Testing
is done as a check on the safety of new drugs or substances for human or animal
use, and to check whether new batches of drugs and other agents like vaccines
work. There is a legal requirement to test how safe and effective chemicals, drugs
and other therapeutic agents are before they can be sold. Well-known tests that
cause suffering when the test substance is poisonous, corrosive or otherwise harmful
are the LD50 Test and the Draize
Eye Irritancy Test. All three of the Three Rs
have been successfully applied to testing and scientists are working hard to find
more and better ways of applying them. For instance, replacement
of animals with tissue cultures (cells kept alive in a test tube) is now used
extensively, especially in the early stages of testing when whole animals were
once used. Also, employing careful statistical analysis and substitutes for animals
(replacements) have markedly reduced
the number of animals required in testing procedures, and using earlier more humane
endpoints thereby ending a noxious testing procedure much sooner than used to
be the case is a form of refinement.