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Serious drug reactions could be avoided
EDITOR – Re the rabbit farm protesters and rabbit farmer Geoff Douglas saying they are 'Wrong', I would like to draw readers' attention to Safer Medicines Campaign, an independent, not-for-profit organisation of doctors and scientists whose aim is to protect public health and safety.
They believe medicines are essential but their safety would be improved by replacing misleading animal tests with superior techniques based on human biology. They have the backing of 82 per cent of doctors, who are concerned animal tests can be misleading.
Therefore, it stands to reason, if animal tests are misleading, they can also be dangerous when applied to humans.
This is borne out by the fact a million Britons are hospitalised by prescription medicine every year, costing the NHS 2 billion.
There is alarming evidence animal tests are failing:
n Six young men at Northwick Park Hospital were almost killed by a drug they were given because it had been 'proved safe' in monkeys.
n Arthritis drug Viox killed tens of thousands of people after being 'proved safe' in mice, rats, rabbits, dogs and monkeys.
n Ninety two per cent of new drugs fail in human trials, following success in animal tests.
This demonstrates the key to solving the problem of predicting how drugs will affect patients is a shift of focus from animal studies towards human biology. This was the theme of an international scientific conference at the Royal Society of Medicine in November 2008 – Speed and Safety in Drug Discovery.
Leading scientists argued the best model for human drug development is human beings. They offered an array of technologies to test the safety of medicines in a human context.
Since animal tests are currently our chief safety screen before drugs are tested on people, it is only reasonable to compare them with today's advanced human biology based methods.
Safer Medicines Campaign wants animal tests scientifically evaluated. To this end, the Safety of Medicines (Evaluation) Bill 2009 was launched in January calling on the government to conduct this unprecedented scientific comparison.
Safer Medicines Campaign believes that until the government stops requiring 'proof of safety' in animals and allowing drug companies to use such 'proof' as a legal defence when their drugs kill people, we will continue to suffer serious and fatal adverse drug reactions that could have been avoided.
Pat Wickham
North Street, Caistor
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Friday 25 May 2012
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