Synthetic Skin Could Replace Animal Subjects' 68
fangmcgee writes "Synthetic skins are now good enough to mimic animal skins in lab tests, according to research that will appear in the June 5 issue of the Journal of Applied Polymer Science. Bharat Bhushan, a professor at Ohio State University and Wei Tang, an engineer at China University of Mining and Technology used atomic force microscopes to observe the responses of pseudo and rat skins to a generic skin cream. The result? Even at a scale of 100 nanometers — or one-thousandth the width of a human hair — all the samples
reacted in a similar fashion."
Re:testing on stakeholders (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh, I always thought the obvious solution was to test on those most opposed to animal testing. Rather than protest, threaten, intimidate, cause destruction and generally be a major pest, they should volunteer themselves in place of the animals. After all, they care so much that they are willing to risk their lives, the skin trials would be nothing in comparison. It's a win/win situation!
The animals don't get tested on, the labs get real human skin to test on (rather than using animal skin as an approximation), and the protesters succeed in their goal, with the added benefit of aiding the rest of humanity.