🐭 No animal testing is needed to get a drug approved

A new law in the United States says that pharmaceutical companies no longer need to conduct tests on animals to get their medicines approved, reports NPR.

Instead, the companies can use other methods such as cell analyses, computer models and "Human-on-a-chip" to prove that the drug is safe.

Companies are still allowed to test on animals if they want, but hopefully many of the 110 million animals used in animal testing in the US each year will not be subjected to testing in the future.

"FDA Modernization Act 2.0 will increase the pace of innovation and bring us safer and more effective drugs on the market by reducing the amount of bureaucratic regulations that are not supported by science," said Senator Rand Paul, who is one of the initiators of the law, in a press release.

The animal protection organization PETA sees the new law as a big step forward and calls it a "radical shift".

In addition to the new law, the US government has put five million dollars into an initiative to reduce the amount of animal testing by helping the pharmaceutical industry develop and use new animal-free methods for testing medicines.