A case is made in this article that research on animal models of human age-related cataract has contributed little\nto our understanding of this blinding disease. This surprising conclusion comes about not so much for the reason that\nhumans are different from other animals, although important aspects of human lens biochemistry are not matched by\nexperimental animals, but more so because of the very long periods of time that are required before human cataract\nbecome evident.\nInsidious processes associated with aging are required to establish the conditions necessary for human cataract,\nand laboratory animals simply do not live long enough to act as useful models. In relation to human nuclear cataract, the\nlarge sums of money spent on animal models would have been spent more productively on investigating the processes\nthat underpin human lens aging. Lessons derived from human cataract may apply more widely to other human agerelated\ndiseases.
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