17 June 2009

Human Lungs are Better for Testing than Rat Lungs

A good step in getting rid of animal testing recently, according to The New Scientist. Kelly BéruBé at the University of Cardiff has developed a way to scaffold human lung cells in 3d. This will allow for more accurate data over 2d cultures because it accounts for air flow and so forth, but also it will be more accurate over non-human animal models because it is using human cell lines. Remember, if we tested chocolate on dogs it'd be banned and if we tested strychnine on hamsters it would be counted as nontoxic.

Eventually the technique could be applied to chips, and theoretically be used as a substritute for the canary in the coal mine. Perhaps literally.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227126.800-lungonachip-could-replace-countless-lab-rats.html

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