Studies in animals should be more like those in humans

doi:10.1136/bmj.39115.419236.1F

BMJ 2007;334:274 (10 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39115.419236.1F

Letters

Animal testing

Studies in animals should be more like those in humans

The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below.

The settings of animal studies are very differentfrom those of therapeutic studies in human patients.¹ They needto be more similar.

In clinical studies a human subjects committeemust approve the methods of the study, determining that it isof sufficient power to produce a meaningful result and thatthe risk:benefit ratio is acceptable. There should be animalsubject committees similarly to scrutinise drug trials in animals.The task of such committees would be to assess sample size,randomisation of treatments, blinding of observers, selectionof animal subjects, statistical methods, and elimination ofbiases that may be introduced by the pharmaceutical companythat sponsors the work.