RE: animal testing and cosmetics

speranza

Lush are great for bath/shower/hair stuff and they have a make-up range as well now which is also not tested on animals.

http://www.lush.co.uk/IndexB.aspx

morg_monster

Clive - I know where you are coming from. I have a very idealistic young (14) cousin who is against all animal cruelty including animal testing, hands out leaflets outside KFC etc(!). I'm impressed with her devotion to a cause at such a young age, and to be fair she isn't really militaristic about it and never tries to impose her views on anyone - she is more concerned with RSPCA-type stuff than vivisection, but she also has a chronic, deteriorating lung disease and I haven't quizzed her on how she feels about the fact that the drugs which keep her healthy and ultimately will prolong her life, have all been thoroughly tested on animals.

Having said that though, she's pretty intelligent, I'm sure she has reconciled herself to this possible anomaly in her beliefs...

Clive_Woody

morg_monster wrote: »

Clive - I know where you are coming from. I have a very idealistic young (14) cousin who is against all animal cruelty including animal testing, hands out leaflets outside KFC etc(!). I'm impressed with her devotion to a cause at such a young age, and to be fair she isn't really militaristic about it and never tries to impose her views on anyone - she is more concerned with RSPCA-type stuff than vivisection, but she also has a chronic, deteriorating lung disease and I haven't quizzed her on how she feels about the fact that the drugs which keep her healthy and ultimately will prolong her life, have all been thoroughly tested on animals.

Having said that though, she's pretty intelligent, I'm sure she has reconciled herself to this possible anomaly in her beliefs...

I am sorry to hear about your cousin, particularly as I work in a team running clinical trials to develop new treatments for diseases such as hers. Often young (and old) folk buy into the propaganda from these organisations that are opposed to genuine clinical research and can find themselves promoting messages they don't genuinely understand or have not thought through.

All the best to your cousin.

Twopints

speranza wrote: »

Lush are great for bath/shower/hair stuff and they have a make-up range as well now which is also not tested on animals.

http://www.lush.co.uk/IndexB.aspx

Lush's policy is different from Body shop in that they do not use ingredients from companies that currently test on animals - they do not have a time limit. Their stance is that this is more likely to encourage companies to stop testing and, for those that currently do not test, more likely to keep it this way.

celyn90

dmg24 wrote: »

You also need to be aware that some that do not test products on animals, may however not guarantee that the ingredients are not tested on animals! x

dmg24 is right - most of the ingredients have at some point in the past been tested on animals in some way or another. It may have been tested years and years ago, but still tested. If you google the "whatever ingredient LD50" and get a number...well.... that should give you a clue as to how toxicological data is obtained. I guess it depends on how strict your DD wants to be. cel x

sarah84

Lush are great too! And Buav has the best list of cruelty free products in my opinion. I cut out any cosmetics that have been tested on animals, and feel much better for it.
I really wish they would stop testing medicine on animals too, being as there are more reliable scientific methods of testing-unfortunatley they are more expensive too, hence why companies arent interested

LizD_2

Although the subject was cosmetic testing on animals, the Dr Hadwen Trust is a charity that works to find alternatives to testing medicines on animals:

http://www.drhadwentrust.org.uk/

Clive_Woody

sarah84 wrote: »

I really wish they would stop testing medicine on animals too, being as there are more reliable scientific methods of testing-unfortunatley they are more expensive too, hence why companies arent interested

So Sarah what are there more 'reliable scientific tests' and how much do they cost compared to the cost of animal testing?

faerie_girl

wrote:

So Sarah what are there more 'reliable scientific tests' and how much do they cost compared to the cost of animal testing?

