Member

In that context, I note that I raised with the previous Government, but have not yet had the opportunity to raise with this one, the call for a human-specific technologies Act to support the full replacement of animals in medical research with new technologies. If we look at that in the context of clinical trials, the likelihood of a cancer drug being approved and progressing from small phase-run trials to larger clinical trials is less than 6%. Alzheimer’s disease has a clinical trial failure rate of more than 99%. We cannot rely on animal tests to indicate whether a drug is safe or effective in people; 92% of the drugs that show promise in animal tests fail to reach the clinic and benefit patients. Are the Government looking at that more broadly when they think about the whole ecosystem of developing new medicines and pharmaceutical trials? Given that I have just sprung that on the Minister, I will entirely understand if she would like to write to me about it later rather than deal with it now.