alt Hacker NewsAlternatives to Animal Testing Are Finally Taking Off
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What makes it more complicated is that regulatory authorities across different countries have varying views on what is considered 'acceptable'. As mentioned in the Harvard example from the article. This could mean that both animal and non animal testing will be required for the forceable future to satisfy both sets of views until there is sufficient alignment from the 'big' regulators imo.
The dirty little secret of human organoid models is that they are grown in a matrix (e.g. Matrigel) that is derived from a tumor that secretes this matrix, which is grown in a mouse host. The mouse of course is "sacrificed" to harvest this matrix.
Ah lest we forget about Jevons Paradox. With the ability to discover a nearly infinite number of potential breakthroughs, we are going to need more animal testing than ever!
(Sarcasm but also some potential truth)
In the next 18 months it will come out that Anthropic and/or OpenAI have killed ~1,000,000,000 mice to RL train models for drug discovery. May these model/chips be widely available and cheap enough soon!
Nice to see TissUse getting a shout out :)
the FDA wanted data from organs-on-a-chip or some comparable alternative.
The massive increases of medical research spending to useful outcomes directly track the decrease in testing in humans and then animals. False positives from doing research in systems that are not the systems the medicine will be used in results in the observed waste and lack of progress compared to, say, the 1950s.
I am not saying we should not have stopped directly testing in humans or animals. But I am saying that the result has been worse outcomes. And any further shifts away from the biological systems that need the medicine (like using computational crap like LLMs) will further increase this disconnect.
Funny animal research story: University had an animal research committee to which anyone wanting to "use" an animal on university property had to submit proposals. Theatre department wants to "borrow" a lamb from the school's agricultural department research herd. Female character was to hold a live lamb during several stage scenes. Three shows a week for about a month. Everyone laughed. Then came the objection:
As the lamb would be exposed to uncontrolled people/pathogens it could not be used for further scientific studies nor returned to the herd. There was doubt it could even be sold for food. So, absent anyone taking it home as a pet, its appearance on stage was more of a death sentence than any scientific study!
They opted for a doll.
“It’s people man! We’re the ones who are miserable, so why shouldn’t we get to try it all first?!”
- Sealab 2021
This was already figured out and built out years ago https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/microphysiological-s...
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As slow as it may be to adopt, it's a welcome change to how people should do research. Why induce suffering on an animal when the potential for failure and or miscalculation is so high? It seems from the article a model/chip can be more insightful on how something will affect humans.