A new publication, Responsibility in the use of animals in bioscience research, lays out the expectations of the main UK funding bodies for the use of animals in research.

The guidelines outline legal aspects of UK research involving animals, and information on how the 3Rs should be applied. It is the first time major UK funders—the NC3Rs, BBSRC, NERC, MRC and the Wellcome Trust—have collaborated in this way. Dr Vicky Robinson, chief executive of NC3Rs, comments: ‘the NC3Rs is delighted that these major funders speak with one voice on such an important issue for the scientific community.’ Further information is available from the NC3Rs website.

It can be downloaded directly by clicking here. (Adobe PDF File, 542kb)

If you tend to find online discussions are ruled by 13 year olds using their chat-room jargon and ready for a fight, you may find a new website, Debatewise, is worth checking out. 

Debatewise hopes to foster intelligent debate, by encouraging collaboration and forming sound arguments.  It will be interesting to see if the debate on animal research stimulates fresh opinions on the matter.

You can sign up (for free) and join in on a debate, create a new one, and vote on the issue - it’s a way to directly communicate with and influence the rest of a community seeking informed discussion.

Debatewise hopes to become a place people go to make their minds up about something - from ID cards, to facebook, to the effects of cannabis. So if you feel passionately about an aspect of animal research, add to the debate!

Antivivisection legal challenges seemed to be falling like flies at the moment. Just a week ago the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) lost its long-standing legal challenge against the Home Office on the setting of severity limits—see our earlier blog. And a few months ago the National Anti-Vivisection Society lost its High Court case on the right to advertise on the television—see our blog on that case.

Now we hear that another court case brought about by the actions of the BUAV, this time on freedom of information, has likewise failed. 

The Independent newspaper today ran a front-page story about the success of initial results from trials of a gene therapy treatment to treat a rare form of hereditary blindness. The article pointed out that the technique had already been shown to work in animals.

But what are the implications?

Only last week the Independent ran a front-page story about the lack of hope in finding an HIV vaccine. This they said was despite many years of tests in animals—some of which showed positive results but subsequently failed in humans.

100 years ago today RDS was announced to the public. A letter in the national press on 24 April 1908 said: ‘A Society has been formed with the name of the Research Defence Society, to make known the facts as to experiments on animals in this country; the immense importance to the welfare of mankind of such experiments and the great saving of human life and health directly attributable to them.’

In 1912, RDS even had a ‘shop’ in London.

In 1908 (as we know from BBC One’s Casualty 1907) life expectancy in the UK was about 45 years, and Paul Ehrlich and Ilya Mechnikoff were about to win the Nobel Prize for research on magic bullets they called antibodies.

Key points that Lord Cromer, founding president of RDS, made in his letter 100 years ago are just as fitting today, for instance: 

‘The great advance that has been made during the last quarter of a century in our knowledge of the functions of the body, and of the cause of disease, would have been impossible without a combination of experiment and observation.’

Our centenary year also marks significant anniversaries of other medical developments related to animal research:

The long-running Judicial Review case brought by an antivivisection group against the Home Office has finally ended, with the Court of Appeal ruling against the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) on the final two counts. Nine other counts had previously been rejected by the High Court.

This costly case has been before the courts for nearly four years and this is not the first time we have blogged about it. The two issues subject to the final appeal were:

Is the antivivisection group Europeans for Medical Progress (see for instance this previous blog entry) moderating its message, or just using sloppy language?

In a letter this week to New Scientist, Margaret Clotworthy from EMP says:

‘Europeans for Medical Progress would like to see a comparison between animal tests for drug safety with a panel of state-of-the-art techniques based on human biology. In the UK, 250 members of parliament and 83% of general practitioners support this idea.’

Actually (in EDM 92) 250 MPs supported

‘an independent and transparent scientific evaluation of the use of animals as surrogate humans in drug safety testing and medical research.’

This is a much bigger ask. Comparison of animal safety tests for medicines with new non-animal techniques is already done: it’s called validation. See for instance the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods.

Even more sloppy is the claim that animal research is causing ‘so much grief’ to ‘the majority of the public’. This is all the more surprising as EMP appears so keen on ‘independent evaluation’. Proper public opinion surveys have repeatedly shown that the majority of the public are supportive of animal research. About three quarters can accept animal experimentation so long as it’s for medical purposes or if there is no unnecessary suffering for the animals.

Of course everyone cares about animals (it was an article about the care shown by animal technicians that prompted Clotworthy’s letter) but this doesn’t sound like a lot of grief to me.

With attacks on animal researchers on the increase in the US, over 60 scientists have produced a strong statement of support.  The commentary in the most recent issue of Biological Psychiatry calls for public support to help quash attacks that have been not only on scientists, but also their families.

From the statement:

These terrorist acts might intimidate people and institutions that would otherwise speak out in support of nonhuman primate research and against terrorism. By failing to take public action, we contribute to the isolation of the scientists involved and the institutions in which they work. Frustration with the absence of a vigorous public response to recent terrorist attacks led Robert Palazzo, president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Bethesda, Maryland to ask ‘Where’s the noise on this?’

Biological Psychiatry has provided free online access to this article.

