Time to Retire the Lab Rats?

Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy, a 2007 NRC report, calls for less reliance on animal studies and more on in vitro tests to identify chemicals with toxic effects. It also calls for better research to predict toxicity at exposures that humans might encounter. In response, the National Institute of Health Chemical Genomics Center's (NCGC) will use high-speed, automated screening robots to test suspected toxic compounds using cells and isolated molecular targets while the EPA's National Center for Computational Toxicology will compare their data to traditional animal toxicology results. Do you trust today's biotechnology enough to retire animal testing or should we continue both for a period of time?

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