Man, laboratory rat

1996/11/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Farmakologia

Soon the rats of the laboratories of the company Pharmagene, Royston, will disappear. The company will continue to investigate new drugs, but from next year it will no longer use animals in its sessions, but will replace them directly with human organs.

The head of research of the company Bob Coleman says that “thanks to the advances in human genetics, nowadays it is not necessary to make animals suffer; we want to make medicines for the human being and we can obtain the necessary information for it from the human genome”. To do this, that is, to access this information it will be necessary to obtain a “human material” that, it seems, will not be difficult.

According to Coleman, “the work done in raising awareness among blood donors and organ donors has been very important in putting in place a new style of research that we are now going to break. We have to overcome the suspicions: the black pudding and the organisers will do us a great favor if we give blood and organs to be used for research.”