As we indicated on our last blog, we believe 2008 will be the year when a more sophisticated debate about animal research emerges. This will be possible if the government and police can continue to crack down on animal rights extremists, who have made it difficult for researchers to engage properly with the public.

Researchers themselves will have to take on the responsibility of that extra time commitment to explain their work. We believe many are willing to do so if their safety can be assured. A survey for Nature magazine just over a year ago confirmed this.

To kick off this debate, it will be important to recognize both the benefits and the limitations of animal research. One journalist who appears to have ‘got it’ better than many is James Randerson of The Guardian. In his comment today in The Guardian online, he points out that ’no scientist would claim that an animal is a perfect model for humans, but they offer a way to understand human disease that no alternative can match’. Quite so.

So far many MEPs in the European Parliament have been lobbied vigorously by animal rights groups in their blind opposition to animal research. Sadly, other views have not been heard, despite the enormous benefits to human health which can derive from such research.

It is heartening to see that the European Patients Forum (EPF) has now published a statement on animal testing, approved by the vast majority of its member organisations. EPF will be distributing this statement widely during forthcoming debates in the EU Institutions relating to the revision of the European Directive on Animal Experimentation 86/609.

The dawn of the animal rights movement was over 30 years ago with the publication of Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. Whilst two different groups of animal rights supporters shared much the same objectives, they took very different paths to achieve their aims.

The animal rights extremists are best known for their philosophy of direct action and for their high profile campaigns of harassment and intimidation.

The other group sought to use moral, philosophical, intellectual and legal arguments to further the case for animal rights through the courts, constitutions and laws in a variety of countries.

Animal Defenders International (ADI) seem to be riding high. This organisation is the international campaigning wing of the National AntiVivisection Society. Their autumn 2007 newsletter just dropped through our letterbox with the claim that the European parliament has ‘set a historic target to end experiments on primates’. This is described as ‘the single most important breakthrough in over a decade’.

We’ll see about that.

The case for the use of non-human primates in research is well made in a Guardian ‘Comment is Free’ blog article today, and is otherwise well described on the RDS website.

In any case, the claims of ADI do not stand up to scrutiny…

In today’s Chronicle of Higher Education Mary Beth Sweetland – until recently VP and director of research and investigations for PETA and a close Newkirk associate – made a comment that is almost certainly not condoned by Newkirk and other animal rights bigwigs.

My years of experience with whistle-blowers have forced me to realize that I cannot label as monsters all who work in animal laboratories
- Unfortunately you need a subscription to access the full article

It’s a revelation that will come as no surprise to anyone that’s done animal research, or knows people who do.

However, this isn’t meant to be a gloat, and I hope Sweetland’s comment isn’t used against her by other activists.  It’s nice to see that some committed activists do appreciate the nuances of the debate.

All too often we only hear the views of people like Newkirk(1) who persist with the old, tired position of ‘anyone connected with animal research = sadistic torturer’.

Long may sense continue.

------------------------------------------------
(1) Described by Alex Pacheco, her PETA co-founder, as “a media whore” (USA Today, 19th Nov 2007), other mainstream activists such as Wayne Pacelle, Chief Executive Officer of the Humane Society, feel her ‘neither condemn nor condone’ attitude towards ALF actions is unhelpful – and morally wrong:

‘We’re demanding ethical consistency in the way people live their lives,’ Pacelle says. ‘Once you move into the domain of intimidation or illegal conduct beyond civil disobedience, you’re moving into a dangerous pile of quicksand.’
- PopMatters.com, 19th Nov 2007

Despite the best efforts of antivivisection groups - and they claim some success in the European Parliament - the public debate on difficult issues such as primate research and cloning seems much more grown up than it was a decade ago.

We know from opinion research that, of all research animals, the public are most concerned about primates. But we also know that they can weigh it all up in quite sophisticated ways and make judgments based on potential welfare costs and biomedical benefits of the research. 

The recent news that scientists at Oregon University had cloned macaques was greeted by the UK national media in a largely positive fashion (see for instance BBC News). No particular concerns were expressed about the use of primates, and the twin spectres of Frankenstein monsters and human reproductive cloning, which dogged coverage of Dolly the sheep 10 years ago, were hardly to be seen.

I recently received an email from a journalist, who despite not being routinely involved in this debate could easily see the flaws in recent antiviv claims:

"The Hadwen Trust have said that a new European Commission report puts the UK at the top of the animal research rankings. However, if you look at the notes on the bottom, you’ll see that the figure they use is not even from the Commission report!

