According to a group of doctors and scientists.
Around one in 15 hospital admissions each year, more than a million patients, is due to adverse drug reactions, says the Safer Medicines Trust, based on official figures.
They say the current system is failing and animal testing of drugs is exposing patients to ‘dangerous’ treatments.
Measured dosage: Britons swallow millions of tablets on doctor's advice
The trust, which campaigns for alternative ways of testing the safety of medicines, said the drug industry is over-dependent on animal testing.
In an open letter to the Prime Minister and Health Secretary, published in The Lancet, it said animal testing has failed to protect patients.
Six young men were left in intensive care by a trial drug in 2006 which was ‘demonstrably safe in monkeys at doses nearly 500 times higher than those that nearly proved fatal to the volunteers’, the trust said.
It wants new technologies based on human biology to be used instead, after an official assessment of their fitness for purpose.
A spokesman for the Medicines and Healthcare Product Regulatory Agency said: ‘It is very important to recognise that at present there are no laboratory methods available to totally replace animal testing of medicines.’
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