Resumen de Use of animals in toxicity studies
Ethical aspects of the use of animals in the safety testing and risk evaluation of the hundreds of thousands of industrial chemicals are briefly discussed. By and large, everybody agrees that such use of animals is ethically challenging, and that safety testing and risk evaluation should be carried out without animals wherever and whenever feasible. The trends in the use of animals in laboratories in Great Britain are described with particular focus on the use of animals by commercial laboratories in Great Britain (primarily by pharmaceutical and chemical companies). Animal use in laboratories stabilized during the years of the genetically modified (GMO) mouse “revolution” but is now again starting to decline as the hoped-for breakthroughs from GMO mouse research have not met expectations. In addition, new biomedical technologies (e.g., human organs-on-a-chip, human organoids, high-thruput test systems and sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms) are beginning to dominate chemical safety assessments. The new technologies promise to replace animal safety testing within the next 10–20 years if regulatory inertia can be overcome. Ultimately, the ethical challenges are being overtaken by technological innovations that will lead to an end to most or all use of animals in safety testing and risk evaluation.
