Pandora Pound, Jan Turner, Rebecca Ram (left to right top row) and Kathy Archibald, Gerry Kenna (bottom row)
Our vision is that scientifically valid, human-focused research will deliver safe and effective treatments for patients
Our mission is to make medicines safer by facilitating a transition to human-focused drug development and testing
Safer Medicines Trust is a patient safety charity whose mission is to change the way medicines are tested, to a system based on human biology: the only way to ensure safety for patients. Our scientists have extensive expertise in drug discovery and development. We have hosted international conferences at the Royal Society and the House of Lords, showing the benefits to drug safety and medical progress offered by a focus on human, rather than animal biology. We are a founder member of the Alliance for Human Relevant Science
Safer Medicines Campaign exists to challenge the regulations that still require animal-based safety tests when superior methods exist.
There is alarming evidence that animal tests fail to protect us:
NB: We are aware that there are many issues affecting the safety of medicines, including poorly designed clinical trials, under-reporting of adverse drug reactions in clinical trials, poor pharmacovigilance and medication errors. However, whilst we acknowledge these are each highly important in their own right, our focus is on the need for human-relevant preclinical research, in order to improve the safety of medicines before they ever reach the stage of first-in-human testing, i.e. to protect research volunteers as well as patients and consumers.
* It is very difficult to estimate the number of deaths caused by Vioxx. Dr David Graham (FDA) calculated that Vioxx caused 88,000-139,000 heart attacks in the USA alone, approximately 30-40% of which were fatal (https://www.whistleblower.org/dr-david-grahams-full-story). This means that up to 55,600 people may have died as a result of Vioxx in the USA. Worldwide, twice as many people were exposed to Vioxx as in the USA alone, meaning that as many as 111,000 people may have died as a result of Vioxx. However, the figure could be much higher.
As a patient safety charity whose raison d’etre is to reduce adverse drug reactions, Safer Medicines Trust is deeply concerned by the incidence of adverse reactions following covid-19 vaccinations. This is not what anyone wanted, following their remarkable development with such unprecedented speed – but it is certainly something that health systems should have been on high […]
‘Five For Friday’; Starting 2022 with five examples of human-relevant science using new approach methodologies (NAMs)By Rebecca Ram Many research methods which focus on human-relevant biology (NAMs) are in use worldwide. However, a co-ordinated analysis of all existing methods that could be harmonised for global regulatory approval, as well as diversion of funding to the development of new methods are both long overdue. Encouraging signs were seen in Europe towards […]
