Washington -- PETA has submitted comments to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asking it to turn down a petition from the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA) that calls for the regulation of nanosilver. Although nanosilver has been available over the counter for years to treat general infections, the petition urges the EPA to treat the substance as a new pesticide--a move that would require deadly and unreliable tests to be conducted on thousands of animals. In its comments, PETA points out that, according to news reports, pharmaceutical giant Merck has given more than $1.75 million to various signatories to the petition. If nanosilver were to be regulated as a pesticide, Merck's prescription antibiotics would have a competitive advantage.
According to these reports, some of the signatories to the ICTA petition that received money from Merck include ICTA itself ($247,500), the Center for Food Safety ($1,305,000), the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy ($490,000), the Consumers Union of the United States ($90,000), Greenpeace ($80,000), and Friends of the Earth ($45,000).
A former Food and Drug Administration commissioner admitted that 92 percent of the drugs that pass animal tests fail clinical trials in humans. To prevent similar failures in the emerging field of nanotechnology as well as the deaths of countless animals, PETA is calling on the EPA to use human-relevant, in vitro, nanotechnology-specific methods to test nanosilver instead of cumbersome, antiquated, animal-based methods.
"The interest in regulating nanosilver after all these years comes from a number of groups that have accepted funds from Merck," says PETA Director of Regulatory Testing Jessica Sandler. "We're calling on the EPA to toss this petition into the paper shredder and not allow it to cause the agonizing deaths of thousands of animals."PETA
