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. 

However, a small item in today’s Guardian newspaper reports on an estimate for annual worldwide laboratory animal use that totals 115 million. The figure comes from a paper by antivivisectionists in the current issue of the journal ATLA published by the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Research.  Unfortunately it is not freely available online, but I found a few minutes to read it.

There are fundamental questions about the way the antivivisectionists have collected and analysed their statistics. They include animals that are bred, but not used in research – so called ‘surplus’ animals – and animals that are bred and humanely killed so that their tissues and organs may be used in research. There is likely to be considerable overlap between the two, and both are excluded from the statistics published by the UK government, which regulates the use of living vertebrate animals in research. The authors also include in their ‘missing animals’ category GM animals used for breeding. They claim that except for two countries, these are not included in official estimates.

The authors arrive at a figure of 57 million worldwide for these ‘missing’ animals, extrapolated from extremely limited, very variable and out-of-date estimates. Yet this figure makes up more half of their estimated total of 115 million animals in research worldwide, a figure they know the media will pick up as the topline result.

The editorial recognises that there are ethical issues involved, and that the use of nonhuman primates has long been a contentious issue. Nonetheless, its conclusion is that ’the solid scientific case that can be made to support the use of monkeys and apes in research must take precedence over ethical arguments until the latter can be settled for good‘.

Nature Medicine debunks the myth that there can be realistic alternatives to all use of nonhuman primates in research. As it points out, ’in vitro and computational strategies might be powerful, but they cannot shed as much light on the complex interaction between cells and organs as the use of whole animals can‘. It also finds it hard to see how ’in vitro approaches by themselves can supplant the use of nonhuman primates in the evaluation of drug safety‘.

Of course, the editorial recognises that nonhuman primates would not be regarded as the first port of call. In some cases other species such as dogs, ferrets and pigs could be used instead. But similar ethical issues apply in principle to the use of these species as well. There are no easy answers. But the number of nonhuman primates used in research projects is always a very small fraction of the number of people affected by the disease under investigation. Judgements have to be made. It is just a question of getting the balance right.

The care of the animals in question was not up to the required standards for a variety of reasons, from not being fed to inadequate housing during refurbishment. However, nearly two thirds of the infringements were minor technical issues and did not lead to extra suffering. It is because of the strict regulations in place and the high welfare standards we have that such reports are detailed.

For every 5,000 drugs that enter pre-clinical testing in the US, on average only five are ever tested on humans, and only one approved for use. This puts into context the many ‘magic bullet’ treatments that we hear so much about. However, as a result of promising lab results, Nanospectra Biosciences has gained approval to ‘commence a human trial in patients with head and neck cancer’ this year using ‘AuroLase Therapy’.

He continued:

The pioneering research was led by Dr Jennifer West at Rice University in Texas, before the technology was licensed to Nanospectra, based in Houston. West’s laboratory exposed mice with cancerous tumours to tiny ‘nanoshells’ and a special laser, which beams light similar to that used in your TV remote ….

Animalresearch.info has some interesting information on the use of zebrafish in experiments.

Looking back through the headlines RDS has picked up, there have been some interesting breakthroughs thanks to zebrafish - just in the past few months research has hinted at a cure for Huntington’s disease, offered hope for children with Menkes disease, and given us more understanding of hearing disorders.

It’s good to know, that even with this increase, there’ll still be vital consideration given to the environment of the fish - as a previous blog entry can attest!

For more information on the details of the 2007 report, take a look at the RDS website. 

Not tested on animals

Concern for animal welfare is all very well, but Tom Needham notes that the advertising literature of the manufacturers of Skinner’s dog foods states that ‘no animals are used, or tested on, in any way by our company’. And Karel Tripp feels that the marketers of Arden Grange cat biscuits may also be taking their protestations a bit far. The package states that the contents are ‘not tested on animals’.

What incredible leaps of faith to create pet foods with no idea whether or not your target animals will like the taste.

I suspect this is manufacturers running scared of previous antivivisection campaigns against testing pet food on animals, which always seemed a little strange. Where are they now?

The group SABRE has launched a website to ‘facilitate discussion about the methods used to design and evaluate animal studies in medical research’. We support such attempts at dialogue, and hope it takes off. So far there are few posts.

SABRE includes links to a number of references, which it points out are not endorsed by the group. This raises an interesting question. We clicked on four references at random, and three of them were by Andrew Knight—a well-known antivivisectionist. All were claiming to be systematic reviews which demonstrate that animal models don’t work. This individual is hardly likely to come to any other conclusion.

The whole point of systematic reviews is to use a defined methodology to improve the analysis of existing research, so as to ensure a better foundation for future research. At some stage we could need a methodology to sort the poorly-conducted reviews from the rigorous ones!

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.

Conn is an Associate Director of the Oregon National Primate Research Centre, and has been targeted by the increasingly powerful animal rights extremist movement in the US. It is the actions of this group that prompted him to draw on his experiences and write a new book with James Parker, called The Animal Research War. It looks at the arguments used by animal activists, and explains the truth behind animal research.