3 ms·
Safety of people matters a lot, but I keep thinking about the following observation - in drug trials we routinely see many drugs that work in vitro, work in mic
by PeterisP 5y ago
Safety of people matters a lot, but I keep thinking about the following observation - in drug trials we routinely see many drugs that work in vitro, work in mice but don't work in humans, and many drugs that seem safe for mice but have bad side-effects for humans. Shouldn't this cut both ways symmetrically? Does that imply that we have a bunch of drugs developed for as-yet-uncured diseases that work in vitro and would actually work for humans but just won't work on mice, so we never tried them on humans and will never know because it's unethical to try?
- yakshaving_jgt 5y agoDo you work in this field? I don't, but even as a layman I'm quite certain that the research process is more involved than you appear to be suggesting. As far as I'm aware, trials in animal models don't stop at mice — I've heard of researchers testing for safety and efficacy on mice, and then progressing to guinea pigs and subsequently macaques. Some animal anatomies behave more similarly to humans when confronted with the same disease than others. I know what I'm an expert in and it certainly isn't this. I trust actual scientists to know what they're doing.