There have been several fantastic science/medicine stories in the last few days that have fulfilled all the ‘top trump’ criteria you might expect (1) if there were a Science or Biomedical Research pack. All revealed progress in stem-cell-based treatment. The Guardian clearly appreciated the good science too. 

Sadly, the first about mini-livers, see Zebedee’s Mini-livers - hope or hype?, was an example of how poor reporting on scientific issues can lead to unwarranted hype (and/or misleading antiviv spin) surrounding an important medical breakthrough.

However, the reporting of three others has been accurate and excellent:

US antivivisectionist Ray Greek has been rather quiet for a while.

A while back this ‘top science adviser’ said:

‘Melanoma is a lethal cancer in humans but is usually not so in dogs’

A vaccine for melanoma in humans is now being trialled and also at the same time been found successful in dogs, and this recent news story also states:

‘Dogs, like humans, can naturally get many forms of cancer, including melanoma. In dogs, the melanoma is not usually related to sun exposure, but it can be very difficult to treat, and it’s often fatal.’

So is Greek just being quiet, or has the media realised that he talks rubbish?

There was a great story all over the media yesterday about scientists growing liver tissue from stem cells. I suppose what caught my attention was that The Scotsman and several other newspapers said that this meant mini artificial livers could replace animal and human medicines testing.

Well, one day they might replace the small amount of testing carried out for liver toxicity, but they would tell us nothing about potential toxicity to the immune system, to the nervous system, to the fetus, or about the potential to cause cancer. And they would be of little use in research into Alzheimer’s disease, HIV, bird flu, cystic fibrosis and other diseases in need of prevention, treatment or cure.

Shame this interesting advance got hyped out of all proportion and scientists got misquoted. I asked one of them what he had actually said, and he commented:

I do think that new techniques may reduce animal testing, and replace certain elements of it, but I don’t say that animal testing is gone forever. It is still an important element of the work that we do. I do believe in Reduce, Replace and Refine, but I am also realistic.

Certainly puts it in context. This is still a great example of the steady work scientists are doing towards reducing the numbers of animals used in research and testing by developing potential replacement alternatives. 

I just picked up a nice story on blood transfusion, from the BBC kids’ programme Newsround, of all places (well, they did a good piece on mice in glue ear research last week).

Apparently a new animal donor register has just been set up. The story of how it came into being is on the register’s website:

This week’s In the Know magazine (October 10, pages 18-19) has an article about animal research featuring an articulate, intelligent trainee barrister who happens to be diabetic. Lisa says:

Before insulin was discovered, diabetes would be a death sentence. I wouldn’t be here today if scientists hadn’t tested on animals. I know it’s not ideal but it’s the only way forward in many cases. I’d always put the life of a human above an animal.’

I think most people would agree. This presents a dilemma for antivivisection and animal rights groups. They cannot deny that the most people – vegans aside – do not accord animals the same rights as humans. So they either deny the evidence of history – eg the key role of Banting, Best and a dog called Marjorie in the discovery and development of insulin – or claim that animals are no longer necessary in medical research.

The In The Know article outlines the story of insulin and other animal-research-dependent medical advances. So what case does the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection make against animal research in this article? They resort to a string of distortions and blatant lies. Here’s the worst example:

‘… only about 20% of experiments are for medical purposes. Others are for products such as household cleaners, fertilisers and petrol.’

Petrol??? I don’t know where they got that one from.

The animal experimentation figures are publicly available, if a little complex (that’s why we provide an accessible summary on the RDS website). But using some simple arithmetic, it’s clear that the safety testing of household products and agricultural chemicals together added up to just 1.2% of all animal experiments in 2005.

Tests on non-medical products are a very small percentage of animal use. In fact 96% of all the animal procedures in 2005 were used for some form of biomedical research – basic and applied research, medicines development, and testing of new medical and veterinary products.

The incoming director of BUAV, if she is at all concerned about the truth, has a big clean-up job to do.

