Justified by an exigency for public protection, the Draize eye test became a governmentally endorsed method to evaluate the safety of materials meant for use in or around the eyes. The test involves a standardized protocol for instilling agents onto the cornea and conjunctiva of laboratory animals.
Is the Draize test illegal?
New Delhi—In a major victory for Humane Society International/India’s campaign to end cruel and obsolete animal testing, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare has prohibited the use of Draize irritation tests using rabbits.
What is Draize test and skin sensitivity testing?
The Draize rabbit eye and skin irritancy tests have been used for 60 years to attempt to predict the human ocular and dermal irritation of such products. The Draize test has been the standard for ocular and dermal safety assessments for decades. However, several aspects of the test have been criticised.
How accurate is the Draize test?
Based on a novel prediction model we achieved an accuracy of 78% with a reproducibility of 88.9% to determine all three categories of eye irritation in one single test.
How do you do a Draize test?
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.
What is Draize eye irritancy test?
The Draize rabbit eye test is an acute toxicity test for assessing the effects of chemicals, substances and mixtures in terms of their potential to cause eye irritancy or damage to the eye. The method was originally designed to assess the effects on eye health of cosmetics.
Why is the Draize test bad?
The Draize test is used to measure irritation or corrosion caused to the eye or skin, but it is notoriously unreliable, producing highly variable results. It is also extremely unpleasant and painful, causing eye reddening, swelling, ulceration, even blindness, or skin cracking and bleeding.
Why are albino rabbits used in animal testing?
The animals that have been widely used for the detection of irritant properties of chemicals are the albino rabbit, the albino guinea pig, and the white mouse. Whenever a chemical is applied by repeated dermal application, the objective of the test is to detect both topical and systemic effects.
Who invented the Draize test?
The Draize Test was devised back in 1944 by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) toxicologist John H. Draize to evaluate the risks of normal short-term exposure to new cosmetics and other personal care products.
What is LD50 test?
LD50 tests Under the Animal Research Act 1985 an LD50 test (Lethal Dose 50 test) is defined as “the animal research procedure in which any material or substance is administered to animals for the purpose of determining the concentration or dose of the material or substance which will achieve any predetermined death …
What is similar to the Draize test but the difference is that a serious 15 patch is applied on the same site of the skin?
The Shelanski-Shelanski test [28] is similar to the Draize test but the difference is that a series of 15 patch tests is applied on the same site of the skin.
Is the Draize test still used?
Although the Draize test is still the official model for eye irritation and toxicology studies worldwide, it has suffered major criticism in recent years due to the lack of objective quantification within its grading system, its unreliability in predicting chronic toxic reactions, and marked opposition by animal …
Why do they test makeup on rabbits?
According to Fine, the most common animal “test subjects” for cosmetics include mice, rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs. The testing is conducted to determine the toxicity of a product, and to observe any skin or eye irritation.
Do rabbits have tear ducts?
As rabbits have only one tear duct — located very close to the tooth and gums — the duct can be easily blocked due to oral disease (longtooth impaction is also very common in rabbits). Epiphora may occur also due to longstanding respiratory disorders that block the nasal passages.
What is HET CAM test?
HET-CAM test (hen’s egg-chorioallantoic membrane test) is a test used to determine the irritation potential of substances and is an alternative test to the Draize Rabbit Eye Test. In the test, incubated hen’s eggs are opened carefully on day 9 and the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) is exposed.
What is eye irritancy?
The term eye irritation refers to feelings of dryness, itchiness, pain, or grittiness in the eye. Many factors can cause eye irritation, including injuries, dry eye, and pinkeye. How an irritated eye looks or feels depends on the cause of the irritation, but the main symptoms include dryness, itching, and pain.
Which animal is used for acute eye irritation test?
12.3.
The eye irritation test used includes all variations of the Draize test, and the preferred experimental animal is the albino rabbit. The test consists of placing the material to be tested directly into the conjunctival sac of one eye, with the other eye serving as the control.
Which animal is commonly used for in vivo skin irritation assay?
The most common method used to evaluate dermal irritation and/or corrosion has typically been in vivo tests using rabbits (Draize method).
What can I do instead of animal testing?
These alternatives to animal testing include sophisticated tests using human cells and tissues (also known as in vitro methods), advanced computer-modeling techniques (often referred to as in silico models), and studies with human volunteers.
Why animal testing for cosmetics should be banned?
The harm that is committed against animals should not be minimized because they are not considered to be “human.” In conclusion, animal testing should be eliminated because it violates animals’ rights, it causes pain and suffering to the experimental animals, and other means of testing product toxicity are available.
Is animal testing illegal?
Unfortunately, there’s no ban on testing cosmetics or household products on animals in the U.S., so companies that make and sell their products here can choose to conduct tests on animals.
Do they use rabbits for makeup?
What cosmetics tests are performed on animals? Although they are not required by law, several invasive tests are performed on rabbits, mice, guinea pigs and rats.
How many rabbits are killed each year?
According to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), up to 2 million rabbits are raised and killed for meat in America each year.
How are rabbits abused?
Rabbits are strapped down, and their fur is ripped from their sensitive skin. Workers repeatedly rip the fur out of this rabbit’s back. More than 160,000 rabbits are abused in U.S. laboratories every year.
Why do albino rabbits have red eyes?
The red eyes in an albino rabbit aren’t because of red pigments; remember, he doesn’t have pigment. Instead, his eyes appear red because the iris reflects light from his blood vessels instead of pigments. … When their iris reflect light from the blood vessels (pigments in the eye reflect light) their eyes appear red.
Why do laboratory animals specifically rabbits are often use in the determination of eye pharmacology?
Rabbit eyes have been widely used for ophthalmic research, as the animal is easy to handle and economical compared to other mammals, and the size of a rabbit eye is similar to that of a human eye. … Rabbit eyes can be a good model for pharmacokinetic studies of intraocular drugs.
Is LD50 necessary?
In this regard, determination of the precise LD50 would not be necessary, but the limit test can be employed. This involves the exposure of few numbers of animals to large dose (5,000 mg/kg) of the test chemical.
What does a high LD50 mean?
The LD50 may be determined for any route of administration including the dermal or oral means of contact or ingestion of chemicals. If a species has a high LD50 it means it has a high tolerance to the poison. A low LD50 means the species is highly susceptible to the poison.
How toxicity is measured?
Toxicity can be measured by the effect the substance has on an organism, a tissue or a cell. We know that individuals will respond differently to the same dose of a substance because of a number of factors including their gender, age and body weight. Therefore a population-level measure of toxicity is often used.