World Day for Animals in Laboratories
National March & Rally - Saturday April 16th, 2011
Meet 12noon at Whitworth Park, Oxford Rd, Manchester M15 6ER
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Background: Articles of interest and news items relating to the march and the issues surrounding animal experimentation.
Animal research – a very peculiar practice
Specialist doctor Adrian Stallwood speaks out against medical charities that support animal research
As an emergency doctor, I remember smiling at a medical textbook description of the idealised Casualty department. The fantasy regime offered plenty of time for diligent study – periods punctuated by exciting flurries of life-saving heroics, with maximum resource deployment and crowd-pleasing skills.
Of course, it’s not like that. The emergency team does occasionally charge about as if possessed – but, like all doctors, we also treat a huge volume of chronic disease, with the big guns like heart disease and cancer still scything down huge swathes of the Western population.
Whatever the medical problem, our prime motive is always to help people. Therefore, it would seem logical that we would welcome any research programme that seeks to provide remedies for both acute and chronic conditions. So it may at first seem like a contradiction that I welcome unequivocally Animal Aid’s new initiative to challenge leading medical research charities, such as Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation and Parkinson’s UK – well regarded bastions of the charity fun run and the feel-good factor. I share Animal Aid’s view that these and others are subjecting animals to pointless suffering, squandering valuable resources, and engaging in a worrying secrecy about the animal research they either conduct or fund.
X-head – The false mantra
That animals suffer in such research is beyond question. The clinical
reports detail a massive catalogue of misery. Removing parts of the
brains of marmosets and depriving them of food and water to ’research‘
Parkinson’s disease; millions of mice ’given‘ cancer by poison, irradiation,
injection with tumours or genetic tinkering; dogs with their coronary
arteries tied off to ’simulate‘ heart attacks by attempting to mimic
the fat-laden arteries from which humans suffer and animals naturally
do not.
Advocates for animal testing claim that it’s a trade-off: we need some animals to suffer in gruesome ways so we can find a cure for this or that serious disease in humans. But however appealing this mantra may be to the general public, it is completely untrue. The experiments are almost always futile and tell us nothing we did not know already or could not have discovered by other means. Neither should we think it strange when Animal Aid declares that animals are poor surrogates for people. It is obvious that there are significant, intractable inter-species differences. Even more worryingly, there is a wealth of evidence that animal experiments are at best delaying medical progress, and at worst making medical practice positively dangerous.
X-head – The Vioxx and other fiascos
Take the Vioxx fiasco. Extensive tests on mice, rats, rabbits and
dogs indicated that the painkiller protected the heart. Yet it went
on to cause between 88,000 and 160,000 heart attacks and strokes,
making it the subject of 27,000 lawsuits in the US alone. Or consider
the TGN 1412 catastrophe. Six healthy human volunteers were almost
killed by a drug that had previously been given in massively higher
doses to monkeys, who had experienced no serious side effects.
In all, a staggering 92% of new drugs successful in animal studies go on to fail in human clinical trials.
It is entirely false to claim that these experiments have been responsible for benchmark medical advances. The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection points out that after decades of research using the ’monkey model’ of Parkinson’s disease, there is still neither a cure nor any treatment that halts the progress of the disease – or even a drug which maintains long-term efficacy.
Neither have decades of animal research helped eradicate modern-day killers such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. The evidence is clear, for example, that recent decreases in cancer mortality are largely due to screening and behavioural changes. A new breed of ’wonder drugs‘, developed and deployed at enormous cost, has failed to deliver. And soaring rates of obesity and the related type II diabetes now threaten to reverse the steady fall in heart disease mortality since the 1960s. Between 2000 and 2004, there was virtually no fall in death rates in the 35 to 44 age range.
X-head- Tradition and inertia
So why does animal research continue? Perhaps the most powerful obstacles
are tradition and inertia, with any attempt to alter entrenched practices
fiercely resisted. The ivory towers of biomedical academia are partially
maintained by grants, which are easier to obtain for animal research.
Vivisection is a major money-spinner, much beloved by pharmaceutical
companies for its ability to ’prove‘ whatever they want to claim.