In a letter published by The Observer on Sunday, antivivisectionist Richard Mountford of Animal Aid (for some reason he doesn’t mention his affiliation) tries to align pro-life and antivivisection campaigning:

It is absurd for so-called right-to-life campaigners to object to medical research on cells from dead human embryos, when they do not object to research on live animals (’Scientists turn dead cells into live tissue’, News, last week). They may feel squeamish about using human cells, but that is not a moral argument.
Richard Mountford, letter in The Observer, 1 October 2006

So far so good. But then he states that: ‘thousands of animals suffer in experiments every day in British laboratories’ and says we should invest in stem cell research and ‘stop using cruel animal tests’. Most scientists agree that suffering should be minimised, and I do not believe that animal tests can be characterised as cruel.

But the main point is that stem cell research and stem cell therapies depend very much on animal research, particularly research involving mice. And arguably we would not have progressed very far in this field if it weren’t for Dolly the sheep. Animal Aid seems to inhabit a fact-free zone.

For more evidence on the importance of animals in this research, look no further than the RDS web page Stem cell therapies and mouse research. 

There have been many reports that a virulent strain of the ‘superbug’ C difficile has killed 49 people in Leicester hospitals this year.

This is relevant to the well-worn antivivisection mantra ‘pencillin is a useful antibiotic for people but kills guinea pigs’. Partially true, but the devil is in the detail which they don’t tell you.

In fact, early studies showed that ‘good’ bacteria normally present in the guinea-pig intestine are sensitive to penicillin. So, after penicillin, all these bacteria disappear and are replaced by greater numbers of some types of ‘bad’ bacteria – eg Clostridium difficile. This can lead to absorption of toxins and may cause death from blood poisoning. It seems that guinea pigs, far from being strikingly different from humans, are in fact very similar and provided a clear warning that penicillin could cause colitis or worse in vulnerable patients on long-term penicillin.  More information on the RDS website.

When I first saw the story in The Sun ‘Rabbit flu was revenge’ I thought it must be a sick joke. For a start, I’d heard of bird flu but not rabbit flu. But I checked and found the sad news on BBC Online that a young farmer had indeed died from so-called rabbit flu (caused by a bacterium called Pasteurella multocida) earlier this month. The sick twist to this story is that, according to today’s Sun report, animal rights extremists have been tormenting the young man’s distressed parents with phone calls telling them his death was ‘the rabbit’s revenge’ (they claimed he’d been culling rabbits). How low can they go?

The disease, also known as pasteurellosis, is apparently common in cats and dogs, but it is quite uncommon for it to pass to humans (about 400 cases a year recorded in the UK). According to the Health Protection Agency it is treatable with antibiotics and fatalities are extremely rare. In this case it developed into a fatal septicaemia. I assume the young farmer, John Freeman, did not get the antibiotics that would have saved him, or was treated too late. Ironic really, considering that all antibiotics, from streptomycin and penicillin onwards, have been developed and tested using animals.

It’s quaintly predictable that the rent-a-quotes at PETA should try to make a story out of an artistic display where a naked woman cuddles a pig!

Yes it is true, remember it is the silly season and PETA combines a lack of a sense of humour and perspective with the arrogance of assumed expertise in mental health:

This seems to be a desperate cry for help that merits visits from mental health counsellors, not voyeurs

The funny part is the field day for headline writers: Sun (Pig sick over dead porker), Mirror (ART..OR PIG SICK). The Mail predictably focused on how it was funded by taxpayers, and the US Media swallowed the PETA line.

However dig deeper, and it is apparent that this story is an own goal for PETA. It is actually a story about replacement alternatives to animals - I kid you not!

The artists funding for this project came from the Wellcome Trust SciArt initiative. working on tissue culture of human cells. You can see more details, and an even a video here.

But we always knew publicity was PETA’s objective, not real progress in animal welfare.

I was sad to learn of the death of Professor William ‘Bill’ Russell three weeks ago. He was co-inventor with the late Rex Burch of the Three Rs - Reduction, Refinement, Replacement - the guiding principles of animal research today. I hardly knew him, but I do remember him bursting into song while giving talks to large and distinguished audiences. He was clearly a polymath and a fascinating man.

