PETA scientists’ roadmap to animal-free research gets COVID-era update
New edition of ‘Research Modernization Deal’ offers solutions to animal experiment failures
2023-02-25
(Press-News.org) Washington — PETA scientists have just released a new edition of the groundbreaking Research Modernization Deal (RMD), the world’s first comprehensive plan for phasing out the use of animals in experimentation. The update is packed with new, cutting-edge information and reflects the latest scientific developments and regulatory changes since the RMD was first introduced in 2018.
The RMD provides detailed information about the pressing need to transition toward human-relevant research, and this new edition outlines non-animal methods for studying COVID-19. It also adds tools and recent studies to persuade government agencies to fund more modern, animal-free research and calls for an increased focus on education and training.
Hands-on training for early-career researchers is essential, as are mandatory courses on new approaches, to helping scientists expand their understanding of emerging technology in their fields.
“Experiments on animals are failing, but the capabilities of cutting-edge, animal-free research methods outlined by PETA scientists are increasing every day,” says PETA neuroscientist Dr. Emily Trunnell. “With the extra training tools laid out in this year’s RMD, researchers will be more prepared to innovate and save lives.”
The RMD presents the U.S. government’s own evidence that 95% of all new medications that test safe and effective in animal tests fail in human clinical trials. Failure rates are even higher in specific disease research areas, including Alzheimer’s disease (96.6%), cancer (96.6%), HIV/AIDS vaccines (100%), and strokes (100%). Studies show that 90% of basic research, most of which involves animals, fails to lead to treatments for humans—yet the National Institutes of Health spends nearly half its annual budget on animal studies.
The new RMD also highlights recent major legislative victories, such as the FDA Modernization Act 2.0’s promise to open the door to non-animal methods for testing drugs and the European Parliament’s near-unanimous support for an action plan to phase out animal experiments.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 404-693-3285; TasgolaB@peta.org
#
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2023-02-25
Excess weight or obesity boosts risk of death by anywhere from 22% to 91%—significantly more than previously believed—while the mortality risk of being slightly underweight has likely been overestimated, according to new CU Boulder research.
The findings, published Feb. 9 in the journal Population Studies, counter prevailing wisdom that excess weight boosts mortality risk only in extreme cases.
The statistical analysis of nearly 18,000 people also shines a light on the pitfalls of using ...
2023-02-25
Ancient climates can help us understand the past, but also the future. 23 million years ago, in a time called the Miocene Epoch, Connecticut was around five to six degrees warmer than today and located roughly where Long Island is now. By the end of the Miocene, around five million years ago the earth had gradually cooled, Antarctica was glaciated, and there was some Arctic ice as well.
This cooling scenario moved in the opposite direction of today’s changing climate. One difference UConn Department of Earth Sciences Assistant Professor in Residence Tammo Reichgelt points out is that in the past, these changes happened gradually, spaced ...
2023-02-25
Substance use disorder (SUD) is an extremely difficult disorder to overcome, and many individuals with SUD return to regular use after repeated attempts to quit.
A return to regular drug use can be caused by the body’s physical dependence on the drug as well as experiences associated with prior drug use. Exactly how these drug associations are formed in the brain and how they trigger a return to drug use remain unclear.
“Individuals make long-lasting associations between the euphoric experience of the drug and the people, places and things associated with drug use,” said Christopher Cowan, Ph.D. professor in the Department ...
2023-02-24
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 24, 2023) — A recent University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center study suggests a new radiopharmaceutical compound may be a viable treatment option for patients with advanced cervical cancer.
The study, led by UK Markey Cancer Center radiation oncologist Charles Kunos, M.D., and published in Frontiers in Oncology, validates that the radioactive drug 212Pb-DOTAM-GRPR1 may be useful in the treatment of persistent, recurrent, or metastatic cervical cancer.
Radiopharmaceuticals are expected to play ...
2023-02-24
For two decades, scientists have observed an elongated object named X7 near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way and wondered what it was. Was it pulled off a larger structure nearby? Was its unusual form the result of stellar winds or was it shaped by jets of particles from the black hole?
Now, having examined the evolution of X7 using 20 years of data gathered by the Galactic Center Orbit Inintiative, astronomers from the UCLA Galactic Center Group and the Keck Observatory propose that it could be a cloud of dust and gas that was ejected during the collision of two stars.
Over time, they report, X7 has stretched, and it is being pulled apart ...
2023-02-24
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Our bodies are made up of 60,000 miles of complex pipes that play a vital role in transporting nutrients throughout our bodies, performing waste disposal, and supplying our organs with fresh oxygen and blood.
Vascular malformations (VMs) are a group of rare genetic disorders that causes an abnormal formation of veins, arteries, capillaries, or lymphatic vessels at birth. VMs can interfere with the duties of our precious pipes by causing blockages, poor drainage, and the formation of cysts and tangles.
To address a need for further study, William Polacheck, PhD, an assistant professor at the ...
2023-02-24
Philadelphia, February 24, 2023—Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have identified variants of a chaperone molecule that optimizes the binding and presentation of foreign antigens across the human population, which could open the door to numerous applications where robust presentation to the immune system is important, including cell therapy and immunization. The findings were published today in Science Advances.
Class I major histocompatibility complex (MHC-I) proteins are ...
2023-02-24
Antarctic bottom water (AABW) covers more than two-thirds of the global ocean bottom, and its formation has recently decreased. However, its long-term variability has not been well understood.
Researchers led by Prof. DENG Chenglong from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their collaborators have reconstructed AABW history back to approximately 4.7 million years ago (mya). They found that AABW has collapsed several times and such collapses might have induced moisture transport to fuel the Northern Hemisphere ...
2023-02-24
A study conducted by researchers at the University of Liège on group 2 innate lymphoid cells (or ILC2s) shows that the functional reprogramming of these cells following their exposure to viruses allows our body to react differently to exposure to certain respiratory allergens. This study is published in Science Immunology.
The hygiene hypothesis states that exposure during childhood to certain micro-organisms protects against the development of allergic diseases such as asthma. In this context, researchers from the immunology-vaccinology laboratory (FARAH research ...
2023-02-24
CÚRAM SFI Research Centre for Medical Devices researchers have published in Nature Communications a key study establishing a new pre-clinical model to develop clinically relevant treatments for heart attacks.
Heart attacks (myocardial infarction (MI)) occur due to an acute complication of coronary artery disease and are a major cause of global mortality. The two main types of heart attack are ST-elevation (STEMI) and Non-ST elevation (NSTEMI). A non-ST-elevation is a type of heart attack that usually happens when your heart's oxygen needs are unmet. This condition gets its name because it doesn't have an easily identifiable electrical pattern like with an ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] PETA scientists’ roadmap to animal-free research gets COVID-era update
New edition of ‘Research Modernization Deal’ offers solutions to animal experiment failures
