I wouldn't dispute that Covance have discovered a lot about medicine and curing disease, but I wonder how much of it benefits me.
A drug company boss wrote recently: "Boy, we can cure mice like nobody's business, but when it comes to humans we have a harder time."
A cancer specialist once said: "We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn't work in humans."
Another expert said: "God knows we've cured mice of all sorts of tumours, but that isn't medical research." He then stopped doing animal research to concentrate on genetic research based on humans.
A colleague, a past director of an enormous cancer lab, talked of "a superstitious belief in a grossly unscientific notion: mice are miniature men".
Humans and animals ARE different - and it seems Covance are building up a great knowledge of illness in animals but, as the experts testify, this doesn't have anything to do with human health.
Until they abandon animal studies and focus on clinical study of human patients using the priceless technology available today, their claims to be concerned with human health are unconvincing.
