EPA to end animal testing.

[Michael Oberdorfer]

The Washington Post, The Hill, CNN and other news sources report that the Environmental Protection Agency has adopted a plan to end animal testing requirements by 2035 for the evaluation of risks of chemicals to human health. The decision was announced by EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler in a memo yesterday and at a ceremony in Chattanooga, TN. The EPA plans to reduce funding of animal studies by 30% by 2025, and by 2035 animal tests will require special approval by the EPA administrator. Wheeler also announced that five research centers, Johns Hopkins University, Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Oregon State University and University of California Riverside will receive up to $4.25 million in funding to develop alternative test methods. 

As part of his remarks Wheeler stated, "There are a lot of alternatives between computer modeling to in vitro testing that we can use to replace animal testing, “Oftentimes we find that the animal testing has perhaps misled us on the science, and there are better alternatives for testing the impacts of chemicals on people.”

Wheeler was joined by animal activist groups, such as the White Coat Waste Project at the announcement ceremony.  Wheeler's remarks along with the nod to the animal activists suggests that this policy could go beyond toxicological testing.

Your thoughts? 

[Hugo Sanchez-Castillo]

We will live 25 years longer than our grand grand parents. All this extra years are due the basic research, particularly the animal research and the development of new drugs to fight against diseases, like polio, cancer, siphilis, etc. In the other side is well know that every day we have new diseases due different factors over virus and bacterias like mutations, new adaptations or even resistance to our old drugs. And we never forget the fact that if we increase our life expectative we will have and increase in the number of diseases that will affecting us, we will expect new diseases due our longevity. In all this cases we need to be prepared with reasearch tools to fight against this. We need tue animal research to observe how our new drugs could affect the new diseases, how the drugs interact in the environment, how the epigenetis interact with this drugs.

Im researcher from Mexico and we are convinced that the research with drugs and their effects should not disappear. If we do, we will be faced against effects that our computational models could not expect due the complexity of the environment.

[Wael Mohamed]

Well. It is very hard to ban experimental research using animals. The alternative is using human as whatever the computer model or any other industrial model we use, the generated data will not be extrapolated to human setting. We are dealing with a biological systems either in animals or human. The biological systems have many dimensions and many subsystems. 

[Amanda Labuza]

This is why we as scientists need to be involved in politics. We need to help them make informed policies. Banning animal models will cause huge problems. As Wael said, the alternative is testing directly on humans which is highly dangerous and unethical. I feel like the public forgets all the advances that were made because of animal research. Insulin was originally isolated from pigs. Diabetes is treatable because of animal research.

It is vital that we as scientists begin to better inform the public what animal research entails. I don't think it is beneficial to pretend we don't harm any animals. Rather, explain how we minimize their pain, how we reduce use when possible, how we euthanize before they ever feel too much harm. We need to better explain that there is no other way to study depression than to make a mouse depressed. But that doesn't mean during force swim we let them drown. As soon as you have the information you need they are removed. Some research mice are treated better than stray cats. This information is vital for the public to know so laws like this don't get passed.

Hopefully in the next 15 years before this plan is in full effect we can reverse their choices.

[Gabriella Panuccio]

I also advocate the reduction, but not the elimination, of animals used for research, like I believe all of us. We have no fun using animals for scientific research.

In my field, animals are a fundamental resource, without which I would have never gained certain insights into brain function and dysfunction. As much as I would love to avoid the use of animals, I have no better choice.

Computer models are derived from animal and human studies, so how can this people think that we may limit ourselves to the use of computer models only, if we need animals to design a model? Also, a model has several limitations. We don't know so many things about the human body that it's impossible to date to accurately simulate the function and dysfunction of an organ or of an intact organism. When animal activists advocate for the use of computer models, they completely disregard this aspect. Also, when they advocate in vitro studies, they don't realize that these in vitro models are obtained from animals in most of the cases. I use rodent brain slices and I could never replace them with cell cultures, since I study the interactions among different brain areas in epilepsy; cell cultures do not retain the brain architecture. Brain organoids might be an alternative in the future, but I'm a little skeptical that they will completely replace in vivo and brain slice studies.

In Italy, where I currently reside and work, we have started a petition to save biomedical research. We are looking for scientific and technological progression, but such misconceptions and prejudice will only lead to regression. In my humble opinion.

[Gabriella Panuccio]

On 9/19/2019 at 3:19 PM, Andrew Chen said:

Exactly!! You can't make a model without something to model against! Even if Blade Runner thought we would have replicants and accurate human AI by 2019, unfortunately we're not quite there yet. Until then, we'll have to work with animal models.

Exactly!!! And then, backup answer of the activist turns into: "Well, you are the scientist, you should know or find an alternative"... After I've just said that there is none