I read an article about how the pharmacologist J.W. Trevan invented the traditional LD50 (lethal dose 50%) test in 1927. It’s a really inhumane test — poisonous chemicals are fed to laboratory animals until half of them die, then that amount is recorded as the “lethal dose 50%” test. If it takes a lot of the chemical to make the animals die, it’s determined that it’s not a very poisonous substance. If it takes just a few drops, it’s determined that it is a pretty poisonous substance. So anyway, back to J.W. Trevan. Isn’t that a horrible test to be remembered for? I mean, I’m sure he thought of himself as furthering science and saving human beings from suffering from chemical side-effects, and that’s good and all, but I will always think of him as an animal abuser.

Luckily, modern toxicologists view the LD50 test as too unreliable — its results have a precision rate of 60-65%, which many toxicologists feel is not precise enough, so it’s on the way to being phased out (the Consumer Products Safety Commission, the Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency discourage the use of the LD50 test). (Unfortunately, they are instead recommending 3 other alternatives, one of which is animal-using — it’s the “Limit test,” which involves poisoning 10 animals, as far as I can tell.)

Luckily, Dr. Bjorn Ekwall developed a humane replacement for the LD50 test which has a much better precision rate — 77%! — and uses donated human tissue, rather than live animals. I hope the Consumer Products Safety Commission, the Department of Transportation, and Environmental Protection Agency start recommending it instead of the Limit test.

Categories : against animal testing, cruelty free