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:
100th anniversary of Nobel Prize for work on ‘magic bullet’ antibodies, and the hypothesis that polio may be caused by a virus
80th anniversary of the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming
80th anniversary of the first isolation of Vitamin C from food
60th anniversary of the NHS and Word Health Organisation
40th anniversary of the first UK heart transplant
40th anniversary of the Medicines Act (introduced as a response to the thalidomide tragedy)
20th anniversary of Sir James Black winning the Nobel Prize for development of beta blockers for high blood pressure and H2 antagonists to heal stomach ulcers.
20th anniversary of the launch of the WHO Global Polio Eradication Initiative
These are all world-changing achievements. Take polio vaccination for example. Polio is now endemic in only four countries. More than five million people who would otherwise have been paralysed are today walking because they have been immunised against polio since the Initiative started. The polio vaccine, like other medical advances that are celebrating anniversaries this year, could not have been developed without animal research.
Co-incidentally, 24 April is also a focus for abolitionist campaigning every year, having been designated ‘World Day for Laboratory Animals’ by a UK antivivisection group in 1979. NAVS says it marks the birthday of a former President, Lord Dowding. It also says ‘This international day of commemoration is recognised by the United Nations ’ but we have found no evidence of this.
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