Number 10 Downing Street recently responded to an antivivisection-inspired e-petition calling on the Prime Minister to ‘ignore the petition that supports animal testing.’

It continued ‘because if they bothered to investigate hard enough they would already know that a) there are modern and more effective methods like computer models and tissue research and b) that 92% of drugs tested on animals are still found to be inappropriate for humans....’ This e-petition got 386 signatures by mid-June.

We blogged the 92% nonsense here, and have addressed the pseudoscience around so-called ‘alternatives’ many times.

The original pro-research petition got over 3,000 signatures and called on the government to support animal research - we blogged the very supportive government response to that here.

A little strange that the antivivisectionists should turn ‘animal research’ into the much narrower ‘animal testing’ which accounts for less than one eighth of all animal procedures in the UK. Unfortunately we do not believe that this is because antivivisectionists support the 85% of basic research and applied research and development using animals that makes up the rest; rather that they find ‘animal testing’ so much easier to attack.

That aside, the Government’s response is again worth reading. I’m not going to reproduce it all here, just the first two paragraphs:

The Government’s policy on the use of animals in scientific procedures is clear and straightforward. There is still a need for the responsible use of animals for experimental and other scientific purposes to continue if improvements in healthcare and veterinary treatment are to be developed with the minimum of delay and to make proper provision to protect man and the environment from health risks and other hazards.

Some campaigners describe animal experiments as ‘outmoded science’ and argue that there are better ways of making medical and scientific progress using modern, non-animal methods, such as computer modelling and microdosing. However, under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, animal experiments cannot be carried out if the same objectives can be achieved using non-animal methods. So, as relevant, new and improved technologies and testing methods are developed, they already have to be used instead of animal methods.

While we welcome this, perhaps it’s time for the government to raise the bar for responding to e-petitions? At the moment it stands at just 200 signatures. I’m sure most people could drum up more than 200 signatures to any weird and whacky idea.