Talk:Draize test
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[edit] pH values
The pH values in "Rabbits are more susceptible to damage (alkaline) materials, because the pH of their aqueous humor is .82 compared to .71-.73 for man" are wrong. I think this might be 8.2 and 7.1, but a pH of less than 1.0 is that of a strong, corrosive acid. This should be either corrected from the original source or removed. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:50, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
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- I'll remove it, since in the talk page archive there is a comment making exactly the same point from two years ago. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Identifying the players
I know this is a contentious issue and most of the people who are interested in it already have their own opinions, but listing this explicitly as an animal rights issue is already giving a certain spin to it.
I'm not editing anything, I have a pro-testing bias (as you might have guessed), and I want to get some consensus before starting a firestorm.
Some thoughts:
"Antivivisectionist" description of the test vs. "Pro-testing" description of the test. Following the "pro-choice" and "pro-life" types of statements, each group's position should probably be headed explicitly by the term preferred by that group. Pro-vivisectionist sounds rather inflammatory to me.
(Continued in new section so people can reply to one or the other)Somedumbyankee (talk) 07:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Data presentation
The thing on underprediction is not stated very clearly, and including this data under a section labeled "Allegations that the evaluations are unreliable" seems misleading.
It seems like a pretty solid safety test to me, since there's only an 0.01% chance of missing something aggressively harmful and a relatively high chance of detecting any significant irritant. The test is, however, lousy at telling a strong irritant from a mild irritant. For such a tiny number of subjects (1-4 rabbits), that's pretty solid. Chances are that a cosmetic isn't going to be used if it's either, and drugs have many more hurdles yet to clear (i.e. at least 3 phases of human testing).
Current language:
"A 2004 study by the U.S. Scientific Advisory Committee on Alternative Toxicological Methods reported that, using the modern Draize skin test, the "underprediction of an irritant as a mild irritant ranged from 10.3% to 38.7%, an irritant as a non-irritant ... from 0% to 0.01%, [and] a mild irritant as a nonirritant ... from 3.7% to 5.5%." [7] (pdf)."
Proposed language (see page 25 of the source):
"A 2004 study by the U.S. Scientific Advisory Committee on Alternative Toxicological Methods analyzed the modern Draize skin test. They found that the test would:
- Misidentify a serious irritant as safe: 0-0.01%
- Misidentify a mild irritant as safe: 3.7%-5.5%
- Misidentify a serious irritant as a mild irritant: 10.3%-38.7%[7]"
If there are no objections to these changes by 21Dec07 or so, I'll make them.
I'd also like to add an "executive summary" of the data.
"In short, the test will identify around 95% of possible irritants and nearly all seriously dangerous substances, but isn't very good at determining how irritating the substance is."
This statement should be reviewed by someone who is against the test, since it's more conclusive than the raw numbers. I will not add it until I receive some sort of feedback on it.Somedumbyankee (talk) 07:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
