Only a few months ago, up to 15,000 people against animal demonstrated in the Hamburg tests.
Similar rallies are likely to it. on the day of the test animal this Friday (24 April) hardly, if only due to the limitation of the freedom of Assembly in the Corona-crisis.
Almost all people want as quickly as possible means that can end the pandemic. However, vaccines will not give it without animal experiments, concern scientists.
“Medicine has succeeded to develop successful vaccination, for example against polio, Mumps, or the flu. At Covid-19 significant medical and scientific progress is necessary”, explains the spokesman of the Initiative of animal experiments to understand the göttingen neuro-scientist and biologist Stefan treue.
Responsible animal experiments are indispensable. “This is world-wide consensus in research and legislation.”
Behind the Initiative, scientific and research organisations in Germany by the Helmholtz – and Fraunhofer societies, up to the Leopoldina.
Alternatives to animal testing
Animal experiments are regulated in Germany are strict. You would only be undertaken if no alternative methods are available, says a spokesman for the Federal Institute for risk assessment (BfR).
Many alternative methods based on cell culture techniques in which cells of animal or human are cultured in the Petri dish.
So about the so-called monocyte activation test fever-causing substances could be detected in the drugs, without the need for Experiments on animals fall back.
A further possibility of three-dimensionally growing cell cultures can be recreated, with the help of complex tissue structures.
“A successful example of this is the artificially produced human skin, with the certain effects of chemicals, such as skin irritation, reliably tested,” says the BfR speaker.
Relatively new Tests, and various organ systems of the human body on so-called Chips (Organ-on-a-chip) and also to network with each other to be.
The organization Doctors against animal experiments holds drug testing on animals is fundamentally wrong. “A fast and reliable development of drugs and vaccines with the animal experiments prove that this is impossible,” says spokeswoman Gaby Neumann.
Nevertheless’m currently trying to find suitable animal models for the Sars-CoV-2-research or manufacture.
“The current Corona-crisis shows more than clearly what a great mistake it was in the past, animal testing, human-to-promote-based research methods such as human 3D lung models and Multi-Organ-Chips is not enough.”
No Corona vaccine without animal testing
Fidelity of animal experiments to understand says: “of Course, the research also uses all of the available animal-free methods – but neither with a Petri an Organ-on-a-chip or a computer model of the shell alone, we are diseases, a complex virus, cancer, or Alzheimer’s can defeat it.”
More than 80 percent of the two million animals that were used in Germany to 2018, were rats or mice, as is clear from Figures of the German Federal Ministry for food and agriculture is apparent.
In the development of a composition against the Coronavirus, especially the mice to come, according to Fidelity to use. “But also studies in other animal species, such as, for example, monkeys are inevitable,” says Fidelity, is the head of the German Primate center in Göttingen.
The Berlin-based virologist Christian Drosten considers Experiments with macaques, such as rhesus monkeys, “in a very, very limited way” makes no sense because the immune system of these animals was more similar to the human.
Experiments with great apes are prohibited in Germany.
Protests after LPT scandal
The Protest of the animal rights activists had targeted the end of last year against the private animal experimentation laboratory LPT, with sites in Hamburg and in the adjoining lower Saxony.
Secretly-made recordings of screaming monkeys and blood-smeared dogs, and had caused outrage. The authorities revoked the company’s permission to keep a pet.
The Prosecutor’s office in Stade, determined for violation of the animal protection act.
Had the protests, the Soko animal called protection, which calls for attempts to put an end to all animal. Even now, in the Corona-crisis of the club in his position, stay speaker Friedrich Mülln says.
However, Mülln acknowledges that there is now an emergency situation, and the science could not do without ad-hoc testing on animals.
“If you go at 300 kilometers per hour, a full braking, it will not end well,” he says. It is in revenge for now, that alternative methods had not been enough promoted.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa)
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