The Humane Society of the United States applauds the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Toxicology Program, and Environmental Protection Agency for joining together to help develop a new generation of more humane methods for assessing the toxicity of chemicals to which humans are exposed. The Memorandum of Understanding among the three federal entities, announced today, calls for cooperation in developing high-throughput, non-animal methods to rapidly and inexpensively assess thousands of chemicals for their toxicity
"The NHGRI, NTP, and EPA are taking an important step toward implementing the National Research Council vision, which would reduce, if not eliminate, animal suffering by developing more effective, non-animal testing methods," said Dr. Andrew Rowan, HSUS executive vice president. "This project could eliminate the pain and distress of thousands of animals and be seen as a follow-up, with equally visionary possibilities for biology, to the NHGRI's highly successful Human Genome Project. In order for this vision to be fully realized within a decade, what is needed overall is an international government/industry effort funded at approximately two hundred million dollars per year, or approximately four times the current level of effort."
The announcement follows the June 2007 report published by the National Research Council calling for a sustained, well-funded effort to shift the traditional toxicity-testing paradigm away from its heavy reliance on animal testing and towards high-throughput systems that monitor perturbations in toxicity pathways.
For more than 40 years, The HSUS has been advocating a shift away from traditional animal testing towards alternative methods based on a modern understanding of human biology—the essence of the NRC vision. The HSUS' Dr. Martin Stephens served on the committee that wrote the NRC vision. The Humane Society Legislative Fund's Sara Amundson was instrumental in the passage of the 2000 legislation that permanently codified ICCVAM. Stephens, Amundson and Rowan have a combined seventy years of effort towards initiating the paradigm shift, from traditional and unsatisfactory animal toxicology to non-animal testing, that occurs today.
Timeline:
- In 1959, two scientists in the United Kingdom, at the instigation of Nobel-prize winning immunologist Sir Peter Medawar, published a report calling for the development of alternatives to animal methods.
- In the early 1960s, The HSUS established a specialist committee on Alternatives to Animal Research and began to urge science to develop and implement such methods.
- In 1980, The HSUS launched, with animal activist Henry Spira, the Coalition against the Draize Test to highlight the practice of toxicity testing on animals and to call for a change to non-animal methods.
In 1993 and 2000, The HSUS was part of a consortium that successfully lobbied for the language that led to the establishment and strengthening of the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods. - In 2000 and 2007, laws were passed in California and New Jersey to require the use of alternative test methods, strengthening government and industry's investment in their implementation and use.
- In 2007, the NRC issued its landmark report, "Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century, A Vision and Strategy." Dr Stephens of the The HSUS is a key member of the NRC panel. Later in the year, The HSUS launched a website, AltTox, devoted to promoting and implementing non-animal methods of toxicity testing.
- The HSUS estimates that, worldwide, funding into non-animal alternatives for safety testing is now greater than $50 million a year (compared to around $100,000 a year 25 years ago).
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