Replacing animal testing for drug trials is promising, but Professor Sara Gerke and her co-authors on a new paper on the subject believe caution is warranted before adopting change. Gerke recently spoke to the Illinois News Bureau about the paper.
“The primary goal of the FDA is to make animal testing the exception in 3-5 years, and a secondary goal is to get drugs to the market faster by reducing research and development costs,” she said. “Those are all worthy and ambitious goals, but it’s hard not to worry about the attendant risks in doing so. We really need to start thinking about how we ought to validate these new approach methodologies so that they’re at least as effective as animal testing.”