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A Mary T. Hoffman Commentary from All-Creatures.org

 

"Joyful Curmudgeon" An oxymoron?
No! I see all the beauty of God's creation and I'm joyful.  At the same time, I see all the suffering and corruption going on in the world, and feel called to help expose and end it so that we may have true peace and compassion.

 


Spinal Cord Injuries – 18 April 2008
By Mary T. Hoffman

Two days ago we wrote a letter to the Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about stopping tests on animals and mentioned how animal test results often are not applicable to human conditions. According to FDA data, more than 90 percent of drugs that proved successful in animal tests are not approved for wider use after clinical trials in humans.

One research area where this is very obvious is that of spinal cord injury experiments. In the April issue of the peer-reviewed journal Reviews in the Neurosciences, Aysha Akhtar, M.D., a neurologist, wrote: “Despite decades of animal experiments, there is still no effective treatment to reverse spinal cord injuries in humans. Dozens of agents have been found to improve spinal cord injury in animals, but none of these turned out to be helpful in humans.”

Besides being archaic and inhumane, animal experiments delay the help needed by the thousands of humans who suffer with spinal cord injuries. It is encouraging that researchers at the University of Miami are collaborating on the Human Spinal Cord Injury Model Project which uses imaging technique, post mortem analysis, and nerve conduction methods to understand human spinal cords. Computer modeling, in vitro research, and the study of human cadavers are other directions to pursue.

For more information about animal testing, visit:
http://www.all-creatures.org/anex/index.html 

For health articles, visit:
http://www.all-creatures.org/health.html

Go on to: Bloodroot – 19 April 2008
Return to: Ask the FDA to Stop Animal Testing – 17 April 2008
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