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The recent severe reaction to a drug by volunteers brings into question the use of animals in testing human medicines. Initially I thought it reinforced the case for through testing of drugs on animals before being used on humans. However, it seems this drug was tested on animals, with rabbits given 500 times the dose the human volunteers received, with no ill effects. So is there merit in the argument that because animals makeup differs from humans, testing on them cannot really be justified?

A good point. Personally I have no problem with animal testing of human medication but would like to see the testing broadened to include more humans.
Would it be morally or ethically wrong to conduct medication testing on convicted murderers/sex offenders? People who are likely to be detained for "life terms" would be ideal candidates for long term medical tests.
It would go a long way to offsetting the cost of their detention & enable society in general to gain some benefit from their crimes.

of course animals differ to humans, but a lot of the mammilian metabolic pathways are the same and as such a lot of information can be determined from animal tests.
things will never be perfect but the fact that there has never been a disaster during medical trials such as this before suggests that the current model we have is the best one.
How many volunteers do you think would make themselves available if there were no animal tests? and as a consequence how few new drugs would become available
current requirements are much more strict than they used to be, if current guidelines were used simple drugs such as aspirin would not pass the criteria to become licensed

There are now suggestions that the particular drug that has caused all the problems did cause an adverse reaction in monkeys. If this is true, it would appear that the decision to test it on healthy human volunteers was mistaken at this stage. However the reports are still unsubstantiated.