International consensus report: reorienting global health strategy and moving away from animal testing
This international consensus report, developed by 284 experts from 31 countries with the participation of Doctors Against Animal Experiments, presents 101 evidence-based recommendations for addressing the global rise in chronic diseases. The authors argue that the most effective and cost-efficient health strategy lies not primarily in expensive high-tech medicine, but in evidence-based prevention through a whole-food, plant-based diet and an active, healthy lifestyle. A central focus of the report is the critical reassessment of animal experiments, which the authors argue no longer reflects the technological standards of modern medicine. Due to extremely low translational value and the inability to realistically model complex human diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and diabetes, animal experiments prove to be misleading for our understanding of health and disease. The report therefore calls for a decisive shift in biomedical research toward human-relevant, animal-free approaches, including 3D organoid models, organ-on-a-chip systems, computer-based simulations, and epidemiological and clinical studies in humans.