L7 - Treatments and Drug Development

• Preventative measures to stop diseases:

  • good hygiene
  • good sanitation
  • improved diet
  • vaccines
• Drugs have to be tested before given to humans. New drugs, including medicinal drugs, may cause side effects that do not show up until lots of people use them.
• Pre-clinical trials:

  1. Drugs are tested on human tissue grown in the lab
  2. Drugs are then tested on animals
  3. Drugs are then tested on healthy volunteers

  Clinical trials:

  4. Drugs are then tested on people with the disease
• Placebo

  A tablet that contains no drug and has no effect. Acts as a control/offers a comparison with the real drug.
• Blind trial


  When the person testing the drug doesn’t know whether they are taking the drug or a placebo
• Double blind trial


  When the person testing the drug doesn’t know whether they’re taking the drug or the placebo and neither do the researchers
• Reasons against animal testing:

  • Laboratory animals are so different from human beings that they do not react to drugs in the same way as humans
  • Humans do not have the right to subject animals to any form of experimentation
• Reasons to justify animal testing:

  • Humans should never have their lives threatened by experimental procedures
  • The human body is very complex and drugs tested on human tissues grown in a lab may not react in the same way once in the body
  • Computer simulations are not accurate enough to model all of the biological processes that take place in living organisms