Do we need animal research?
Re “Unsettling questions about animal research,” Opinion, Sept. 11
Implicit in Robin Abcarian’s thoughtful column is how slowly change seems to come to the research industry, either because of government hesitancy to modify outdated laws, or because a large portion of the industry itself won’t budge. I wonder how much the lucrative nature of testing on animals comes into it, or the capacity to endure inflicting suffering on other beings. How many people could stomach dripping toxic chemicals into a rabbit’s eyes?
Researchers like to point out the success of their efforts, but they often run the same tests for many years with little or no results. And medications that enter the market are loaded with a long list of side effects.
Non-animal means of testing have yielded results that have proven themselves to be more effective when applied to humans, as well as more uniform and less expensive than animal testing. Organs-on-chips, for example, can test down to the cellular level and can predict how drugs impact multiple organ systems, with great accuracy. Jacqueline Raven, New York