Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible Medicine
 

About DLRM

News & Campaigns
- Toxicity
- Research
- Press Releases

Resources

Contact Us

Join us

Home

Scientific Toxicity Assessment

Summary of the contribution to REACH presented by Pro Anima in co-operation with the board of the Alliance for Responsible Science (AFRS)

Europeans live surrounded by over 100,000 chemicals, 98% of which have never been tested for their effects on our health or the environment. The European Commission is right in deciding that these products must be assessed.

However DLRM challenges the EC's projected use of traditional toxicology methods in such assessments, since these would rely on animal-based tests, which have been conclusively proved to be unreliable for human medical research.

Examination of recent health data statistics prove that we are inadvertently exposed, inside and outside our homes, to a full-blown chemical war which claims hundreds of thousands of innocent victims yearly in the EU. The board of AFRS, in which DLRM participates, has worked out a Science Based Toxicology programme (SBT) for reliable toxic risk assessment which is valid for humans and enables us to forecast long term effects.

The methods proposed are derived from those of modern biology (DNA,chips, 'reporter' genes etc). They are fast, allowing high throughput of screening of chemicals, can be easily robotized, and are cost-effective compared with traditional toxicology.

DLRM is campaigning for the adoption of this programme by the EC and EU. We believe it could halve the cancer mortality rate over the next five years, and would address the wide variety of side effects which have been tested by invalid methods.

3-Step Plan

DLRM has put forward a 3-step plan to eliminate the use of animals altogether, and instead, switch over to tried and trusted scientific methods based on molecular biology. These non-animal methods are also faster and far more reliable than animal tests.

This joint initiative by DLRM and Pro Anima would appear to be just what the EU needs right now, for the following reason: Ten years ago in 1991, having recognised the danger to public health of chemical pesticides, the EC took the step of planning to assess the toxic effects of these pesticides by the year 2003 (EC directive 1991/414). To-date (October, 2001), only about 10% of these pesticides have actually been tested. Realising that it will not meet the deadline of 2003, the European Parliament is likely to push for a postponement until 2008.

What this means is:

  1. The public will continue to be exposed to the unknown toxic effect of pesticide chemicals for at least another decade;
  2. EU regulatory authorities will continue to formulate public health policies on the basis of unreliable animal toxicity data;
  3. The EU will continue to ignore the much faster and far more scientific methods already available for assessing human toxic risk assessment.

What DLRM and Pro Anima intend to do:

  1. Expose this public health scandal as widely as possible (hence our press conference);
  2. Supply scientific information to all 500 of the MEP's, which will explain why animal tests do not, and cannot, yield useful information regarding humans;
  3. Pursue all other legally legitimate options which will protect public health.

For more information, contact the DLRM Office.

Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible Medicine, November 2001.

 

| About Us | News & Campaigns | Resources | Contact Us | Join Us |