Just some brief non-animal tests that are able to carried out:
Eytex
Produced by the National Testing Corp. in Palm Springs, California, Eytex is an in-vitro (test-tube) procedure that measures eye irritancy via a protein alteration system. A vegetable protein from the jack bean mimics the reaction of the cornea to an alien substance. This alternative is used by Avon instead of the cruel Draize eye irritancy test.
Skintex
An in-vitro method to assess skin irritancy that uses pumpkin rind to mimic the reaction of a foreign substance on human skin (both Eytex and Skintex can measure 5,000 different materials).
EpiPack
Produced by Clonetics in San Diego, California, the EpiPack uses cloned human tissue to test potentially harmful substances.
Neutral Red Bioassay
Developed at Rockefeller University and promoted by Clonetics, the Neutral Red Bioassay is cultured human cells that are used to compute the absorption of a water-soluble dye to measure relative toxicity.
Testskin
Produced by Organogenesis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Testskin uses human skin grown in a sterile plastic bag and can be used for measuring irritancy, etc. (this method is used by Avon, Amway, and Estee Lauder).
TOPKAT
Produced by Health Design, Inc. in Rochester, New York, TOPKAT is a computer software program that measures toxicity, mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, and teratonogenicity (this method is used by the U.S. Army, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration).
Ames Test
Tests for carcinogenicity by mixing a test culture with Salmonella typhimurium and adding activating enzymes. It was able to detect 156 out of 174 (90%) animal carcinogens and 90 out of 100 (88%) non-carcinogenes.
Agarose Diffusion Method
Tests for toxicity of plastic and synthetic devices used in medical devices such as heart valves, artificial joints, and intravenous lines. Human cells and the test material are placed in a flask and are separated by a thin-layer of agarose (a derivative of seaweed agar). If the material tested is an irritant, an area of killed cells appears around the substance.


These took me about 2 mins to find out about.

To me I don't care about the costs. If a product which had been tested on animals costs more than one that has used alternatives, I will get the one not tested on animals.

I am 100% for equal human rights, therefore I am 100% for animals rights.

Since researching animal rights, testing/vivisection I am shocked at what humans are capable of. Since giving up products which exploit animals I haven't had to use any medication, but when i do I will be finding out whether they have been tested on animals.

If it is a matter of life and death, why should my life be put before that of another animal?

But anyway that is another argument and this post is probally not the place to discuss such radical ethical views

Clive_Woody

faerie_girl wrote: »

Just some brief non-animal tests that are able to carried out:
Eytex
Produced by the National Testing Corp. in Palm Springs, California, Eytex is an in-vitro (test-tube) procedure that measures eye irritancy via a protein alteration system. A vegetable protein from the jack bean mimics the reaction of the cornea to an alien substance. This alternative is used by Avon instead of the cruel Draize eye irritancy test.
Skintex
An in-vitro method to assess skin irritancy that uses pumpkin rind to mimic the reaction of a foreign substance on human skin (both Eytex and Skintex can measure 5,000 different materials).
EpiPack
Produced by Clonetics in San Diego, California, the EpiPack uses cloned human tissue to test potentially harmful substances.
Neutral Red Bioassay
Developed at Rockefeller University and promoted by Clonetics, the Neutral Red Bioassay is cultured human cells that are used to compute the absorption of a water-soluble dye to measure relative toxicity.
Testskin
Produced by Organogenesis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Testskin uses human skin grown in a sterile plastic bag and can be used for measuring irritancy, etc. (this method is used by Avon, Amway, and Estee Lauder).
TOPKAT
Produced by Health Design, Inc. in Rochester, New York, TOPKAT is a computer software program that measures toxicity, mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, and teratonogenicity (this method is used by the U.S. Army, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration).
Ames Test
Tests for carcinogenicity by mixing a test culture with Salmonella typhimurium and adding activating enzymes. It was able to detect 156 out of 174 (90%) animal carcinogens and 90 out of 100 (88%) non-carcinogenes.
Agarose Diffusion Method
Tests for toxicity of plastic and synthetic devices used in medical devices such as heart valves, artificial joints, and intravenous lines. Human cells and the test material are placed in a flask and are separated by a thin-layer of agarose (a derivative of seaweed agar). If the material tested is an irritant, an area of killed cells appears around the substance.


These took me about 2 mins to find out about.

So a list of tests already used for the most part in conjunction with animal tests. No evidence to suggest they are more reliable as Sarah claimed.

I have yet to see anybody posts a convincing alternative showing a drug development process from compound screening through to presenting data for first time in man studies that would convince anybody it was safe to move testing to the clinic and into man. The usual reply is oh you can use cell culture, well yes you can and most pharma companies do, but it's no alternative to animal testing. Various radicals bang on about isolated tests, but for the most part these are already used, most people have little idea what is required to develop a new drug.