The three Rs are a lasting legacy, with many welfare awards and even a building in the names of Russell and Burch, and of course there is now a National Centre for the Three Rs.

There’s a delightful obituary of this delightful man in The Guardian today by Caroline Richmond. She sums up the ‘musical polymath and promoter of laboratory animal welfare’ thus:

a funny and erudite polymath who wrote science fiction novels, introduced the concept of replacement, refinement and reduction - the 3Rs - into animal research, and had successful careers as a psychoanalyst, zoologist, agronomist and sociologist. His wide ranging knowledge and capacity to set almost anything he was going to say to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune made him immensely popular and earned him a place on BBC Radio’s Round Britain Quiz for several years.

I realised reading his obituary just how much I didn’t know about Bill Russell.

The RDS blog regularly exposes bad science, and unwarranted extrapolation from the facts, from those opposed to animal research (eg Pseudoscientist shows true colours).

But we should also expose bad science from those who know better, such as the Animal Health and Welfare Panel of the European Food Safety Authority. Its report Opinion of the Scientific Panel AHAW related to the aspects of the biology and welfare of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes has been reviewed by the Royal Society who have highlighted how statements to decide policy on animal experimentation should not include classics such as

Spiders may be clever but we don’t know ...

Proposals to protect prawns as we protect monkeys ...

We need good animal welfare science for good policy making. The EU should throw out the EFSA report, if only to maintain its own credibility.

I blogged before (Lies, damn lies and statistics) about the misleadingly named antivivisection group Europeans for Medical Progress and its equally misleading claims of support from 83% of GPs. This claim comes from a survey conducted in August 2004. One of the odd conclusions that EMP draws from it is:

The clinical relevance of animal research requires urgent evaluation - a fact now accepted amongst the medical profession ...

So there could be no doubt about it, EMP headlined its press release ‘Doctors fear animal experiments endanger patients’

EMP’s sister organisation AFMA has posted the complete survey in raw data form. It tells a rather different story, of leading questions and omission of results that were clearlyinconvenient for EMP/AFMA. We have an astute member of the discussion forum Oxford Gossip to thank for drawing this astounding spin to our attention. Another member of Oxford Gossip helpfully analyses the questions and concludes:

It’s a simple fact that every single day of their working lives, GPs will be treating patients in one way or another using findings from animal research. I’ve taught hundreds of medical students in both Oxford and London for over 15 years, my parents are medics, my father in law and sister in law are medics, I’ve yet to encounter a single one who doesn’t appreciate the value of animal based research. Where on earth did they find these GPs?

OK, so this is anecdotal. But, particularly in the light of another omission by EMP/AFMA, very credible. EMP/AFMA commissioned the survey company TNS Healthcare to carry out the poll of GPs. TNS subsequently dissociated itself from EMP/AFMA’s analysis of the results in no uncertain terms:

The conclusions drawn from this research by AFMA are wholly unsupported by TNS and any research findings or comment published by AFMA is not TNS approved.

TNS did not provide any interpretation of the data to the client
TNS did not give permission to the client to publish our data
The data does not support the interpretation made by the client (which in our opinion exaggerates anything that may be found from the data)

TNS Healthcare reactive statement, September 2004

One small example of how you can’t trust anything the antivivisection or animal rights groups say. Well, not so small, it relates to nearly 42,000 animal experiments. Animal Aid claimed in a recent press release criticising the rise in UK animal research last year:

The number of experiments involving genetically modified animals has risen by 43,428. Almost 42,000 of these were on undeclared species of animals.

Now the second part had me scratching my head. Sadly, I’m all too familiar with the annual statistics on animal procedures, which run to about 90 pages and over 30 detailed tables of figures, four appendices, explanatory notes, etc, etc. It seemed highly unlikely that 40,000 procedures on genetically modified animals could be on ‘undeclared species of animals’.

