Drug disasters in the past prompted new laws to protect the public but today the Government accepts this vast pharmaceutical carnage as a fact of life
MPs call for safer medicines
It is a cruel irony that side effects of prescription medicines designed to help us are now a leading cause of death, hospitalising a million Britons, killing more than 10,000 and costing the NHS £2 billion every year.Drug disasters in the past prompted new laws to protect the public but today the Government accepts this vast pharmaceutical carnage as a fact of life.
One explanation for the poor safety record of so many drugs is the reliance on safety testing in animals. The Government insists that all new drugs are shown to be safe in two species of animals before they can be given to humans. However, overwhelming evidence shows that new technologies based on human biology are more accurate and reliable; they are also a much faster and cheaper option.
In the infamous ’elephant man’ clinical trial at Northwick Park Hospital in 2006, six young men were almost killed by a drug after it had been shown to be safe in monkeys - even at 500 times the dose given to the volunteers. Since 2006, tests using human cells have been developed which can predict the terrible effects suffered by the volunteers, something which has not been possible with animal tests.
Leading scientists agree that the best model for human drug development is based on human beings; yet animal tests have never been compared with the latest human biology-based methods. Many MPs now agree it is time they were.
A cross-party group of MPs has launched the Safety of Medicines Bill, which calls on the Government to compare animal tests and human biology based methods, in order to determine which is the safer option for protecting patients. If animal tests are superseded then patients, the NHS, pharmaceutical companies and laboratory animals are all set to benefit.
Brighton Pavilion MP, Dr Caroline Lucas, says: ‘More reliable methods will benefit everyone. A national strategy to replace outdated animal tests is urgently needed to improve the safety of medicines’.
A comment from Dr Francis Collins, Director of the US National Institutes of Health, says it all: “It’s slow. It’s expensive. We are not rats and we are not even other primates”.
Indeed we are not – yet, as Safer Medicines Patron, actor and thalidomider Mat Fraser points out: "Animal testing makes all of us guinea pigs".
We must move safety testing into the 21st century, for all our sakes.
You can help!
Please ask your MP to sign Early Day Motion 475 (Safety of Medicines): contact Safer Medicines Campaign for a pre-written postcard: PO Box 62720, London SW2 9FQ, 020 8265 2880, www.SaferMedicines.org
Drug disasters in the past prompted new laws to protect the public but today the Government accepts this vast pharmaceutical carnage as a fact of life
What we are calling for
- Safe and effective treatments for patients as soon as possible
- Open discussion of the key scientific questions at the heart of this controversial issue, separately from the associated highly-charged ethical issues.
- Independent scientific evaluation of the utility of animal tests for drug safety: something which 250 MPs and 83% of GPs have also called for. The effectiveness of animal tests has never been measured against a panel of state-of-the-art techniques based on human biology. We propose a unique comparison between the two approaches, the case for which is compelling: http://www.SaferMedicines.org/broadsheet2010.pdf
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Contact Details
Website: www.SaferMedicines.org
Tel: 0208 265 2880
Email: [email protected]
Safer Medicines
PO Box 62720,
London SW2 9FQ
