Here’s an interesting question. Does the use of non-sentient animals, such as worms and fruit flies, constitute an ‘alternative’ to experiments which would otherwise cause harm to sentient animals? The majority of scientists would answer yes.

But not the antivivisectionists, who oppose any use of animals - even slugs and snails. The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) responded to Gordon Brown’s speech this week by calling for more of the £15 billion spent on medical research in the UK to be diverted to so-called ‘brave new humane’ methods, i.e. non-animal methods.

BUAV is obviously not thinking of the type of research revealed this week in the Independent, in which scientists have developed a technique to screen drug treatments using fruit flies. With further research, this innovative breakthrough could save time and money in drug development for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as save the mice used in such tests. 

The technique involves injecting into fruit fly embryos a human gene for a disease of the central nervous system, such as Alzheimer’s, plus a gene from jellyfish that emits blue and green light. When the flies hatch, the affected part of their brains can be seen to emit a blue light. If the blue light flashes to green after the flies are fed the drug, the drug can be taken forward. As fruit flies hatch within days, results can be seen more quickly than with mice. And flies only need a fraction of the drug, so testing is cheaper.

But the BUAV shows no interest in such promising research. Indeed, the less ‘appealing’ invertebrates are rarely acknowledged at all by the antivivisectionists, either by recognizing their enormous potential in biomedical research, or by campaigning against their use. No ‘Save the Slugs’ banners from BUAV. Are they guilty of ‘speciesism’ in the science of alternatives, we wonder?