• Question: if every human being is different (the way they react) how would u plan to test stuff like glucose tablets etc. if u dont want to test on animals?

    Asked by emz96 to Pete, Rebecca, SallyB, Sally, Sian on 20 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sian Lawson

      Sian Lawson answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      The main way that you can cope with the fact that people are different is to use a very large sample size (i.e. a lot of people) so that you can say what effect it has on average.

    • Photo: Sally Barber

      Sally Barber answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      In science we use statistical tests to say whether something works or doesn’t work. If it works 95% of the time we say that it works, even if it doesn’t work 100% of the time. Drugs must be tested on a large number of people to see whether they work or not, and they need to be tested in all sorts of different people too, people of different genders, ages and from different ethnic backgrounds.

      If we didn’t test drugs on animals first we wouldn’t know how safe it was to test them in humans. Instead we could do tests on human tissue and blood which has been extracted to see how it reacts or we might be able to use people’s bodies once they died to do tests on. However, because we would not be testing on living humans and looking at how the body reacts as a whole we still could not be certain that it would be safe to test the drugs in living humans.

    • Photo: Peter Styring

      Peter Styring answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      I am totally against any artificial nutrition. Eat a well balanced diet, with protein for muscle bulk and carbohydrates for energy. Drink lots of fluids, water or isotonic. Don’t bother with commercial isotonics as you can make them from OJ water and salt. So I wouldn’t test them on anyone.

      If it was looking at diet and its relationship to sport then you would only test on the athletes as they can feedback important info.

    • Photo: Sally Fenton

      Sally Fenton answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hmmmm thats a very good question (and a difficult one!)…i think you would have to look at what the tablets are supposed to do and test them on isolated human muscle cells and blood and see how they react! With things like glucose tablets..we already know they are not dangerous so testing them in humans would not be problem. However..if someone decided to develop something which contained a substance which would be potentially harmful..maybe isolated muscle cell would be the way forward…however..even then we would never know if it would be completely safe to use in humans!

      If this is the case there are all sorts of processes a scientist has to go through to be able to test something in humans for the first time. These are called “first in man” studies..and often you find that the drug or substance has to have been tested on animals first unfortunately to see if there are any harmful side effects.

    • Photo: Rebecca Randell

      Rebecca Randell answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      what we do in science is give people something, in your case glucose tablets, and see what happens and then we give the same person a placebo tablet (a tablet containing nothing) and we see if something different happens. If something different has happened we say it is because of the extra glucose they have ingested.

Comments