Humane Society International/India has learnt that the Indian Council of Medical Research plans to build a massive new 100-acre animal breeding facility in Hyderabad to supply tens of thousands of monkeys, beagle dogs and genetically engineered mice each year for laboratory testing.  

The facility is said to be an investment in India’s medical research and drug development infrastructure -- but it’s really an investment in the past, not the future. 

Statistics published by the US Food and Drug Administration and drug companies themselves reveal that animal test data translate to real-world human outcomes 0% - 8% of the time. That means that the vast majority of new drugs that appear safe and effective in dogs, rats or monkeys turn out to be unsafe and/or ineffective in people. 

Each year this scenario wastes billions of scarce health care resources, millions of animal lives, and fails to effectively address pressing human health needs.  

In the west, scientists and research funding agencies are increasingly recognizing the limitations of animal testing and research, and shifting their funding priorities toward modern, human-relevant approaches. For example, the United States and European Union are investing more than $100 million each year to develop sophisticated tools like ‘human on a chip’, robotic high-throughput In vitro testing platform, next generation computer modeling, etc.

 It’s time for India to reach beyond animal testing. Please join us in calling on the Indian Council of Medical Research to direct its infrastructure investment toward new technologies that are more appropriate for understanding human disease, and thereby bring India to the global forefront of medical research.