Jessamy Korotoga, anti-vivisection campaign manager, Animal Aid, writes:

The news that Solanezumab, a drug developed to treat Alzheimer’s, has failed in the final stage of a clinical trial is tragic for people living with Alzheimer’s, their loved ones and wider society.

It is also another example of the failure of animal research to provide cures for human diseases.

To be of value, a research method must produce reliably predictive results. When Solanezumab was tested on genetically modified mice, it ‘attenuated or reversed memory deficits’, but it appears the same result was not ­sufficiently evident in humans.

Research on GM mice, which is undertaken on the false assumption that genes function similarly across different species, cannot be ­reliably ­predictive of what happens in humans.

Further examples of GM mouse research ‘successes’ that failed in clinical trials include drugs for cancer, chronic heart failure, breast cancer, emphysema and asthma.

Animal Aid is calling for an end to the use of unreliable ­animal ‘models’ and for humane, non-animal research instead. This move should not only bring more robust science.