UK Plans to Euthanize Its Lab Beagles

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

I lost my mom to Alzheimer's. I have no confidence that what goes on in animal testing laboratories is getting us any closer to cures for alzheimers or cancer. Most testing could be done in petri dishes with definitive outcomes.

 

Virtually every drug on the market goes through testing on laboratory animals. It's part of the process in making sure that the drugs are safe for human applications prior to use on humans in clinical trials.

 

My wife spent a year over in the UK researching mTOR inhibitors in a laboratory mouse trial. Those drugs help control a disease called tuberous sclerosis, and they are the sole method of preventing tuberous sclerosis from advancing and turning into cancer. Google "everolimus".

 

In Australia, researchers have also developed a drug to tread Alzheimer's that has been approved for clinical human trials (Xanamem)...which means the clinical animal trials for the drug have shown enough promise and success to justify giving the drug to humans on a trial basis. It reportedly took over 190 trials on animals to develop the drug to where it is now, which would have undoubtedly resulted in an unconscionable loss of life had those trials been conducted on humans. So in hopes of developing a successful drug, they opt for trials on animals.

 

I certainly think it's a shame that the dogs have to be used for testing...or any other animal for that matter, but the fact is they stand in the place of humans, and as a Christian I believe that we have "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every thing that moves on the ground." I think there comes a point where some testing for new drugs and products may be superfluous, but to do away with testing would be unreasonable.

 

For what it's worth, assuming these dogs don't pose any kind of health risk to the general public, I think UK really needs to look at the option to offer them for adoption.