Home office statistics on animal experiments show a two per cent increase on last year to a massive 2.8 million in 2003. This translates to 11,200 procedures started every working day. This follows a four per cent increase last year. Animal experiments are at their highest level since 1994. By any standard, this is suffering on a massive scale. The true number of animals used by the vivisection industry is much higher. A great many experiments have nothing to do with the search for cures for life-threatening diseases, despite the government’s claims to the contrary.
The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) believes that it is morally indefensible deliberately to inflict pain and suffering on sentient animals when not for their benefit – just as it is wrong to experiment on people non-consensually. There can be no question that laboratory animals suffer, indeed the 1986 Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act only requires experiments on animals to be licensed if they have the potential to cause “pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm”.
As the vast majority of animal experiments are shrouded in secrecy in this country, the only opportunity the general public gets to see the disturbing truth, is when organisations such as the BUAV conduct undercover investigations in research facilities. In 2002, our investigation at Cambridge University showed how monkeys involved in Parkinson’s Disease research had the top of their skull sawn off and part of their brain sucked out or injected with toxins in a crude attempt to mimic the symptoms of the human disease. Many were deprived of water for long periods and forced to carry out tasks they clearly found distressing. The BUAV believes that this can never be an acceptable way to treat any animal.
Animal models Like everyone else, the BUAV wants to see safe products and cures for human diseases, but attempting to use animals as surrogates for humans is fraught with very significant extrapolation difficulties, rendering such research, at best, of highly dubious value.
One of the ways animals are used in medical research is as models of human diseases, such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s or diabetes. Most of these diseases do not occur naturally in animals, so the gross symptoms of any given disease (but never the human disease itself) have to be artificially induced in the animal, or “disease genes” inserted into its genome. However, artificially creating symptoms in this way fails to address the underlying causes and natural progression of the human disease or genetic interactions.
One example of animal experiments severely misleading researchers and leading to delays in progress, is multiple sclerosis (MS). MS is an inflammatory and progressive auto-immune disease of the human brain. It slowly incapacitates the patient over a period of years. Despite extensive animal research, where more animals have been given the MS-like condition “experimental allergic encephalitis” than there have been cases of human MS, the cause remains unknown. There is no effective treatment. The standard animal model of MS, produced by injecting cocktails of brain tissues and other chemicals, has an entirely different course and cause than human MS, and a catalogue of profoundly significant differences in manifestation and incidence of relapse. Some researchers now say that progress in medical research has actually been held up by animal research [New Scientist (2004) 2436, p.17].
Governmental inaction Labour has been a huge disappointment. Even where a ban on animal testing is a natural progression of an existing policy, the opportunity to deliver is resisted. For example, arguments for ending the testing of household products, such as carpet shampoo, on animals are as compelling as those accepted by the government in 1998 when it ceased licensing animal experiments for cosmetics and toiletries. Yet years later we are still waiting for action.
Indeed, the government is now little more than a propagandist for animal researchers. It is desperately seeking to resist calls for meaningful transparency – the one step which could lead to a more intelligent and informed debate on animal experiments.
it is true that the government has recently announced a National Centre for Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Experiments as an extension to an existing unit run by the heavily pro-vivisection Medical Research Council. However, every sign points to it concentrating on reduction and refinement and not the one area of the ‘3Rs’, replacement, that will actually bring animal experiments to an end. Moreover, government funding will be a paltry £660,000 a year. This is minuscule when set against the billions of pounds generated by the industry each year. It is the equivalent of the budget of a small humane research charity. This is not the level of commitment required to make a real difference.
The BUAV is convinced that constructing a strategy for abolition in association with forward-thinking scientists advancing modern, cutting-edge non-animal research techniques as part of an active and open consultation with animal protection organisations and the public, is entirely achievable. What is currently missing, is the political vision to understand that such a strategy would bring benefits not just for animals, but for human health and society as a whole.
