WIKICOMMONS
The US National Academy of Sciences released a report in 2007 envisioning a future in which animals would largely disappear from toxicity testing programs. The report, drafted by a panel of experts, proposed that toxicity induced by drugs, food additives, pesticides, and other chemicals be assessed not by observing overt clinical signs in animals but by monitoring perturbations to biological pathways in cultured human cells. Sophisticated bioinformatic technologies could then provide risk predictions that overcome the limitations of animal-based methods, such as low throughput and the questionable relevance of animal results to human physiology. Initially, the report was greeted with skepticism, but that skepticism is giving way to guarded excitement.
In response to the NAS report, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health, ...
