Question by itsmerosy♥: How effective does animal testing alternatives work such as computer modelling and human tissue cultures?
Animal Testing is only 2% effective when it comes to finding human illessness in animals, i want to know how effective the other methods that don’t have to invlove innocent animals work.
Thank you in advance!!! :DD
Answer by tigris
they don’t go and search for human diseases in animals any more. They put the relevant genes for the disease into the animal (usually a mouse, but it might also be a fruit fly) if they are known or they test the effect of candidate genes. A lot of that work is done in cell cultures, but I have to tell you unless it is an immortalized cell culture a cell culture comes from an animal which may have to be killed to obtain the cells. So not all cell cultures keep an animal alive.
I don’t think your number is correct. Also it really depends what you want to look at. You cannot look at e.g. the effect of a proposed drug on the circulatory system in a cell culture. It is much easier to look for gene products or gene activation in a particular cell by using cell cultures.
Computer modeling is only appropriate if you have sufficient data to base your model on. It does not substitute for experiments. Depending what data you need the data can also be acquired by killing animals. It is possible that computer modeling reduces the need for killing animals if the predictions are accurate and make it easier to find the correct solution in animal (or cell culture) tests. But a computer model always has to be tested in the real world.
I do think while we try to come up with new medications and treatments for human diseases there is no way to omit experiments on animals. I do agree that they should only be performed when alternatives are not available. But given the legislation and higher expense of animal testing over other methods I would assume that is often the case, though I am sure not always. But unfortunately no system works perfect.
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