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Toxicology is a scientific discipline, overlapping with biology, chemistry, pharmacology, and medicine, that involves the study of the adverse effects of chemical substances on living organisms and the practice of diagnosing and treating exposures to toxins and toxicants. The relationship between dose and its effects on the exposed organism is of high significance in toxicology. Factors that influence chemical toxicity include the dosage, duration of exposure, route of exposure, species, age, sex, and environment. Toxicologists are experts on poisons and poisoning. There is a movement for evidence-based toxicology as part of the larger movement towards evidence-based practices. Toxicology is currently contributing to the field of cancer research, since some toxins can be used as drugs for killing tumor cells. One prime example of this is ribosome-inactivating proteins, tested in the treatment of leukemia.
Design by contract (DbC), also known as contract programming, programming by contract and design-by-contract programming, is an approach for designing software.
Animal testing, also known as animal experimentation, animal research, and in vivo testing, is the use of non-human animals, such as model organisms, in experiments that seek to control the variables that affect the behavior or biological system under study. This approach can be contrasted with field studies in which animals are observed in their natural environments or habitats. Experimental research with animals is usually conducted in universities, medical schools, pharmaceutical companies, defense establishments, and commercial facilities that provide animal-testing services to the industry. The focus of animal testing varies on a continuum from pure research, focusing on developing fundamental knowledge of an organism, to applied research, which may focus on answering some questions of great practical importance, such as finding a cure for a disease. Examples of applied research include testing disease treatments, breeding, defense research, and toxicology, including cosmetics testing. In education, animal testing is sometimes a component of biology or psychology courses.
The Draize test is an acute toxicity test devised in 1944 by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) toxicologists John H. Draize and Jacob M. Spines. Initially used for testing cosmetics, the procedure involves applying 0.5 mL or 0.5 g of a test substance to the eye or skin of a restrained, conscious animal, and then leaving it for set amount of time before rinsing it out and recording its effects. The animals are observed for up to 14 days for signs of erythema and edema in the skin test, and redness, swelling, discharge, ulceration, hemorrhaging, cloudiness, or blindness in the tested eye. The test subject is commonly an albino rabbit, though other species are used too, including dogs. The animals are euthanized after testing if the test renders irreversible damage to the eye or skin. Animals may be re-used for testing purposes if the product tested causes no permanent damage. Animals are typically reused after a "wash out" period during which all traces of the tested product are allowed to disperse from the test site.
In the animal rights movement, cruelty-free is a label for products or activities that do not harm or kill animals anywhere in the world. Products tested on animals or made from animals are not considered cruelty-free, since these tests are often painful and cause the suffering and death of millions of animals every year.
In toxicology, the lethal dose (LD) is an indication of the lethal toxicity of a given substance or type of radiation. Because resistance varies from one individual to another, the "lethal dose" represents a dose at which a given percentage of subjects will die. The lethal concentration is a lethal dose measurement used for gases or particulates. The LD may be based on the standard person concept, a theoretical individual that has perfectly "normal" characteristics, and thus not apply to all sub-populations.
The Johns Hopkins University Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) has worked with scientists, since 1981, to find new methods to replace the use of laboratory animals in experiments, reduce the number of animals tested, and refine necessary tests to eliminate pain and distress. CAAT is an academic, science-based center affiliated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Bibliography on Alternatives to the Use of Live Vertebrates in Biomedical Research and Testing, or Altbib, is a bibliography available online to assist in identifying methods and procedures helpful in supporting the development, testing, application, and validation of alternatives to the use of vertebrates in biomedical research and toxicology testing. The bibliography is produced from MEDLARS database searches analyzed by experts from the Toxicology and Environmental Health Information Program (TEHIP) of the Specialized Information Services Division (SIS) of the National Library of Medicine.
In software engineering, dependency injection is a programming technique in which an object or function receives other objects or functions that it requires, as opposed to creating them internally. Dependency injection aims to separate the concerns of constructing objects and using them, leading to loosely coupled programs. The pattern ensures that an object or function that wants to use a given service should not have to know how to construct those services. Instead, the receiving 'client' is provided with its dependencies by external code, which it is not aware of. Dependency injection makes implicit dependencies explicit and helps solve the following problems:
The National Toxicology Program (NTP) is an inter-agency program run by the United States Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate, evaluate, and report on toxicology within public agencies.
Application lifecycle management (ALM) is the product lifecycle management of computer programs. It encompasses requirements management, software architecture, computer programming, software testing, software maintenance, change management, continuous integration, project management, and release management.
Alternatives to animal testing are the development and implementation of test methods that avoid the use of live animals. There is widespread agreement that a reduction in the number of animals used and the refinement of testing to reduce suffering should be important goals for the industries involved. Two major alternatives to in vivo animal testing are in vitro cell culture techniques and in silico computer simulation; however, some claim they are not true alternatives because simulations use data from prior animal experiments and cell cultures often require animal derived products, such as serum or cells. Others say that they cannot replace animals completely as they are unlikely to ever provide enough information about the complex interactions of living systems.
Michael Balls is a British zoologist and professor emeritus of medical cell biology at the University of Nottingham. He is best known for his work on laboratory animal welfare and alternatives to animal testing.
Cosmetic testing on animals is a type of animal testing used to test the safety and hypoallergenic properties of cosmetic products for use by humans.
Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments (FRAME) is a charity based in Nottingham, UK. FRAME funds and promotes alternatives to animal testing.
Rise for Animals is a national, registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit animal rights organization which aims to end nonhuman animal experimentation. It has been described as "one of the oldest and wealthiest anti-vivisection organizations in the United States".
The Three Rs (3Rs) are guiding principles for more ethical use of animals in product testing and scientific research. They were first described by W. M. S. Russell and R. L. Burch in 1959. The 3Rs are:
- Replacement:methods which avoid the use of animals in research
- Reduction: use of methods that enable researchers to minimise the number of animals necessary to obtain reliable and useful information.
- Refinement: use of methods that alleviate or minimize potential pain, suffering, distress, or lasting harm and improve welfare for the animals used.
Perforce Software, Inc. is an American developer of software used for developing and running applications, including version control software, web-based repository management, developer collaboration, application lifecycle management, web application servers, debugging tools, platform automation, and agile planning software.
Directive 2010/63/EU is the European Union (EU) legislation "on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes" and is one of the most stringent ethical and welfare standards worldwide.
The Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods (CCAAM) and its subsidiary, the Canadian Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (CaCVAM), is a research centre founded in 2017 and based at the University of Windsor, in Canada. Its goal is “to develop, validate, and promote laboratory methods and techniques that don’t use animal test subjects”. It is the first centre in Canada dedicated to non-animal testing and the promotion of human-relevant alternatives.
References
- ↑ DB-ALM Homepage (Archived 2013-08-26 at the Wayback Machine )
- ↑ JRC
- ↑ EURL ECVAM
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