The Democratic House passed HR 1669 by a vote of 414-1(2) on Wednesday, which would amend the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997 in order to minimize animal testing (3) while focusing specifically on public health.
With this legislation moving forward, the United States can now move from an experimental test that may or may not provide scientifically legitimate and reliable results. There’s finally hope for the millions who suffer from these diseases.
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By Dr. Gary Michelson and Dr. Aisha Kantar
The Democratic House passed HR 1669 by a vote of 414-1(2) on Wednesday, which would amend the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997 in order to minimize animal testing (3) while focusing specifically on public health.
With this legislation moving forward, the United States can now move from an experimental test that may or may not provide scientifically legitimate and reliable results. There’s finally hope for the millions who suffer from these diseases.
An outdated approach
Federal legislation puts tight regulations in place for drug testing, but those regulations are outdated. According to a recent study, animal test data cannot predict how a drug or vaccine will work when applied to humans.
In fact, another study suggests that some bad drugs and treatments may have been avoided because of unreliable animal tests.
Industries like pharmacy would be wise to end their reliance on these inaccurate tests and move to newer methods of testing in order to maintain standards of care.
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New methods
Modern technologies have revealed that imprinted organ models, organ-on-a-chip models, “virtual humans,” and artificial intelligence applications all offer benefits in predicting human responses to drugs more accurately and quickly.
Some great progress has been made recently with the awarding of a COVID-19 award for a lung organ chip and the directing of another award to human vaccine organ chips.
A call to action
Physicians know how easily people are overtaken by diseases. During the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we as a nation learned that a prolonged bureaucratic and inaccurate drug approval process must be revamped in order to get life-saving treatments to those who urgently need them.
In response, government and scientists brought context, urgency, and innovation to the pandemic response. We don’t want our disaster relief efforts to stop there either – we need to make sure that anyone who is sick gets a second chance.
The FDA Modernization Act will free the FDA so they can make decisions based on the best science – but only if Congress agrees!
We understand that for many individuals, medical professionals can be the only hope of survival. When the epidemic was just beginning during the SARS-CoV-2 crisis, we as a nation realized that too much red tape and bureaucracy in the drug and vaccine approval process had to be addressed.
The FDA Modernization Act will allow for rapid cures and treatments to those who need it most. The Congress and the Biden administration should pursue this with the same urgency they’re now demonstrating in fighting SARS-CoV-2.
Without the FDA Modernization Act, we might not be able to put an end to deadly diseases like Ebola and scarier ones like SARS-CoV-2.
They’ll continue ravaging communities and threatening our way of life unless we take charge of the process. One way to stop this from happening is for us to support the reform that will provide better scientific information so our government can accurately make new drugs and vaccines.
