The Dr Hadwen Trust, an ‘alternatives’ charity, has released a somewhat aggressive report on the apparent failure of the Labour government to stay true to their 1996 pre-election pledges on animal research. The report can be downloaded from their website here. With the Trust starting to release more ‘campaigning’ material, they risk undermining any scientific credibility they may have had, and indeed their charitable status.
The report – an 11-year ‘bash the government’ review – quotes a figure of 0.00002% as ‘Britain’s science budget spent on government funding of non-animal replacements’. It claims that the government-funded NC3Rs spends just £193,646 annually on replacement research. It says this is a proportion of the NC3Rs’ gross research spend for 2006 of £268,990. However, if you look at actual NC3Rs funding in 2006, you’ll notice a much larger figure than this for the projects it funded – totalling just over £1.4 million. The report does not say where the Trust got its figures for the NC3Rs spend from.
The total UK science spending stands at £5.4 billion. This is, admittedly, a large figure. However, this is total science spending - encompassing research into new technology, chemistry, physics, education programmes.... The list is endless. If we look at the proportion of government money spent doing animal research in the past decade (as opposed to developing alternatives to animal research), it has fallen year on year, despite a massive increase in Government bioscience and medical research (reported by RDS website here).
One particular figure caught my interest - that quoted as the amount spent by the Ministry of Defence on non-animal replacements. By the Trust’s own admission, this figure is made up (see reference 16 of the report). Following a FOI request for exact figures, the MOD said it was ‘actively seeking replacements’. This led the Trust to insert ‘the minimal amount ... that could feasibly constitute a claim’, ie a round figure of £70k each year, which is a tad suspect.
Developing alternatives to animal research and testing is no easy task. Whilst research can be conducted using computer modelling, tissue engineering, and the use of stem cells, these methods are really complementary to animal tests rather than alternatives. They offer limited information about what happens in a whole, living animal – and this is where the difficulty lies.
So while we simply do not have sufficiently advanced technology to develop large-scale replacements, funding is directed at the other 2Rs, refinement and reduction. The government estimates the total spend to be £10 million – see their FAQs on the matter.
Reduction is clearly happening - even the Dr Hadwen Trust report acknowledges this, and refinement is a key concern for all, highlighted in the recent ASPI report (we blogged about it here). The New Statesman has a recent article, written by the Communications Director of the Dr Hadwen Trust. Unsurprisingly, this is as critical of the government as the report is. Hopefully the public will make up their own minds on this score.
<Wrap up...>
