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The brain is an immensely complicated, essential organ. Understanding its workings is crucial to curing a wide-range of debilitating diseases, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Yet, despite decades of highly invasive animal experiments, no significant progress has been made to help human patients.

A new joint research study from Johns Hopkins University and the science safety company, Underwriters Laboratories (UL), shows that computers can predict the safety of chemicals better than animal testing, and at much lower cost. The software program called REACHAcross™ uses big data and Artificial Intelligence to analyze tens of thousands of chemicals to evaluate how they might react in the human body.

Since October 2017, CAARE has been exposing sickening experiments on cats and kittens at the State University of New York College of Optometry (SUNY Optometry). In these horrifying experiments, cats are anesthetized and paralyzed while their skulls are surgically removed and electrodes embedded in their brains so scientists can “map” the response of visual neurons.

May 18, 2018

In 2015 CAARE reported on a new collaboration between biotech startup Emulate Inc. and Janssen pharmaceuticals. Their partnership has now produced a milestone when Emulate’s human blood vessel-chip predicted toxicity of an autoimmune drug previously undetected in experiments using animals.

In recent months we’ve seen dramatic new developments towards replacing animals in drug testing. New innovations have resulted in methods to assess cardiotoxicity, an adverse effect that impacts the heart.

It’s a tragic fact that animal welfare regulations guiding the use of animals in laboratories are minimal, resulting in rampant violations of the Animal Welfare Act and terrible suffering for millions of animals.

Did you know that federally funded animal laboratories operate under the concept of “enforced self-regulation?” According to the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare: “Once an institution has prepared an Animal Welfare Assurance and the Assurance has been approved by OLAW, the institution is in a position to regulate itself.”

As we close out another year, we can reflect on some very amazing progress in science and medicine without animals. I hope you had a chance to read CAARE’s recent article about using brain organoids to study cancer, which like so many other breakthroughs, is happening as doctors and scientists confront the failings of animal-based research.

December 20, 2017

In his lab at Weill Cornel Medicine in New York City, Dr. Howard Fine and his team are using brain organoids to study glioblastoma, the deadliest form of brain cancer.

November 27, 2017

CAARE has learned that the University of Missouri (MU) has permanently ended egregious experiments on young beagles that inflicted wounds and chemical burns to their eyes. After the experiments, the dogs were needlessly killed.