Can Medical Research on Animals be Justified?

In addition to scientific and humane incentives, there are also substantial economic advantages to the adoption of replacements for animal tests. Animal-based methods are routinely very costly in money and time. Non-animal test methods are typically less costly and time-consuming, and may require lower investment in personnel and other resources.

For example, the DakDak test, which is used to measure the efficacy of sunscreens in preventing skin damage, provides major advantages compared to standard animal tests. Charles River Laboratories, which purchased DakDak in 2002, reports that this test does in days what it take animal studies months to do and estimates that it can test five or six products for less than half the cost to study one product in animals.

The current gold standard for testing a chemical to determine if it is carcinogenic is the rodent bioassay, which takes up to five years from planning to evaluation and review, at a cost of up to more than $4 million per substance. In vitro (test-tube) screening allows companies to identify promising test compounds in a cost- and time-efficient manner before progressing to expensive human trials.

Additionally, non-animal test methods save on various costs associated with animal methods, including animal procurement, maintenance and husbandry, and hazardous waste disposal. Finally, costly legal claims against companies that rely heavily on animal data may become more commonplace. For example, the pharmaceutical company Merck and Co., Inc. is currently facing litigation for alleged improper reliance on animal tests to show that its painkiller Vioxx was safe for humans.

A less publicized cost of animal experiments is the waste generated by discarding the bodies of dead, unused animals. An estimated 75 percent of the 100 million transgenic mice bred for laboratory research yearly are killed because they are not needed in research protocols.