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gerkletoss t1_j1eztom wrote

Presumably it will be some time before such alternatives can actually be approved as substitutes, but good. There are many ways in which this can be expected to be more effective than animal testing. There must be quite a few drugs over the years that would have been good for humans but were rejected because they were poisonous to mice.

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Ithirahad t1_j1g2x54 wrote

Or vice-versa, a great number of drugs on which a lot of time and resources were wasted because they showed such promise in mice, despite being useless for humans.

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ForceGhostVader t1_j1gj5fs wrote

If mice ever take over the world, we’ve already cured every ailment that could affect them which could launch them into some sort of super species

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Alphecho015 t1_j1itsp7 wrote

You'd be surprised how accurate mice testing is. I'm in nanotechnology but yeah, recreating organ on chips is a HELLA interesting topic. Hopefully we'll see some lung on chip alternatives in the next decade or so, it'll help us improve medicine so much faster. God I love being in this science, I feel like the implications of Organ and Lab on chip in science and engineering is so underappreciated right now but it'll truly revolutionize testing one day.

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darkened-foxes OP t1_j1ez8ti wrote

A great development for drug manufacturers. Organ chips and other human-relevant technology like 3d organoids are the future of medicine. Companies like emulate are leading the charge in this technology, and I hope with the passage of this law more focus and funding is given to these models.

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ReelWatt t1_j1f2nbc wrote

Yes, this is huge! It is going to allow for the medical industry to progress several times faster allowing therapies to reach people with far greater ease.

It will also lower the cost of clinical trials considerably, so much so that many abandoned drugs and devices may actually be revived because of lower-cost of entry.

There will be some time to make this shift but it will really advance the medical field.

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hats_cats_muscrats t1_j1gkkhf wrote

Perfectly timed with the vagina-on-a-chip announcement

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lunchboxultimate01 t1_j1gsh78 wrote

That's such a good example. Due to the name "organ on a chip" people often think these are purely some type of computer chip, when in reality they are small microfluidic devices containing live human cells.

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genesiss23 t1_j1fgj20 wrote

It might not impact anything. The manufacturers will try to do studies which they can use in as many markets as possible. If the majority require animal models, they will use that.

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gerkletoss t1_j1ftg6u wrote

The US is a market leader. Others will follow

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MattyEC t1_j1hq13z wrote

Organoids are many decades away from being able to replicate whole systems well enough to supplant animal models, and I say that as someone who worked on an organoid system in his PhD, so I'm not sure how I feel about this regulation.

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ATribeOfAfricans t1_j1fpc67 wrote

God damn this administration is so starkly better for the country than the right wing it's mind blowing

Edit: several folks have commented along the lines of "the right also contributes to or controls congress right now(not true)". Being a leader is not just steam rolling the opposition, it's about influencing people with different or even conflicting incentives to act in a way that may not benefit them, or even hurt them, in order to achieve a better outcome for the masses

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bplturner t1_j1gg5ed wrote

Because they’re actually trying to govern… shocking.

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GorumGamer t1_j1icyoh wrote

I’m not particularly political, but you should know that congress is controlled by the republicans right now.

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cancerengineer t1_j1jbwor wrote

Congress is not controlled by the Republicans right now, who told you something like that?

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GorumGamer t1_j1jdkm7 wrote

I thought the republicans won seats in the midterms. Bloomberg Gov says it’s 222 to 213. Idk

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cancerengineer t1_j1jebeq wrote

That's how many seats were won in the midterm election, but the new Congress does not start until next year.

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ColdButCozy t1_j1h4921 wrote

Hell yeah, that’s a great step forward both for animal welfare and testing speed

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SonOfNod t1_j1gios3 wrote

There is a great quote that “mice get the best drugs.” Animals are humans and the impacts on human cells and human systems will differ from mice and other lab animals. It’s why a lot of things that work on mice won’t eventually work on humans.

