In the Name of Science?

This may seem off topic, but I do ocassionally impart news on the progress of reducing animal med labs and other tidbits on animal testing. Here's some very important news about animal testing that I hope you'll take action to prevent. Just when we thought things were getting better with the recent halt on animal testing by Colgate-Palmolive, our "environmentalist" Vice President is throwing a wrench into the works that can set us back years! Read on...

Al Gore is attempting to launch a program called the High Production Volume Challenge (HPV) that will force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require animal testing on more than 2,800 industrial chemicals by the end of this year. What are some of the chemicals on this list? Turpentine, rat poison and tetraethyl lead - the anti-knock agent found in leaded (you read that right) gasoline. Not only is it blatantly obvious that these chemicals pose a risk to humans and the environment, but there is already an abundance of existing data to evidence this.

The tests that will be involved will include the archaic and inconclusive lethal dose test, as well as skin and lung irritation tests. These tests are so obsolete that if it weren't for the fact that Gore is serious, the situation would be laughable. Furthermore, the predictable results of these tests have already been recorded on these substances and they have little, if any, application to humans. The classic Draize test, for example, involves dripping caustic substances into the eyes of restrained rabbits and the results are applied to human eyes. Well, I have to assume that the researchers recognize the fact that the membrane and cornea of a rabbit bears little resemblance to the human eye in terms of composition and structure, and that rabbits have no tear ducts with which to wash away toxins. Aside from that, the doses inflicted upon the test animals are of such an extreme measure that they hardly bear any resemblance to a realistic model of accidental level of exposure in humans.

The most offensive aspect of this proposal is the fact that we have had alternative testing techniques in place for several years now. Previous lab mice and rat populations have allowed us to clone tissue for future testing without sacrificing a single animal. In vitro testing of human tissue cells allows for experimentation without risk to people or animals. The Columbia Environmental Research Center in Missouri has recently developed a synthetic membrane device for chemical testing that eliminates the need for biological membranes. This test is more accurate and less costly than animal testing and takes less than 24 hours to complete.

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