
Mankind has ruled over the planet for thousands of years, consequently the rest of the animal kingdom has been subjected to the will of humans. Humans have imposed this superiority over even our closest relatives, the chimpanzee, in every conceivable way possible. This includes the mistreatment of millions of animals every year in the pharmaceutical industry. The development of medicine over the years has been very tedious and dangerous work, because making a compound that can save a life is just as easy as developing a compound that will end it. This thin line between antidote and poison required a test subject to walk it and discover on which side they would fall. However testing drugs that could be potentially deadly or have severe and harmful side effects was too risky and unethical to preform on humans, so very early on it was decided that animals would take the fall for us. At the time it was the only option and made perfect sense, and so more and more animals were being used in the pharmaceutical industry to test the many new drugs being developed to pass them for human trials. These methods however are torturous to the animals and almost always result in their death. The constant loss of animals requires the purchase or more, which becomes increasingly expensive as well for the companies. The results obtained from the tests are not always reliable or applicable to the human anatomy. Today however is a new age and science and technology has developed and progressed immensely over the decades, presenting new and exciting alternative ways to test potential drugs in a way that will not harm or kill innocent animals. New testing has been proven to be more reliable and applicable to humans than their animal test counterpart at the same time as being more cost efficient. Alternative testing and research in the pharmaceutical industry has become increasingly more efficient, practical, effective, and reliable way to develop new drugs that are safe for humans to utilize compared to the torturous and fatal testing on millions of animals.

There is an endless amount of different animal tests that researchers use to various effects, including but not limited to: toxicity (LD50) test, draize tests, mutagenicity and carcinogenicity, phototoxicity, embryotoxicity, and toxicogenomics. Every year in these tests and more “over 100 million animals are killed around the world” (PETA). Every single one of these tests was designed to test different aspects of a potential new drug and how they will affect a living subject. Ethically however these tests cannot be tested on humans, which is why animals have been used for years but because animals are not humans this can lead to some inefficiencies and discrepancies. The toxicity test is also know as the LD50 test which stands for Lethal Dose 50 percent and is most often used on rats and mice. The animals are force fed the chemicals and a dosage is reached that results in the death of half (50 percent) of all test subjects. To force-feed the animals a tube was “inserted down the esophagus into the stomach, causing severe discomfort and extreme and unrelenting pain.” (New England Anti Vivisection Society). The LD50 test could be used to measure the toxicity of gases, powders, direct injection, and force-fed chemicals to discover their effects on the test subjects. The traditional LD50 test would “use 60-200 animals, generally without anesthesia or pain relief for concern that they would alter test results.” (New England Anti Vivisection Society). The traditional LD50 test has recently been scaled down to have a smaller group of test subjects which is a step in the right direction but still not enough. Dr. Bjorn Ekwall, who worked in the Cytotoxicology Laboratory located in Sweden, developed a new toxicology test utilizing donated human tissue that can replace the LD50 test altogether. The LD50 test could only measure toxicity at a precision rate of 61- 65 percent compared to Doctors Ekwall’s test that has a precision rate of up to 85 percent. Not only is this toxicity test more precise than older tests but it also provides far more information for the researchers. The human tissue toxicity test can allow researches to study the affects on specific human organs as well as if any toxic substance will be able to permeate the blood barrier and reach the brain. These results would have never been achievable through the testing of animals in the LD50 or other toxicity tests preformed on animals.   

