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Estimates For Worldwide Laboratory Animal Use In 2005, Katy Taylor, Nicky Gordon, Gill Langley, Wendy Higgins
Estimates For Worldwide Laboratory Animal Use In 2005, Katy Taylor, Nicky Gordon, Gill Langley, Wendy Higgins
Gill Langley, PhD
Animal experimentation continues to generate public and political concern worldwide. Relatively few countries collate and publish animal use statistics, yet this is a first and essential step toward public accountability and an informed debate, as well as being important for effective policy-making and regulation. The implementation of the Three Rs (replacement, reduction and refinement of animal experiments) should be expected to result in a decline in animal use, but without regular, accurate statistics, this cannot be monitored. Recent estimates of worldwide annual laboratory animal use are imprecise and unsubstantiated, ranging from 28–100 million. We collated data for 37 countries that …
Considering A New Paradigm For Alzheimer’S Disease Research, Gillian R. Langley
Considering A New Paradigm For Alzheimer’S Disease Research, Gillian R. Langley
Gill Langley, PhD
Using Alzheimer’s disease as a case study, this review argues that it might be time to consider a new paradigm in medical research and drug discovery. The existing framework is overly dependent on often unvalidated animal models, particularly transgenic mice. Translational success remains elusive and costly late-stage drug failure is common. The conventional paradigm tends to overlook species differences and assumes that animal-based findings are generally applicable to humans. Could pathways-based research using advanced human-specific models probed with new tools, including those of systems biology, take centre stage? The current transition in chemical toxicology to a 21st-century paradigm could be …
The Validity Of Animal Experiments In Medical Research, Gill Langley
The Validity Of Animal Experiments In Medical Research, Gill Langley
Gill Langley, PhD
Other animals, such as mice, rats, rabbits, dogs and monkeys, are widely used as surrogates for humans in fundamental medical research. This involves creating disorders in animals by chemical, surgical or genetic means, with the aim of mimicking selected aspects of human illnesses. It is a truism that any model or surrogate is not identical to the target being modelled. So, in medical research, experiments using animals or cell cultures or even healthy volunteers instead of patients (being the target population with the target illness) will inevitably have limitations, although these will be greater or lesser depending on the model.