Canadians for the Advancement of Health Research::. alternatives to animal research

In 1988, Lester Lave of Carnegie Mellon University reported, in the journal Nature, experiments to test the carcinogenicity of 214 compounds on both rats and mice. He concluded that results agreed with each other only 70% of the time. Also, David Salsburg of Pfizer reported that of 19 chemicals known to cause cancer in humans only seven caused cancer in rodents using the standards set by the National Cancer Institute.

A 1980 survey by the Medicines Division of U.K. Department for Health and Social Security states: "[new drugs] have largely been introduced into therapeutic areas already heavily oversubscribed and ... for conditions which are common, largely chronic and occur principally in the affluent Western society. Innovation is therefore largely directed toward commercial returns rather than therapeutic needs."

Twelve, among the most prestigious medical journals, including the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association will refuse to publish studies, which are not issued from independent laboratories. As a joint effort to protect the validity of the published results against the greed of pharmaceutical companies and hence, the health of people, these journals demand now that the independence of investigators be better respected. (2)

David Earnshaw a former senior lobbyist with SmithKline Beecham, resigned to join the British-based charity Oxfam, leading an European campaign to ensure affordable access to drugs in Africa, after he criticized not only the U.N. program to accelerate the distribution of drugs that reached as fewer as 2000 Africans but also the way pharmaceutical companies handle the plague of AIDS in Africa: "It could be argued that the way companies are currently doing business in the southern hemisphere is crassly stupid," he said. (3)

It was estimated that two million Americans become seriously ill and approximately 100,000 people die every year because of reactions to medicines properly prescribed or not. Strikingly, this figure exceeds the number of deaths from all illegal drugs combined, and the public health system must face an annual cost of more than $136 billion in expenses. (4)

In England, an estimated 70,000 deaths and cases of severe disability occur each year because of adverse reactions to prescription drugs, making this the third most common cause of death, after heart attack and stroke.(5)

1. GAO/PEMD-90-15 FDA Drug Review: Postapproval risks 1976-1985

2. La Presse. "Les revues médicales n'entendent plus faire patte blanche,"15 août (2001)

3. Top Pharmaceutical Executive Jumps Ship to NGO. UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. www.africa.com April 20, (2001)

4. JAMA 277: 301-6 (1997)

5. Medical World News. 6:168 (1965)