animals in testing

Efforts being made to reduce animal use

From Professor J. Dearden, Hon MRPharmS

With reference to Onlooker (PJ, 7 January, p20) it should be noted that the European REACH (registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals) legislation will not apply to drugs or cosmetics. It will apply to up to 30,000 “industrial” chemicals and is intended to enable more efficient risk assessment of potential human health and environmental effects. Since its inception, the impact of the proposed legislation has caused concern both from industry and from environmental pressure groups regarding the potential level of animal usage. In an attempt to assuage the ethical and moral concerns of extensive animal testing, the legislation contains specific recommendations to use “alternatives”. There has been considerable effort and much progress in activities initiated within the European Commission (eg, the European Chemicals Bureau) to provide useful and useable tools to predict toxicity computationally and meet the requirements of REACH for regulatory agencies. These are being supported internationally by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In the UK, FRAME (Fund for Replacement of Animals in Medical Experimentation) is also doing valuable work on non-animal test methods. All of this heralds considerable savings in animals for testing industrial chemicals. There is also much work being done to improve computational techniques for drug efficacy and toxicity prediction, within the pharmaceutical industry and elsewhere. There are also a number of computer-based expert systems available for prediction of toxicity of any chemicals or drugs, and the International QSAR Foundation to Reduce Animal Testing has recently been established. I hope that this gives some indication of the huge effort that is being made world-wide to reduce the need for animal testing of drugs and other chemicals.

John Dearden
School of Pharmacy and Chemistry
Liverpool John Moores University

Send your letter to The Editor

Previous Topic (Vitamin D and Cancer)

Next Topic (Out-of-hours services)