Marin Voice: Animal testing slows medical progress. It wastes money. It’s wrong

I am living with ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often called Lou Gehrig’s disease. The average survival time after diagnosis is two to five years. I’m in year two.

When you have a disease like ALS, you learn how slowly medical research moves, and how often it fails the people it is supposed to save. You also learn how precious time is.

For decades, the dominant pathway for developing new drugs has relied on animal testing. Most of us grew up believing this was unavoidable...