I started going through the tables. Table 3 (which runs to three pages) and table 3.1 give all the detail. Most of the GM and mutant animals are mice (92%), followed by fish, rats, amphibia and fowl. Oh, and three sheep. No undeclared species there. Tables 3.2 and 3.3 also relate to GM animals. Again, all species declared.

Then I went back to table 2.2 which details the somewhat technical sounding ‘Scientific procedures by Schedule 2 listed species and source of animals (genetically modified animals)’. Schedule 2 of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 lists those species that must be obtained from designated breeding or supplying establishments (which is most of them), unless a specific exemption is granted.

And there it was, just above the bottom line, ‘animals not listed in Schedule 2’, on which there were 41,758 procedures.

The mystery was soon solved. Just below, a footnote stated:

The ‘animals not listed in Schedule 2’ here were 300 domestic fowl, 3,067 amphibia and 38,391 fish

Which were of course listed in tables 3, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and others.

The annual statistics are not the most user-friendly publications, but they are freely available and groups like Animal Aid should take care to examine them thoroughly before making such specious claims.

Antivivisection groups are increasingly latching on to a new figure, emerging from drug development studies, in their attempts to undermine the use of animals in research. For example, the animal rights group Europeans for Medical Progress has sent a postcard to MPs stating that ‘there is substantial evidence that animal tests are the weakest link in the safety testing of new drugs: they are so poorly predictive for humans that 92% of candidate drugs fail in clinical trials after success in animal tests.’

The recent report from the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) on the use of primates in experiments also refers to this figure. It describes the source as being a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), review of problems facing the development of safe and effective new drugs.

BUAV correctly claims that the main causes of the 92% failure-rate are safety concerns and lack of effectiveness in humans, but adds its own interpretation that this is ‘despite tests on primates and other animals’.

Once again, the anti-vivisection spin on what is a complex problem is simplistic, distorted, and dishonest by omission.

Last week saw the announcement of one of the most exciting technical and medical breakthroughs ever: the development of ‘neuroprostheses’, or electronic brain implants.  This amazing feat has enabled a paraplegic man’s brain to directly interface with and so control computers and robots: thanks Haruspica for your illuminating blog on this.

The research reported in Nature represents ‘the culmination of decades of investigation by many research group into computing, engineering and the neurobiology of animals and humans’; but there is still a way to go before neuroprostheses become clinical practice.

This breakthrough highlights perfectly the way science and medicine progresses: many groups work very hard – often in seemingly unconnected areas – and years later these come together to form something beneficial to humanity.  However, certain groups often fail to appreciate the size of the task and difficulties involved in developing treatments and cures.  For instance, antivivisection groups such as BUAV and EMP constantly whine that science has yet to produce a cure for AIDS, despite the fact that it was identified a mere 25 years ago and has seen huge developments in diagnostics and treatments thanks in large part to animal research.  Not only do these antivivisection groups ignore the valiant efforts and successes of those involved, they actively (and irresponsibly) dispute the validity of the work done; setting their own opinion over those who work in the field and who are therefore rather better informed (see a previous blog Monkey business).

Neuroprostheses (see also the bionic eye development announced last week), treatments for AIDS, malaria, flu (of any description let alone the dreaded bird flu), TB – the list goes on and on – solutions to all these require much ingenuity, together with dedication, intelligence and research on animals.  Researchers with these qualitites may save millions of lives; but according to the following cretinous statment are not needed.

What the enormous majority of sick people in this world need from us is not our ingenuity and our laboratories
Alistair Currie, BUAV Campaigns Director, speaking at the Oxford Union over the motion ‘This House would not test on animals’ (motion not passed)

Alistair Currie inhabits a fairyland where if people donated everything that they could spare then all the world’s troubles would be solved!  Yes, the world would be a better place if more people were charitable: fewer children would starve, die of drought or hypothermia.  But for the millions of AIDS sufferers, those paralysed, those succumbing to cancer and many more terrible diseases, there would be no cure: and I want no part of a world where money is thrown at them but no effort is made to tackle these things.