The latest newsletter from the National Anti Vivisection Society (NAVS) features an amazing claim in the section on ‘research without animals’. A team at Aston University has supposedly created “a human based nerve cell system which reflects the complexity of the human brain”. Wow. That’s something.

Would it be mischievous to wonder what this nerve system thinks about being cooped up in a glass bottle? If it really reflects the complexity of the human brain, it may be emotionally traumatised at being locked up all night when it could be watching Big Brother!

Seriously, of course RDS supports all types of research, including cell and tissue cultures. These can enable some problems to be studied without the use of animals. The development of alternatives is an integral part of scientific research.  But the motivation of antivivisection groups for highlighting these other methods is nothing other than to undermine the use of animals. Making exaggerated claims may help their fundraising, but does little to contribute to good science.

The researcher involved makes the more moderate, genuine and sensible point in an article on the NAVS website that:

If a novel human tissue neurotoxicity test were able to model successfully even a narrow aspect of human neural damage sufficiently well to gain worldwide regulatory acceptance, several thousand animal neurotoxicity experiments would become obsolete.

Absolutely. But NAVS are predictably dismissive of those dismal scientists who still “think cell systems cannot fully replicate the human brain”. Thank you NAVS, for this piece of expert opinion.