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spartanjet t1_j1hfrtn wrote

The majority of testing done on animals is Toxicology testing. At what concentrations do you start seeing harmful effects. Animal testing isn't used nearly as much in Efficacy tests. I worked in a lab that did Toxicology testing. A lot of drugs don't do much and it's testing new formulas for drugs already commonly on the market. But there are also a lot of cancer drugs and opiods that end up having a lot of unexpected effects. Also you end up with small companies that have Lawyers and investors that have everything riding on their one drug they have and they are willing to try and make any shortcuts they can to make sure that drug gets to market. I worry about those companies if the FDA opens a path that won't be tested with animals.

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FuturologyBot t1_j1f3y9s wrote

The following submission statement was provided by /u/darkened-foxes:

A great development for drug manufacturers. Organ chips and other human-relevant technology like 3d organoids are the future of medicine. Companies like emulate are leading the charge in this technology, and I hope with the passage of this law more focus and funding is given to these models.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zts0a3/congress_passes_the_fda_modernization_act/j1ez8ti/

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PresidentialCamacho t1_j1gq6qv wrote

Morons. This bill is meant to allow BPs to cut corners and lead to human misery and deaths. Testing on multiple mammalian species reduces the chance that we provide a novel drug that messes up children for life. There's nothing to be happy about. There's nothing trivial about testing drugs in systemic environments. No amount of modeling and small tests beats the complex microenvironment of animals. We only know <1% of the body. Anyone claiming more is a liar.

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Marston_vc t1_j1hd4uw wrote

Actually it will lead to better health outcomes for humans.

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Cheesenugg t1_j1j0u28 wrote

Could you explain how? I'm not understanding what all this is.

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SicilianOmega t1_j1lbtp0 wrote

Yeah, but since the FDA now responds to failed animal tests by suppressing the results and approving the drug anyway, what are animal tests still needed for?

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[deleted] t1_j1gfdxf wrote

[removed]

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cnnrduncan t1_j1gwc9l wrote

Because subjecting people (who may potentially be falsely convicted) to harmful medical testing is fucked up. There's a reason that the groups of Nazis and Imperial Japanese that experimented on unwilling subjects are considered to be some of the most fucked up parts of ww2.

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[deleted] t1_j1gwtdq wrote

[removed]

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cnnrduncan t1_j1gxehg wrote

How about Elmer Jackson or the countless other black men that the yanks lynched after falsely accusing them of rape and other crimes?

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Michiberto t1_j1gxkqf wrote

We could go all day about this. Your guilt shit trip is not convincing. Modern forensics. And you're bringing up crap that was done where there were none.

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cnnrduncan t1_j1h0lxb wrote

Lmao how is it "guilt trip shit" to say that we maybe shouldn't be subjecting people to unconsentual medical experiments. You're on some fascist shit my dude.

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Marston_vc t1_j1hd7nk wrote

Such bullshit. People get wrongfully convicted all the time even today. Use google more.

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Herbacult t1_j1gmn9e wrote

Well you can’t pick and choose inmates to subject to cruel and unusual punishment. Surely an innocent person might be subjected to such an experiment.

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SmokierTrout t1_j1halzv wrote

Plenty of reasons this is not a good idea.

There are no where near enough rapists and pedophiles to conduct enough clinical studies on. The US prison population is 2.3 million, of which a small fraction will be convicted rapists or pedophiles. By contrast, 111 million mice and rats are killed in US laboratories every year. So before long you'd get pressure to expand which prisoners can experimented upon and then which crimes result in a custodial sentence.

Second, for many drug trials you need to inflict a condition to see how the drug effects that condition. That is, every year loads of mice are given cancer to see if a drug is effective at treating that cancer. Not that many rapists in jail with lung cancer.

Thirdly, when testing drugs you need to properly test on a representative sample of the population. Otherwise you get skewed results. This is already a problem for women, especially pregnant women. Very little testing has done on them, so out knowledge of how drugs effect women is much more limited and can often lead to adverse health outcomes for women. Using prisoners, who are mostly male, would only exacerbate this problem.

Overall it's a terrible idea that is focused primarily on punishment of prisoners, not on rigorous clinical trials and good science.

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