… they said they used the UK estimate for animal research because European figures didn’t account for certain types of research. How the UK figure can therefore be used as a comparison is a bit of a mystery to me!"

See Dr Hadwen Trust website, News, New Statistics: Britain still the animal testing capital of Europe, 9th Nov 2007

Unlike the rest of Europe, the UK counts breeding of GM animals as a procedure meaning that when GM animals aren’t counted we aren’t actually in the top spot. That you have to compare like with like – just because France, for instance, doesn’t count GM animals it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have thousands running around the lab – seems to have passed the folk at DrHT by. However, ‘UK is number 2 in Europe’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.  It’s sad that one of the supposedly respectable antiviv groups has resorted to these tactics.

The UK collects and publishes the fullest details of animal research undertaken in the world, as well as being acknowledged by the antis as being "at the forefront of cutting edge non-animal research"(1). Add to this that DrHT’s very own Gill Langley recognises that UK animal research is a "very tiny minority of research effort"(2), and the negative comments look very silly indeed!

It would benefit animal welfare more if the DrHT had instead held these facts up as an example to other countries.

I’d actually say that it is a source of pride that the UK is the world leader in conducting top quality animal research that is carefully regulated and fully accounted for.

-----------------------------------------------------

(1) National Anti-Vivisection Society & Lord Dowding Fund for Humane Research (Nov 2002) Monkeys & Men
(2) Gill Langley (17th July 2001) Oral evidence to House of Lords Select Committee on Animals in Scientific Procedures

Presumably concern for the environment is not something that bothers Jerry Vlasak, the extremist animal rights advocate from the US. He flew 10,000 miles to speak for 10 minutes in a debate on animal research in Dublin last week.

What was remarkable was the man’s ability to make such a bad impression in such a short space of time. Not only was he the only speaker who refused to take questions, much to the frustration of those present, but he managed to spectacularly misjudge the mood of the audience.

Vlasak, who has advocated violence against researchers who use animals, spent most of his speech likening his movement to the French resistance during the Second World War. Such rhetoric seemed absurd in what was an otherwise genuine debate about a difficult ethical issue. Vlasak clearly lives on a different planet to the rest of us.

It was difficult to take seriously Vlasak’s bizarre vision compared to the reality of well-regulated and carefully conducted humane animal research. It conjured up extraordinary visions of commonly used animals in research, such as fruit flies and fish, being overrun by Nazi stormtroopers!

No wonder the other proposed speakers from the UK backed out at short notice. Sharing a platform with a man locked in a mental mind trap from the last century would surely have been an embarrassment.

At the end of the evening, much like a similar debate at Cork University the month before, the vote was overwhelmingly in favour of animal research. Indeed, it was difficult to find anyone hanging around afterwards at the students bar who thought that animal rights was issue at all in Ireland!

It was five years ago, in October 2002, that the Chief Inspector released his report Aspects of Non-human Primate Research at Cambridge University. This had been in response to allegations made following an infiltration by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV).

The sorry story has continued right up to this month. The Home Office has just lodged papers at the High Court appealing against the recent ruling of a judge on one out of four points for which the BUAV took them to court.

What has been lost in this debate is proper publicity for the very high standards of animal care and welfare which are maintained at Cambridge University. It is worth re-visiting the Chief Inspector’s report. He found that:

The most vitriolic antivivisection group in the UK, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) has spun out of control in its account of the single point it won in the court case against the Home Office this July. The Home Office has appealed against the ruling.

In its latest mailing to supporters, the BUAV claims that the government was ‘found guilty of turning a blind eye to the substantial suffering of animals’. No such verdict was made by the judge in the full court transcript. He never claimed that the suffering of animals was not taken into account, but rather that the severity limits for certain experiments were incorrectly assigned when project licences held at Cambridge University were renewed in 2003 (he said they should have been ‘substantial’ rather than ‘moderate’). The Home Office remains clear in their original assessment of this case that changing the severity limit would not itself alter the experience of an animal undergoing regulated procedures.

The National Research Council (NRC) recently produced a report titled Toxicity Testing in the Twenty-first Century: A Vision and a Strategy. In it, they outline a plan for utilising new technology to streamline toxicity testing.  The plan’s aim is to increase efficiency whilst decreasing costs, time, and numbers of animals used.

