UCL STS Seminar series: Grant Fisher

New approach methodologies’ (NAMs) have been proposed as potential alternatives to animals routinely used in toxicological risk assessments. They include recent developments in biomedicine (including novel forms of in vitro stem cell systems and their derivatives) alongside computational modelling and supporting systems that collectively drive expectations about fundamental methodological reform in toxicology. Reform may well be desirable considering public and practitioner concern about animal experimentation and the slow progress tackling potentially toxic substances in the environment. However, NAMs raise epistemological, ontological, and normative issues. How might practitioners validate alternative methods when the evidential base is disputed? Data from animal experiments would still play an important role in establishing the veracity of new ways to test the toxicity of industrial chemicals and drugs. Nevertheless, trust in this data has long been disputed by scientists and philosophers. What are new approach organic systems? Some scientists have proposed that stem cell lines, organoids, and their derivatives, possess similar advantages to model organisms. Perhaps stem cell lines are ‘non-classical model organisms’? The veracity of these claims and their applicability to the repurposing of biomedical innovations in regulatory toxicology can be established, in part, by engaging with the representational functions of organic systems. But the problems with NAMs are not simply epistemic and ontological. Their economic significance may impact on their promotion and assessment, raise ethical issues of their own, and could pose legal problems for existing funding policies. I aim to demonstrate the inter-related character of the problems facing NAMs in toxicology and to explore the relationships between biomedical innovation and emerging methods in toxicological risk assessments.