One in fifteen British patients in hospitals there for drug reactions

Press Watch, UK - The Safer Medicines Trust has found that bad reactions to drugs have reached epidemic levels. Around one in 15 hospital admissions each year, more than a million patients, are due to adverse drug reactions, according to official figures. The trust, which campaigns for alternative ways of testing the safety of medicines, said the current system is failing and animal testing of drugs is exposing patients to 'dangerous' treatments. A spokesman for the Medicines and Healthcare Product Regulatory Agency said: 'It is very important to recognise that at present there are no laboratory methods available to totally replace animal testing of medicines.'