ANIMAL RESEARCH IS ESSENTIAL FOR NEW MEDICINES
But we recognise that it is not an easy or a simple issue.

Most of us care about animals. Most of us care about people. Most of us appreciate the benefits of modern medicines and look forward to new treatments to extend and improve the quality of life for millions of people. Most of us want to do the best for people and animals. This makes animals research a difficult issue.

All new prescription medicines must be studied in animals before they are tested in people. Advances in computer and test tube methods are making a big difference and are always used first. But many of the potential effects of medicines are the result of chains of biological reactions that can still only be investigated in the living body, with all its cells, organs and systems working together. No combination of computer models and work on isolated cells and tissue can, as yet, come close to reproducing the vast complexity of the body.

Most of these more complex effects of medicines in people can be predicted from well-designed animal studies, giving researchers the necessary guidance to decide whether to take a potential new medicine forward to be tested and then used in people. It would be unacceptable in our society - and would not be permitted - to risk causing harm to people in order to avoid using animals.

The pharmaceutical industry supports the use of animals only where the research cannot be done in other ways and then only with care. But if we want new medicines for conditions like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, asthma, heart disease and AIDS, then animals will continue to be needed.

This section of the ABPI website sets out to explain the main points about why animals are needed in the development of new medicines, the way that research is controlled and answer the main questions people may have.