And in hopelessly misguided fashion, regulators slavishly mandate
drug tests on animals despite their dreadful record in protecting
patients.
Stopping animal experiments will not mean an end to scientific progress. There are now many cheaper, quicker, and more reliable non-animal techniques on offer. Ultimately, human clinical trials are the only way of properly evaluating a treatment’s safety and effectiveness. But prior to this, an array of techniques such as microdosing, non-invasive scanning, high-powered computer modelling and human cell and tissue assays can predict the human outcomes more accurately than crude experiments on rats, mice or monkeys. And the age-old mainstays of discovery – observation, epidemiology and autopsy – are as vital as ever.
X-head – Growing scepticism
There is now increasing scepticism about the whole premise of animal
testing within the medical profession. The Safer Medicines Trust is
an independent group of scientists and doctors who are once again
asking for a systematic comparison of animal testing with today’s
advanced human biology methods. Their stance is supported by 83% of
GPs - serious professionals with their patients’ interests at heart.
Their open attitude to debate is in stark contrast to the secrecy
of the medical research charities, many of whom refuse to give clear
answers even to basic questions about their animal research policies
- how many animals are used, what they are used for and so on. Even
if we ignore the cruelty issue, research for research’s sake is not
only pointless but a betrayal of a public hungry for real, true answers
instead of endless false dawns. Big Pharma and its cohorts in academia
stand like colossi over the land of modern medicine. Depressingly,
their apologists in government are in thrall to them, with a resultant
unholy air of ethical deficiency pervading the whole set-up.
Animal Aid’s campaign is brave and necessary. Hopefully, it may result in a public more informed, and prepared to donate only to those charities that do not sanction animal experiments. MPs will be urged to join the growing support for better non-animal alternatives. Challenging tradition and vested interest will not be easy, but it behoves us all to speed up the inevitable end to cruel and unhelpful research.
Adrian Stallwood, Specialist Doctor in Emergency Medicine at Withybush Hospital, Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire. Adrian will be one of the speakers at the march and Rally on April 16th in Manchester.
University Waste by Dr Andre Menache
Universities are fast becoming institutions that are producing a new kind of waste - “intellectual waste”. How else can one describe the animal studies and the resulting data that is churned out week after week by the country’s leading places of learning? To these animal researchers, a mouse, a rat, a rabbit, a pig or a monkey are all tools of their trade as well as a means of ensuring income for their department. All they are required to do is conjure some experiment and record what happens to the animal when a major blood vessel to the brain is deliberately blocked for several hours. They know they will get a result. And whatever the results obtained, they will be published in a scientific journal, thus adding one more grain of knowledge to the mountain of useless knowledge that blocks real progress.
The University of Manchester is just as guilty as any other university in the UK where animal experiments take place. And the same system is in operation. The animal research is approved by a committee whose members have a vested interest in their continuation. There is not a single dissenting scientist on the ethical committees that approve these animal studies, and if ever there were such scientists, they would very soon find themselves ostracised by the university for daring to challenge their colleagues. So much for academic freedom in the 21st century.
According to the website of the University of Manchester, “The Faculty of Life Sciences is committed to engaging with the public, be it through its schools outreach work, Faculty open days or by alerting the world to its research breakthroughs via the media. Its scientists take a proactive approach to communicating their work, understanding the importance of explaining their research, not only to justify continued funding but also to excite and inspire the young people who will be the groundbreaking scientists of the future”. Statements like these help to keep the public in the dark about the real nature of the animal research that takes place behind University of Manchester’s closed doors. In 2010, cat and monkey brains were destroyed, dogs were subjected to allergy tests, pigs were sliced up, rabbits were deliberately given lung infections and rats force-fed alcohol.
Several UK university heads have been approached to host an open scientific debate on the subject of animal experiments. None of the universities have replied. They clearly want to have their cake and eat it. On one hand, they claim to be committed to engaging with the public and explaining the importance of their research, while on the other, they consistently refuse to debate with scientists and continue to stack their animal ethics committees with “yes” men and women. Time for change!
Andre Menache will be speaking at the March and Rally on April 16th in Manchester.
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