Freestyle Post #2
There have been many times during my blogs where I have mentioned that there are alternatives to animal testing, however, I have not had a chance to go into depth about these different alternatives. I found a website, The Humane Society of The US, and they go over the different steps for finding an alternative to testing animals.
The Humane Society defines an alternative as any change in animal testing where something replaces a procedure, cuts the number of animals used, and also finding a new procedure where animals will not be hurt. Because there is so many new kinds of technologies, private companies, universities, or government agencies are working to develop something new. The alternative technologies will take away the need of using animals for a cell/tissue test. With these new technologies, results will come quicker and will cost less to complete.
Once an idea is brought up, it must be tested several times. It would also have to be tested by other labs to make sure that it is a suitable way to test a drug. This step here is clearly the most time fulfilling and frustrating step. Everything really has to be done correctly before being used by other labs or agencies. When the alternative test has been 100% completed, then it goes to the government to be reviewed. The Humane Society says “the opinions of government regulators strongly influence the extent to which private companies use available alternatives instead of traditional animal tests.”
AltTox gives a full list of alternative tests that have been validated and successfully used. An example of that would be how labs used to use rabbit skin for testing skin care products. EpiSkin™, EpiDerm™ and SkinEthic all use artificial skin for their tests. This saves the rabbits from the painful testing that they used to be put through. “The 3T3 Neutral Red Uptake Phototoxicity Test” takes place of a test used with guinea pigs and mice. These tests used to be finding out the skin sensitization of these animals and compare it to human skin. Â
As I kept looking through this website, I found it very interesting. The Humane Society supports basically any animal. Anything from a monkey to a cow to an elephant, will be helped out by them. They have rescued just about 270,000 animals, and the number is still growing. When they are aware of any source of animal cruelty, the society will step in and make things right.
The Humane Society takes any volunteers who think that they would be able to help. I think that these days, places like The Humane Societies need to become bigger and more successful in order to get animal testing to stop since we know that there are alternatives.
This is a picture of fake human skin that is used as an alternative to animal testing











