Faunalytics
September 2018
Every test that’s done on a computer means one less animal caged and experimented on, and that’s something that every animal advocate should celebrate.
Intro
Animal advocates everywhere know that the fight against animal
experimentation has long hinged on a tradeoff between ethics and efficacy.
For a long time, advocates have waited for science to “catch up” to social
consciousness; there has always been a tension between society’s reactions
of horror at animal experiments, and scientists wringing their hands and
explaining that these tests must happen because there is no other option.
This study was conducted to determine the possibility of replacing animal
testing with technology and statistical models. The method in question is
called RASAR, standing for “read-across structure activity relationships.” A
library of known chemicals and their properties was created and made to be
machine-readable. RASAR then takes the subject chemical and compares it to
the library, giving us an idea of the subject’s chemical’s properties,
including toxicity to humans, damage to water or air quality, volatility and
flammability, carcinogenicity, and danger to eyes, skin, or respiratory
organs. According to the authors, this process of RASAR testing was able to
correctly predict these properties 80% of the time, and reproduce the
results accurately. The scientists note that “’Simple’ RASARs obtain
cross-validated sensitivities above 80% with specificities of 50%–70%” which
they say “is on par with the reproducibility of the respective animal
tests.”
Read more at Machine Learning Could Make Animal Tests Obsolete
Return to Alternatives to Animal Testing, Experimentation and Dissection