How can the Dr Hadwen Trust replace animal tests, if the law requires them for new drugs?
The making and testing of new medicines is only one aspect of medical research (comprising 24% of all UK animal experiments in 2005), but it’s not what the Dr Hadwen Trust does. Most of our research is focused on understanding different human illnesses — their causes, how they develop, and the underlying features that might allow them to be prevented, diagnosed earlier, or treated more effectively. This is sometimes known as fundamental medical research. Much of this kind of medical research normally involves investigating how the body functions in health and disease, by artificially causing selected symptoms of human illnesses in other animals. We are finding new ways to investigate illnesses without resorting to animal experiments. Some of our research aims at developing advanced non-animal methods to replace the animal tests currently required by legislation or by regulatory agencies.
