Sir, – John Holden's article highlights the ongoing importance of the use of mammals for studying disease processes and validating novel therapies ("Of mice and medicine: the ethics of animal research", February 18th).
In recent years, a wide range of alternative systems have been developed to reduce the numbers of mammals utilised in such studies. Due to the many structural and functional similarities between the immune system of insects and the innate immune system of mammals, insects have been employed to measure the virulence of microbial pathogens and to evaluate the efficacy of antimicrobial agents and produce results that show a strong correlation with those that can be obtained using mammals. In addition, insect larvae can now be used as a model for studying the process of brain infection that occurs in mammal infected with listeria bacteria.
The use of insects as in vivo models has contributed to a significant reduction in the use of mammals in a wide range of in vivo tests.
While the use of insects and other alternative systems will never remove the need to perform such testing in mammals, they offer the possibility of significantly reducing the need to use mammals. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN KAVANAGH, PhD
Department of Biology,
Maynooth University,
Co Kildare.
Sir, – Mice are not furry little humans. Their anatomy, physiology and reactions to drugs are quite different from ours, and trying to extrapolate data from animal tests to justify the human use of treatments is dangerous and irresponsible.
Time and time again, systematic reviews have found that experiments on animals lead to fruitless clinical trials that can endanger human life, cause millions of animals to suffer and cost taxpayers billions of euro. There are better and more reliable ways to tackle human problems without tormenting and killing animals along the way.
How much more time and hope and how many more resources and lives have to be thrown away before we end cruel and wasteful experiments on animals? – Yours,etc,
CALUM PROCTOR,
Regent’s Wharf, London.