Question: Do you really think that medicines and drugs on animals can be generalised to humans?

Joanna Cruden answered on 12 Jun 2012:

Yes I do, if I did not believe it then I would not be able to do this work and would feel very strongly that it should stop. In fact I do not think anyone working with animals in science would do this work if they did not believe animals are vital to research, certainly nobody I have ever met anyway.

in fact there are several drugs on the market which cross over the species barrier (for example antibiotics) although there are drugs which can cause problems with one species over another, using antibiotics as an example again; guinea pigs rely on bacteria in their gut and some antibiotics are therefore dangerous for them, but for humans and other animals the same antibiotic combat many illnesses and save lives.

It is very important that we use the most appropriate species, we can usually determine this because by the time a compound has gone through all the non animal studies we have a pretty good idea of how it should work in a whole mammalian system and what species is the most appropriate for the compound. Before a drug can go onto the market we have to prove it is safe for human patients and currently we cannot do this without animals.

It is not just the medicine but also understanding how our bodies work and how drugs are metabolised in a whole system, how diseases work, because we cannot find a cure if we don’t understand the mechanism of a disease this cannot always be replicated in a non animal model yet however in the future it may be… in the future I hope it will be.