[填空题] Testing Times
Researchers are working on ways to reduce the need for animal experiments, but new laws may increase the number of experiments needed.
The current situation
In an ideal world, people would not perform experiments on animals. For the people, they are expensive. For the animals, they are stressful and often painful.
That ideal world, sadly, is still some way away. People need new drugs and vaccines. They want protection from the toxicity of chemicals. The search for basic scientific answers goes on. Indeed, the European Commission is forging ahead with proposals that will increase the number of animal experiments carried out in the European Union, by requiring toxicity tests on every chemical approved for use within the union’s borders in the past 25 years.
Already, the commission has identified 140,000 chemicals that have not yet been tested. It wants 30,000 of these to be examined right away,