Derek Lowe: “The anti [animal] testing people seem to have visions of drug company employees cackling at the thought of getting to use more animals, when the truth is that we’d dump them in a minute if we could. But here’s the hard part: we can’t. Not for now, and not for some time to come. We don’t know enough biology to do it. As it stands, if you were able to model every relevant system in a rat, well enough to use your model for predictive screening, you’d have basically built a rat yourself. We get surprised all the time when our compounds go into animals, and every time it happens, it shows how little we really know.”

Even in left-wing Berkeley, people can’t imagine how huge an issue animal testing is in England. I’ve met scientists who have had serious death threats because of their involvement in Alzheimer’s research, with animals involved in the testing. Britain has the strictest regulations on the planet in this regard, but that hasn’t stilled the sometimes-violent protests. That’s part of what makes the creation of Pro-Test by teenager Laurie Pycroft so remarkable and courageous.