Why damaging dogs is not an effective way to better diagnosis and treatments for people with osteoarthritis

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This is a photograph of a small beagle dog, under anaesthetic and laid on a table in preparation for a 2kg weight to be dropped on her bent knee.

To artificially create an arthritic-like knee in a perfectly healthy dog requires an awful instrument known as the dropping tower. This device drops a 2 kg weight onto the bent hind leg of an anaesthetised dog – most commonly a beagle, but Labradors, golden retrievers and German shepherd dogs are also used for this. The … Read more

Septic shock- replacing sick mouse ‘models’ with healthy human volunteers makes for better science.

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The Oxford Medical dictionary defines sepsis as “the putrefactive destruction of tissues by disease-causing bacteria or their toxins” and there is no argument that sepsis, or ‘blood poisoning,’ is a serious health problem. Around the world, sepsis kills more people than AIDS, breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. In people, sepsis can affect anyone but … Read more

Humanising mice – more an exercise in testing the limits of the technology and less an answer to understanding hepatitis C infection.

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The image shows six mice, lying other sides, with their faces pushed into plastic tubing delivering anaesthetic gas. The mice all have bright areas on their sides that indicates where they have tumours growing.

Modifying tumour cells from malignant liver cancer so that they shine brightly under specific conditions might seem like a neat trick. That is until you realise that this will not help diagnose, detect or eradicate cancer in people. Instead, these modified human cells are destined to be injected into a mouse, to generate a huge … Read more

It’s time to stop monkeying around with harmful primate experiments 

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This is a photo of a macaque, imprisoned in a bare cage, and extending her hand out of the bars.

Whenever I listen to debates regarding the ethics and scientific value of animal experiments for medical progress, the justification tends to rely on historical rather than scientific reasoning: Because animals were used in the past, they remain necessary. The end. A recent report by the European Union Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks … Read more

Engineered to suffer

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This picture shows a mouse with ALS, his hind legs are paralysed and curled up and he is small and scruffy.

ALS – or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – is a progressive, fatal, neurodegenerative disease. Only five to 10 percent of ALS cases, called familial ALS, are believed to be inherited; the great majority of ALS is known as ‘sporadic’ with no known genetically inherited component. But the key features of familial and sporadic ALS are the … Read more

Novel technologies offer hope for asthma research, without animals.

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Asthma is on the rise. This complex condition currently affects more than 300 million people globally, with a further 100 million people likely to have asthma by 2025. Around 250,000 people die every year from the disease, which has no cure. Medication for asthma can only control the symptoms – to reduce the likelihood of future … Read more