Despite numerous international studies highlighting the presence of even more viable alternatives, the worldwide average number of macaques, rats, dogs and ferrets used for experimental purposes each year continues to be extremely high. It is estimated that more than 8.3 million animals are now used in experiments in Europe, locked in underground cages, subjected to injections, withdrawals, and forced administration of toxic chemicals and drugs.
These tests are used in science mainly in the pharmaceutical and food fields, but on the occasion of World Day For Animals In Laboratories 2025 on April 24, (also known as World Lab Animal Day), it is good to remember that another kind of research is possible. Indeed, one of the most recent news stories concerning the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. agency that regulates food and pharmaceuticals, which has unveiled a plan to phase out animal testing, goes in this direction. This new approach will serve to improve drug safety and speed up the evaluation process, while reducing research and development (R&D) costs as well as prices.
As the agency explains in a press release, “the FDA’s animal testing requirement will be reduced, refined, or potentially replaced using a range of approaches, including AI-based computational models of toxicity and cell lines and organoid toxicity testing in a laboratory setting (so-called New Approach Methodologies or NAMs data).” The implementation of the research methods will begin with marketing authorization applications for new investigational drugs.
Supporting the FDA’s decision are the many international studies already published that demonstrate the futility of animal testing in the study of human diseases and the creation of new drugs. As OIPA Italy explained in an in-depth article on the most ethical alternatives to animal testing, human-based (i.e., human-centered) research uses innovative methodologies and technologies that allow for more precise and relevant results than would be obtained through the use of vivisection.
OIPA Rome delegate Francesca Lavarini, biologist specializing in Anthropology and Ethology, explained that this is research based on human biology in that it seeks to reproduce human physiological conditions. Some of the technologies used, such as genomics, proteomics and imaging, have proven to be very accurate. One example is a 2021 study that analyzed the progression of Alzheimer’s disease from post-mortem human brain samples of patients suffering from the disease.
These findings confirm that experimentation based on excruciating animal suffering is not the only one, but neither is it the most reliable.
