Anti-vivisection organisations around the globe are joining forces in a positive way – we are thanking the scientists who are fighting against COVID-19 without the use of animals!
Human diseases are usually a death sentence for hundreds of thousands of monkeys, mice, dogs, rats and other animals in laboratories. But, for the first time in history, some researchers are not waiting for the results based on cruel and inaccurate animal tests and instead are moving right ahead to human-relevant research! This could be the beginning of the end for an industry of cruelty that dooms millions of animals to short, brutal lives of suffering.
This World Week for Animals in Laboratories (beginning on April 20), we have joined forces with global coalition partners, including Humane Research Australia, US-based In Defense of Animals, and UK-based Animal Justice Project. Together we are supporting the development of safe and effective treatments and vaccines without the use of outdated, unreliable, and inherently cruel animal testing.
As the current health crisis continues, there is an ever-greater need for fast-moving and effective research. The high-pressure public demands for COVID-19 treatments and vaccine needs to propel the research community to urgently shift towards reliable, human-relevant medical studies.
The innovative research being conducted by some scientists is truly inspirational and includes three-dimensional human respiratory tissue models and human liver models, which provide real hope for combatting COVID-19 and inspire better preparation to address future pandemics.
There are plenty of ethical and effective methods of research that do not require animals such as epidemiology studies, computer-based techniques, human cell and tissue cultures, tissue engineering, organ-on-a-chip microfluidics, and many more.
While many researchers are using non-animal methods, the COVID-19 outbreak has triggered others to start cruel and outdated animal experiments on animals, including primates, ferrets, and mice.
Animal testing isn’t only cruel; it’s just not working. Animals who are not human make very poor models of human disease and fail to predict how diseases and treatments will work in humans.
The National Institutes of Health indicates that approximately 95% of new drugs fail during research and development. According to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, only 12% of investigative medicines entering human clinical trials are ultimately approved, despite showing positive results in animal trials beforehand.
There are currently no vaccines for any strains of coronaviruses that have caused outbreaks in the past 20 years, despite extensive animal experiments. We do not have time to waste. We must use human-relevant models to develop safe and effective treatments and vaccines.
