Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) has developed an in-house animal serum free diabetes test kit which measures the insulin level, which is being marketed by Linco Research. PCRM started to initiate the development of the test kit during the year 2002 amid various criticisms that it is not possible to develop the test kit without using animal serum.
The new alternative test kit uses synthetic medium and the cost and accuracy is not found to vary from the conventional animal serum test kits. The cruelty-free kit is expected to sell particularly well in Europe, where laboratories are concerned about bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) being transmitted in animal serum and the announcement of the new test comes just weeks after European Union officials and industry groups issued a joint declaration to reduce the use of animals in laboratories.Mrs. Even, PCRM Research Analyst said, "Our success shows that a little ingenuity can do a lot to reduce the cruelty involved in medical testing and if scientists put more effort into developing alternatives to the use of animals in medical research and testing, we could alleviate animal suffering and practice more effective medicine."
Source: Eurekalert.
