CAARE Citizens for
Alternatives to Animal Research and Experimentation
April 2018
January 30, 2018 saw another milestone in phasing out the use of animals
in drug and chemical safety testing. The National Toxicology Program (NTP),
an interagency program headquartered at the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), issued a “Strategic Roadmap”
detailing plans involving 16 federal agencies to provide more human-
relevant toxicology data while reducing the use of animals.
The Strategic Roadmap lays out an effective framework for employing new
technologies, such as high-throughput screening, tissue chips, and
computational models, that will modernize safety testing to use the latest
technologies in place of outdated animal tests.
Yet only a few days later, when the NTP put out the “final” results of
its massive ten-year, $25 million animal study to assess the safety of cell
phone radiation on rats and mice, CAARE was shocked to learn that the NTP
plans to expose and kill yet another 300 animals to continue a study that
has become notorious for its inconclusive, confusing and inapplicable
results.
PLEASE CONTACT NTP to send a polite letter calling for the immediate
termination of plans to kill 300 more animals for the study on cell phone
radiation safety.
NTP’s experiments have already sickened and killed some 3,000 animals. In a basement laboratory in Chicago, rats and mice were locked into chambers resembling microwave ovens, where they were exposed to whole body cell phone radiation for nine hours a day over two years, at levels that far exceed any current human exposure. Pregnant animals were included so that exposure could be studied for the period before birth. At the end of the experiments, all animals were killed to study their tissues and organs.
What scientists learned from this study is still being hotly debated. While some animals developed tumors, most were considered statistically insignificant. One category of tumor that may be significant showed up only in male rats.
Inconclusive animal data such as these NTP findings are frequently
disregarded when assessing human health concerns. For example, the National
Cancer Institute has compiled a detailed fact sheet that discusses
predominantly human data from a dozen, large-scale epidemiological studies
to address the risk from cell phone usage.
Clearly, NTP’s plan to use an additional 300 animals for this cell phone
study violates the goals and intents of the newly announced Strategic
Roadmap.
While the NTP has taken an important step toward reducing animal tests,
plans on paper are meaningless unless they are put into action. NTP must
start now, by immediately eliminating plans to kill any more animals for
these cruel and failed studies.
Thank you for everything you do for animals!
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