The draize tests uses animals, primarily albino rabbits, to test eye irritancy of chemicals and other products. The animals are immobilized in full body restraint stocks and kept conscious and unanaesthetized for up to two weeks at a time so that results can be analyzed. The rabbits and other animals that are forced against their will to participate in these experiments suffer from “eye damage and injury—i.e. degree of swelling, redness, ulcerations, etc.. In addition to redness and ulcers, rabbits also experience bleeding and blindness in these experiments.” (New England Anti Vivisection Society). All of that suffer accounts for almost nothing in the end as well because eye damage is subjective to the researcher so results vary from laboratory to laboratory, and rabbits have a different eye structure than humans. Rabbit eyes have a different pH than humans and produce fewer tears than humans do, which does not allow then to flush chemicals out of their eyes as easily, increasing the damage the cornea receives. This imprecise comparison to human eyes and the fact that draize tests are not consistently reproducible is more than enough to warrant alternative testing, not only to save the animals but also to increase the safety of humans using eye care medications and products. The new tests being proposed as an alternative to the draize eye irritancy test area number of in vitro tests. An in vitro test is when a number of cells from a specific part of the human body being tested are removed and grown outside of the body in a petri dish or test tube. This allows important testing to be preformed on human tissue samples and therefore produce results that are reliable and reproducible. In vitro tests are also less expensive and time consuming than their draize test counter parts. One of the new main in vitro tests being used for the eye irritancy tests is a bovine corneal organ culture and is starting to be widely used in the pharmaceutical industry.  

Embryotoxicity is another common test present in the pharmaceutical industry and may be one of the cruelest. The research involves exposing impregnated animals, typically mice, rats, rabbits, and amphibians, to toxic substance and then killing them directly prior to delivery. The fetuses are then examined for signs of any damage and affects that the toxic substance caused. Not only are the pregnant animals poisoned and killed off but also their offspring are then studied for potential poisoning and then left to die. Fortunately in vitro testing has also been made applicable in this branch of the pharmaceutical industry. Currently “The Embryonic Stem Cell Test (EST) has been validated by ECVAM and accepted in the European Union for the identification of embryotoxicants. Of the currently available alternatives, it is the only one suitable for high throughput screening and avoids killing large numbers of pregnant animals.” (New England Anti Vivisection Society). The Embryonic Stem Cell Test is the best alternative test in the industry at the moment but more are still being developed, including the Frog Embryo Teratogenisis Assay: Xenopus (FETAX). An increase in developing in vitro tests has decreased the amount of animals that die unnecessarily and certainly a step in the right direction but more steps can be taken. 

The pharmaceutical industry is implementing a three “R”s method to attempt to reduce the amount of animals killed every year in animal testing and replacing the old tests with new alternatives where possible. The three “R”s method consists of reduction, refinement, and replacement and has had a visible impact on reducing the number of animals killed each year. The first step is to reduce as many current animal tests as much as possible. This is evident in how the traditional LD50 test was reduced in sample size from around 200 subjects to about 10 subjects. While this does not get rid of the tests in their entirety it does help to save the animals. Next during the refinement stage the researchers attempt to “refine the animal facility so that pain, discomfort and distress during animal life and scientific procedures are reduced.” (Alternatives to Animal Testing). Increasing the animals’ comfort and reducing the stress and pain they experience makes better treatment of the animals and better test results. Better test results that are conducive results in less rounds of testing to recreate test results, thus saving more lives. The third and final stage of replacement sadly has not been completely carried out across the entirety of the pharmaceutical industry. The replacement of the old unreliable animal testing with new alternative testing is a crucial frontier for the pharmaceutical industry today. While most agree it is a step in the right direction, some insist that animals are still needed to ensure the safety of testing.  

Cell cultures and assays are not the only new alternative tests in the industry however; other promising techniques being explored and developed are computer models and using alternative organisms. New computer programs that have been developed “are used to predict the various possible biological and toxic effects of a chemical or potential drug candidate without animal dissection.” (Alternatives to Animal Testing). Specifically the Computer Aided Drug Decision (CADD) that predicts the biding cites of potential drug molecules and the Structure Activity Relationship (SAR) that can predict the biological activity of drug candidates. On the other end is testing on alternative organisms such as microorganisms, lower vertebrates, and invertebrates. This is more ethical than the current testing that takes place on higher vertebrates and causes pain and suffering. These new methods along with others mentioned throughout the paper are all on the forefront of the battle against animal testing in the pharmaceutical industry. All of the new methods are revolutionary in their own aspects and are better than their animal test counterparts in all aspects. In vitro testing and other methods are not immensely more reliable but more cost and time efficient. Animal testing is both extremely expensive and can take large amounts time to come up with any type of result that has been recreated. Eliminating animal testing from the industry will save the pharmaceutical companies a lot of money that they can put towards developing even more new drugs. The decrease in time it takes to preform experiments and obtain reliable recreations will allow the companies to maximize their efficiency. 

