Animal Testing.

I would like to begin my argument by pointing out that you agree with me that animal testing is wrong in many cases. You stated it was wrong to experiment on animals for developing make-up, weapons, and shampoo. I would like to try to convince you that it is also wrong in developing medicines for people. I am not going to argue your point; "I'm sure that we wouldn't be where we are if it wasn't for certain animal testing." I can't change what has happened in the past, and there is no reason to argue about something that cannot be changed. I am not going to argue that animal testing in the earlier days of medical development didn't benefit mankind. What I will argue is that it is no longer justified to do animal testing. During the time scientist and researchers were finding cures and treatments for many diseases; they were also finding more advanced ways of developing these drugs. With advanced laboratory equipment such as the Cobas 4800 system, the ABL800 Flex, and perhaps most significantly the Rapid Fire 300 mass spectrometer; it could be possible to develop new drugs without using animal experimentation. "As demands for safe and efficacious pharmaceutical drugs grow, technological solutions will be of increasing interest that reduce barriers to clinical success rather than simply shifting bottlenecks and necessitating new compromises in the discovery and development process. Critical are those solutions providing better target selection and validation from improved information on disease pathophysiology; more predictive and biologically-relevant high throughput assays; and acquisition of ADME/Tox earlier in the discovery process with the goal of identifying and rejecting earlier in the process those chemical structures having poor safety profiles. Miniaturised, quantitative assays implemented in high throughput hold the promise to impact these important areas of need. Nanofluidic quantitative PCR moves the superior analytical properties of the PCR assay into high throughput screening by enabling the capability of quantitatively measuring gene expression in multiple genes in multiple specimens simultaneously with the potential of providing better quality information by biologically validating a target's role in disease pathophysiology. The dual concepts of miniaturisation and quantification is further extended to screening functions in the discovery and development process where the goal is to generate safe and efficacious compounds for subsequent testing in humans. Introduction of high throughput mass spectrometry methods in the initial screening phase and following in vitro ADME/Tox testing phase allows testing of putative drug compounds with assays of greater biological relevance to the disease pathology combined with information on compound safety earlier in development. Better quality data from identifying biologically effective compounds based on application of these new technologies will ultimately impact the odds of clinical success; jump-starting a new era in drug discovery that will allow the industry to realise the gains promised by more than a decade of rapid technological progress." http://www.ddw-online.com... The key sentence in the above paragraph is; "The dual concepts of miniaturisation and quantification is further extended to screening functions in the discovery and development process where the goal is to generate safe and efficacious compounds for subsequent testing in humans." With the scientific research equipment that is available today it is no longer justified to give thousands of animals slightly different versions of a new drug, just to see which ones die and how long it takes them to die. In addition to the advanced laboratory equipment already in existence; nanotechnology is making progress to advance science. "Nanoparticle research, has the capacity to profoundly affect mankind"s future. By carefully researching nanoparticle elements into their smallest components and then engineering these particles to achieve different functions, researchers can dramatically enhance everything from delicate electronics to life-saving medical techniques." http://nanogloss.com... If you take the time to understand how incredibly advanced scientific technology is today; it is plain to see that animal testing is, to put it judiciously, 'outdated'. Therefore it is not necessary to use animal testing.