There has been a steady and sustained rise in openness about animal research from many of our leading research institutions in the UK.

This reflects partly the extremely effective government and police action to tackle animal rights extremism, for which we are extremely grateful. It also reflects a commitment from many more individuals in the scientific community to engage in an informed debate about animal research.

It is critical to point out that animal research is not a separate activity to the rest of biomedical research. Rather, is an integral part of the research effort to advance knowledge and ultimately develop new treatments and cures for patients. It is one of many important elements of the UK science base.

We give special mention to two major funding institutions in the UK, for their commitment and contribution to greater openness: the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council.

‘Scientists must try harder to win this debate’. So said Mary Dejevsky, whose husband suffers from Parkinson’s disease, in yesterday’s Independent.  Surprisingly, she was talking about the embryology bill and hybrid embryos.

Fiona Fox, Director of the Science Media Centre, took a rather different view on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning. Towards the end of the discussion she said:

‘I really feel like there is a change in the scientific community – numerous scientists phoned me at home over Easter and said we need to get into studios, we need to engage with the bishops’ concerns, we need to engage with the public. And three or four scientists literally did back-to-back interviews all weekend, engaged with these debates, and are having these debates with the public and with the media.’

Almost hidden by acres of UK media coverage of the (at times hysterical) debate about hybrid human animal embryo research, I was interested to spot a small item about HIV vaccine research. It was in the Financial Times this morning, based on a Reuters report. Last month we blogged about leading scientists calling for HIV vaccine research to go back to basics, including animal research. Now, according to Reuters, the US government has acted:

The US government has announced a major overhaul of its effort to produce an AIDS vaccine, stressing a return to basic scientific research after the failure of a key clinical trial last year.

Government officials at a summit with AIDS scientists pledged to prioritise spending on lab work and animal tests rather than expensive, and thus far disappointing, large-scale vaccine trials on humans. ‘We need to turn the knob in the direction of discovery. That is unambiguous,’ said Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who convened the meeting outside of Washington.

Let’s hope, for the sake of patients, that sense will also prevail in our current scientific/political/ethical/religious/media preoccupation with hybrid embryo research.

There is every indication that the more sophisticated and nuanced debate about the future challenges of animal research, which we have been hoping for, can materialise.

Last month our new Chairman, Professor Colin Blakemore, outlined in profile in the Times Higher Education Supplement the new approach to the debate which RDS will take.

This was followed up by an article in the New Statesman online by the Director of the RDS outlining the challenges ahead.

Finally, a detailed and extensive editorial has been published (as a pdf) in Alternatives to Laboratory Animals (which is the Journal of the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments) outlining how we see the new arguments unfolding.

With many of the animal rights extremists in jail or awaiting sentencing, now is the time to improve all aspects of the debate, and of course the science, 3Rs and animal welfare as well.

Claims from animal rights activists against animal research tend to be along a similar vein, geared to undermining the science.  In a recent blog entry, a scientist/doctor going by the name of Orac sets out the facts to counter the pseudoscience used by animal rights groups – eg that animal testing can’t give us information of value or reliability, and animal models are inferior to other research techniques.  It’s nice to see a face in the research community setting some of the myths straight. 

Respectful Insolence blog: Bad scientific arguments in the service of ‘animal rights’ activism

RDS is pleased to see that the National Centre for the 3Rs (NC3Rs) has posted information on its website about systematic reviews. NC3Rs is one of many organisations which could take an interest. This is because of the potential to use systematic reviews to improve experimental design, and so reduce the numbers of animals used in research, as well as achieve better (and more ethically acceptable) results.

A recognition of the need to ensure the highest quality of experimental design, statistical analysis and retrospective review of animal studies is something we believe should be embraced. There is cause for concern that we are not always getting it right. On the other hand, the good news is that this has been recognised by leading organisations like the Biosciences Federation, which has organised a series of meetings on experimental design for animal researchers.

Ultimately there is no reason why the UK could not become an established world leader in this area. We are already among the leaders in quality of biomedical science, 3Rs research, and the culture of care for laboratory animals.

We are well aware that some Members of the European Parliament have been misled by animal rights misinformation into thinking that animal research does not work and should be phased out. But some MEPs are themselves the origin of such misinformation.

On his English language blog, the Swedish MEP Jens Holm describes his ‘passions’ as ’global justice, animal rights and environmental issues‘. Note the lack of interest in the well-being of individual people.

Jens Holm describes what he anticipates to be ’difficult struggle against animal experimentation‘. During the revision of the European Directive on animal experimentation, Jens Holm is going to be pressing for ‘concrete plans for reduction’. His rationale is that:

‘in the same way that we have goals in the area of climate change, we should set goals for reducing animal experimentation year for year’.

This is confused thinking. Animal research is an activity which brings benefits both to humans and animals. Climate change is an unwanted by-product of industrial and consumer activity, and brings no benefits of itself.

Advocating targets to reduce animal experiments is like suggesting we tackle climate change through targets to reduce rail travel.

The logical focus of Holm’s concerns should be reducing animal suffering, which is a perfectly sensible. In that case, his goal should be targets to reduce animal suffering from all causes, including all human and animal activities. Whether the EU has the legal capacity for that is another matter!