During the 1990s, the new animal experimentation buzzwords were "gene therapy", "DNA vaccines" and "xenotransplantation". And since the passage into the new millennium, in ever shorter intervals catchphrases have been appearing like "decoding of the human genome", "therapeutic cloning" and – the most recent – "embryonic stem cell research", which supposedly will soon lead to cures for fatal diseases.

Result: To this day, not a single disease is curable thanks to these fields of research which are based on animal experimentation. In fact, the fixation on invalid, unreliable animal experiments guarantees that human diseases remain incurable. However, neither the researchers, who continue without any abatement to experiment on animals, nor the media, which report almost daily about the "successes" and "findings" of animal experimenters, nor the general public, which broadly supports animal experimentation as a "necessary evil", have drawn the obvious lesson. (See also: Health through animal experiments?)

We need a new generation of researchers who renounce animal experiments and who focus on a truly human-based medicine. In order to achieve real progress in alleviating, curing and preventing human diseases, researchers must use valid, reliable methods which are of direct relevance to people. The brochure A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation informs in detail about such methods (see in particular pp. 11-15).

Christopher Anderegg, M.D., Ph.D.