15 Government Agencies Plan Alternatives to Animal Testing

ICCVAM is a permanent interagency committee composed of representatives from the National Institutes of Health, the EPA, and the federal government departments responsible for agriculture, defense, energy, health, interior, labor, and transportation.

Traditionally, chemicals, consumer products, medical devices and new drugs are tested on animals to predict toxicity on humans, but with this five year plan, the 15 government agencies that make up ICCVAM outline how they will develop and validate alternative test methods.

At the symposium, the participating scientists, public officials, advocates and media were told the five year plan identifies priority areas for the research, development and validation needed to achieve regulatory acceptance of alternative test methods.

Currently, ICCVAM's four highest priorities are alternatives to animal testing for ocular, or eye, toxicity; dermal, or skin, toxicity; acute toxicity, and biologics, or treatments made from living organisms.

Monkey undergoing an experiment (Photo courtesy all-creatures.org)

Other priority areas include alternatives for testing for immunotoxicity, endocrine disruption, reproductive and developmental toxicity, chronic toxicity, and carcinogenicity, or toxic causes of cancer.

Another priority is testing for fever-inducing agents known as pyrogens. The absence of pyrogens in injectable drugs is an indispensable safety control because contaminants causing fever pose a life-threatening risk to patients, resulting in the worst case in death by shock.

It's a mouthful to say when he introduces himself, but veterinarian William Stokes is director of the National Toxicology Program Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

In that capacty, Stokes administers ICCVAM, the committee that validates alternative methods to testing on animals, and he proud of the fact that the committee has evaluated more than 185 test methods since it began in 1997.

Alternative test methods are those that either reduce the number of animals used in testing, or refine procedures so animals experience less pain and distress, or replace animals with non-animal systems.

"By incorporating recent advances in science and technology, new alternative test methods can be developed that will benefit animal welfare by reducing, refining, and replacing animal use, and that will benefit public health by ensuring continued or improved protection of human and animal health and the environment," Stokes said today.

Stokes said ICCVAM will emphasize the use of new technologies to develop predictive systems that would be less reliant or not at all reliant on animals.

High throughput screening techniques can screen large numbers of potentially hazardous chemicals at one time is among the technologies already supported by the National Research Council and the National Toxicology Program.

Stokes, who is also an assistant surgeon general in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, explained that ICCVAM itself does not conduct research but evaluates alternatives to animal testing that originate in government and industry labs and makes recommendations about their usefulness to federal regulatory agencies.

Stokes said a high priority for ICCVAM will be to focus on evaluating alternatives to test methods that use a large number of animals or that can involve significant pain and stress, including safety tests for eye injuries, skin damage, acute poisoning, and tests for biologics such as vaccines. Additional priorities include safety tests to determine if products and chemicals may cause other adverse health effects such as cancer, birth defects, infertility and allergic responses.

The five-year plan unveiled in Bethesda today was developed over 12 months with multiple opportunities for input, including a public Town Meeting held in June 2006.

"We appreciate all of the public input we’ve received to develop this plan and look forward to working closely with our government and non-government stakeholders to promote good science and validation studies that will support the regulatory use of alternative methods," Stokes said.

To view the ICCVAM five year plan is online, click here. For more details, and to view public comments, click here.

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