Opinion | How Animal Testing Harms Humans

The Senate last week unanimously passed Rand Paul and Cory Booker’s bipartisan FDA Modernization Act 2.0 to end the mandate that pharmaceutical drugs be tested on animals before human trials. The bill has a good chance of either passing the House this fall or being included in a year-end package. It’s a good reminder of how onerous regulation hinders innovation and harms people.

It took nearly a century to initiate a change in the law despite massive advances in drug-discovery technology. In 1938, Congress ordered that animal testing be conducted as part of the Food and Drug Administration’s drug-approval process. While that method might have made sense with the drug-testing capabilities of the time, studies have since shown that animal testing can be a poor predictor of toxic response in human beings. The new bill would make such testing optional, allowing pharmaceutical manufacturers to choose the most effective toxicity-testing techniques.