Fact of the day
- 330 million people worldwide suffer from asthma.
- About 200,000 people world-wide have benefited from a brain implant for Parkinson's disease.
- About 2.5 billion animals are eaten per year in the UK, nearly 1,000 times the number used in research.
- About 85% of animal research uses mice and rats
- Animal studies were crucial for identifying HIV, and developing therapies for HIV/AIDS.
- Animal use is carefully regulated in most countries
- A third of the world's population is infected with TB.
- Discovery of chemical nerve transmitters in frogs in the 1930s led to the first drugs for asthma.
- Dogs, cats and primates are used in less than 1% of research
- Guinea pigs have contributed to 19 Nobel Prizes for medicine or physiology.
- Herceptin was developed from a mouse antibody
- Humans share more than 98% of their genes with mice
- In 1897 Ronald Ross discovered how mosquitoes spread malaria using sparrows
- Insulin was discovered in dogs
- Many cell lines come from animals
- Many human medicines are also used to treat animals
- Many studies of embryonic development use zebrafish, which have transparent embryos.
- More than 5 million people would have been paralyzed in the last 20 years if they hadn't received polio vaccine.
- Research on ferrets has led to a bird-flu vaccine and anti-emetics for cancer patients.
- Stem cells from the nose can repair spinal cord damage in rats.
- Studies on guinea pigs led to the discovery of: vitamin C, the tuberculosis bacterium and adrenaline
- The effects of penicillin were proven in mice in 1940. By 1941 penicillin was saving dying soliders.
- The first ACE inhibitor to treat high blood pressure came from snake venom.
- The nine-banded armadillo is used in leprosy research.
- The polio vaccine reached more than 400 million children in 2007.
- There are more than 500 GM mouse models of human diseases
- Treatments for the commonest form of childhood leukaemia mean that 8 in 10 now survive.
- We each get a lifetime of medical benefits from the use of one rat and three mice in research.
