Animal Testing Roadmaps Overstate What Can Be Ended — SkimNews
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- The US, UK, and European Commission have all unveiled roadmaps intended to move toward ending animal testing, with the US and UK doing so last year and the EC following a few months ago.
- Technological alternatives to some kinds of animal research are coming of age, and a few are more revealing than the animal experiments they replace, according to the author.
- Policy documents and headlines overstate what is possible by using language like "phasing out," when animal testing cannot and will not be ended entirely due to ongoing needs in fundamental biology and drug safety.
- In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, extreme animal rights activists harassed and intimidated scientists — some researchers had their property set on fire using Molotov cocktails, and national newspapers reported calls to murder those carrying out animal experiments.
- The author warns that framing animal testing as something that can be phased out risks painting remaining researchers as wilfully causing harm, potentially reigniting violent backlash while prematurely abandoning necessary tests would compromise health and safety.
Why it matters: If policymakers and media oversell the feasibility of ending animal testing, the researchers who still conduct necessary experiments face renewed harassment risk while drug safety and fundamental biology research lose irreplaceable tools. The op-ed ties the case to both researcher safety and patient outcomes, warning that 'phasing out' rhetoric carries a documented historical precedent of Molotov-cocktail attacks on scientists.
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