The report notes that one of the ‘challenges’ of developing an in vitro test system to evaluate toxicity is "The current inability of cell assays to mirror metabolism in the integrated whole animal." (p5)

They go on to note that targeted testing in the future may be in vitro or vivo:

Antivivisection groups have been extremely active lobbying in Europe against the use of animals in research. It is important that we get our arguments together and our message across to MEPs. A short summary of the situation in the UK, titled ‘Talking Point on the use of animals in scientific research’ has just been published in the Journal of the European Molecular Biology Organisation. 

We see from a new post on the SPEAK website that the monkey named Felix who they were campaigning to save from Oxford University has now died. SPEAK claimed that Felix was been tortured and that he lived in a small cage, although in fact this primate appeared on a BBC documentary allowing people to make their own judgements about how the animal was looked after.

But we should not shy away from the reality of research. Almost all animals are humanely killed after research, usually to study their tissues to gain further information. Animals are not simply research tools, they are sentient beings. It is regrettable that any animal has to be used, and then die, in research. But it would be even more regrettable if research to advance knowledge and potentially help treat or cure people with distressing and disabling diseases such as Parkinson’s or stroke could not go ahead. And we should not strive to keep animals alive for no good reason if it simply makes them suffer.

In true SPEAK style, their initial pronouncements on Felix sounded sinister; as in their message to Oxford University ‘if for any reason you feel it’s in your best interest to kill Felix before you had intended to, then think again. Or if Felix mysteriously dies, then we urge you to think very seriously about this course of action. The British public will take a very dim view on this course of action, should you choose to take it, and at SPEAK we will never forget such conduct’.

But presumably unable to carry through any threat, SPEAK has now decided apparently that Felix is just a symbol.

The Independent’s Green Goddess columnist Julia Stevenson’s green hue seems to be that of naivete and gullibility. Her latest column says ‘We don’t need to capture wild primates and destroy them in labs’. She’s right: we don’t need to and we don’t do it, because almost without exception primates are bred especially for research. And someone should tell Julia and her antivivisection spinmeisters that apes haven’t been used in the UK research for well over 20 years, or in any EU country since 2000.

That’s not all. Inspired by groups like Animal Defenders International (this is what the National Anti Vivisection Society prefers to call itself, unsurprisingly), she took part in a monkey-in-cage photocall last week. Apparently there were 20 photographers there. Strange we haven’t seen the pictures yet. Maybe they were all undercover police.

Singer Maria Daines was also there, whose dreadful dirge ‘Monkey in a Cage’ (earnest, but naff, lyrics here) is apparently topping indie and rock charts. I don’t follow the charts, but everyone tells me it’s nowhere near the top 20, let alone number one.

Julia is woefully out-of-date on the progress of the antivivisectionists’ Written Declaration in the European Parliament on primate research. She thinks it still has to get 100 more signatures ‘for a ban on primate testing’. Wrong on both counts. It has already received the requisite number of signatures (on the day before Julia’s piece was published) to move to the next stage, which I think means:

• EU President notifies EU Parliament which publishes declaration and names of signatories in the minutes of the relevant sitting. This ‘closes’ the procedure.
• Declaration is forwarded to institutions named together with names of the signatories.
• The EU Commission will probably provide a written answer to the declaration.

This hardly warrants the jubilation in the ADI camp and it certainly falls far short of ‘the end of primate research in Europe’. Jan Creamer, ADI chief executive, trumpeted:

‘This is history in the making and will end the suffering of some 10,000 primates a year in European labs and the adoption of more reliable modern alternatives.’

There is a deadly serious point here. Ending primate research would hamper research into HIV/AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, and malaria – to name but three serious medical problems in which primate studies are indispensible. While we would all wish to see non-animal alternatives ‘adopted’, it’s simply not possible until we have the alternatives, which is a long way off.

So it’s just as well that a Europe-wide ban cannot happen simply on the say so of naïve MEPs swayed by antivivisection songs and stunts.

The latest European Parliament written declaration proposal from MEPs on stopping use of non human primates has already been noted on this blog.

One might assume that all the MEPs who have signed so far, have of course carefully weighed up the arguments before they signed.

Fat chance!

The declaration states the justification for:

establish(ing) a timetable for replacing the use of all primates in scientific experiments with alternatives

noting that almost all primate species share more than 90% of their DNA with humans and it is acknowledged that the primate species have a capacity to suffer greatly in
captivity.

Whilst the fallacy of using this argument in respect to animal welfare has already been exposed, some MEPs are happy to have it both ways....

Richard Corbett MEP has said, in the context of comparing the proposed European Treaty and the rejected European Constitution:

The DNA of mice and humans is 90% the same ... but the remaining 10% is rather important.

Not what you just signed up to Richard!