Not everyone thinks the revamping of new drug research and experimentation in the pharmaceutical industry is all that it is cracked up to be. Some still believe that animal testing is not only necessary required for some tests to ensure that products will be safe for humans to use. While they agree that in vitro testing is a new and revolutionary method, most have concluded that it should be used as a preliminary test. The results from these preliminary tests are then to be used, as baseline data for any animal testing that will occur. Researchers will be able to have an accurate starting dosage and be able to eliminate any know toxins from the tests to decrease possible casualties or suffering of animals in testing. It is their belief that testing still needs to be carried out on an organism in order to ensure the products safety. Most of the articles consulted and researched on this subject are older than the articles describing the new alternative methods. This indicates that the research put into the older articles may not be as up to date because of the time it takes to research and publish a paper the content may not be as relevant anymore. The desire to keep animal testing around is not limited just to researchers and experimenters though, animal breeders stand to lose a lot of money if the testing is edged out by new age technology. The animal breeders sell millions of animals a year to laboratories and research centers to be used as test subjects. Because the death of almost every single subject used to be a priority the demand for subjects was always high. With new alternative tests now available that are cheaper and more reliable for companies the demand for test subjects will decrease at a sharp rate. Currently it will cost a research facility $700,000 to conduct a non-genotoxic cancer risk test using 24 month rat cancer bioassay. To complete that same test using an in vitro model of this same experiment will now cost a researcher facility only $22,000, meaning they can run 31 in vitro tests for the price of just one animal test. The public actually plays a big role in animal testing as wee even if they don’t know it. For decades their medications and products have been held to a standard of safety involving these animal tests and when the standards start to shift to new tests they don’t always understand why and if they can be trusted. The public needs to become more educated on the new alternative tests in order to help faze them out.   

The fight against ending animal cruelty and murder in the pharmaceutical industry is currently a losing battle because the public is becoming more aware of the problem and those inside the industry want to see an end to the as much of the animal suffering as possible. Still there is a need for a big push to end it all for good. If the problem is brought to public attention than a movement can be started to pass bills or legislation to stop animal testing in its entirety. Currently in states like California, New Jersey, and New York legislation has been passed that mandates alternative tests to be used when available. This would be the best first step, to push for a national legislation mandating the implementation the use of alternative testing over its animal test counterpart when available. While it may take some time to phase out animal testing all together it is certainly possible. Throughout the research stage of this article there was rarely a test that is currently being preformed on animals that could not be replaced by a new alternative method. 

Before any medication is released onto the market it has to undergo an extremely rigorous amount of testing and research to clear it for human consumption or application. Testing began with animals because humans could not be used to test any substance with out severe risk of injury or death. And so fore years and years animals have been forced onto the front lines and put through torturous experiments that almost guarantee their death. Most of the time these animals’ deaths meant nothing because either the test is a poor representation of the substances effect on humans or because the results cannot be replicated. As new and advanced medicines have developed though so has technology and it is now within our capability to remove and replace the old out dated animal tests. The new tests improve the results of experiments on new medications in every aspect imaginable. Alternative tests are more reliable and applicable to human applications at the same time as being more efficient and cost effective. The pharmaceutical industry has the option of improving the way that it provides safe medications for the public while also saving the companies millions of dollars every year. The implementation of alternatives testing needs to become mandated by the government by on a national level to take the first big step towards ending the cruel mistreatment and murder of millions of innocent animals every year. 
