NIH Releases Five Year Plan to Reduce or Remove Animals from Testing

Maybe PETA will listen for a little while, now that the United States government released a five year plan, involving fifteen regulatory agencies, to find as many ways as possible to remove animals from toxicology testing methods.

This isn't a new program. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, has been working on the issue for the ethical treatment of animals for ten years, with a joint task force formed to establish guidelines and evaluate technological advances for how to remove animals from their use in screening drugs, cosmetics, consumer goods, and medical and therapeutic devices.

"We've made great progress in the past decade, and with the help of our partners we can do even more to increase the pace of developing and introducing alternative methods," said William Stokes, D.V.M. in a press release. Stokes is an Assistant Surgeon General in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. "We appreciate all of the public input we've received to develop this plan and look forward to working closely with our government and non-government stakeholders to promote good science and validation studies that will support the regulatory use of alternative methods," Stokes said.

The Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM) has already evaluated 185 testing methods. ICCVAM is a permanent interagency body, formed in 1997 to promote the development, validation, and regulatory acceptance of scientifically sound new, revised, and alternative testing methods that protect human and animal health and the environment. Alternative test methods are those that accomplish one or more of the 3Rs (refine, replace, or reduce) of reducing the number of animals used in testing, or refining procedures so animals experience less pain and distress, or replacing animals with non-animal systems.

Note that the first priority is to protect human health, then animal health. Not the other way around. Which, thankfully, is their focus, since there do not seem to be many rats or mice paying any taxes to support this research or evaluation. The committee is working hard, though to find means to replace the use of animals in research and regulatory testing.

The highest priorities for ICCVAM are focusing on evaluating alternatives to test methods that either use a large number of animals, or that can involve significant pain and stress, primarily in safety tests for eye injuries, skin damage, acute poisoning and tests for vaccines.

NIH is charged with dissemination knowledge about toxicological studies throughout the United States, and a subsection of its web site is devoted to the issue of animal testing methodologies that have been changed over the years.