All licensed medicines used in this country have been, at some point, tested on animals.
There is no escaping from this fact, which remains an unpalatable truth for those who believe it is wrong to use animals in research.
Animal rights groups have long campaigned for an end to such testing, but as it stands today no new medicinal drug can be sold that has not been through rigorous trials involving both human and animal testing.
As a majority of the UK population eats meat there are those who say the use of animals in testing – as long as it is done as humanely as possible – is no worse than slaughtering them for food.
But the issue remains an emotive one.
Next month will see the second reading of a private members bill introduced by scientist and fertility expert Lord Robert Winston, which will require all medicines, drugs and vaccines that have utilised animal testing to be labelled as such.
Previous attempts to do this have failed, largely because the Department of Health and pharmaceutical companies have concerns that such labelling might deter some patients from taking medicines.
However, Lord Winston says he wants to re-open the debate on animal testing.
He explained: “It (the bill) is designed to show the hypocrisy of those who try to pretend to unknowing members of the public that animal research can be abandoned. It is designed to help the pharmaceutical companies to ‘put their head above the parapet’. It is also designed to show how rigorously animal research in the UK is regulated; more than any other jurisdiction.”
Worldwide, more than 60m animals are used in medical research. Figures from Understanding Animal Research, an organisation formed in 2008 from two bodies – the Research Defence Society and Coalition for Medical Progress – show that three-quarters of these are rodents, while higher mammals such as cats, dogs and monkeys make up 2 in every 1,000. In the UK 4.11 million research animals were used in 2012, including 8,000 higher animals.
The arguments for allowing animal research to continue are that medicines to benefit humans cannot be obtained by any other methods and that a human life is more valuable than that of an animal. Those against animal experimentation say it causes suffering; the benefits to humans are not proven; and that alternatives are available and should be further developed.
Modern scientists work within a set of principles called the three Rs – Reducing the number of animals used in experiments by improving techniques and data analysis, and sharing information with each other; Refining experiments so that they are less invasive, and providing better medical care and living conditions for animals; Replacing experiments on animals with alternatives such as cell cultures, computer modelling, human volunteers and using statistical information.
It is said that banning animal experiments would mean an end to testing new drugs or that all medicines would have to be trialled solely on humans.
Animal experiments are performed to help decide whether a medicine should go forward to the next stage and are safe for testing on humans.
However, animal experimentation has been found to produce misleading information – leading to the withholding of drugs that were subsequently found to be beneficial to humans or to the release of drugs that were harmless to animals but caused suffering in humans, sometimes even causing death.
But the basic argument is a moral one. Do animals have rights? And, if so, can we justify violating those rights by using them in experiments?
In January this year the European Union, which has banned all animal testing on cosmetics in Europe, introduced legislation that prevents the use of great apes – chimps, gorillas etc – in scientific procedures, other than in exceptional circumstances. The ruling also seeks to improve welfare conditions for all research animals. There is, however, no proposal to phase out the use of other primates in the foreseeable future.
In the UK, before any medicine can be used to treat people it has to be licensed.
These licenses are granted by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and the European Medicines Agency.
Potential medicines are researched using tissue culture, computer analysis techniques and animal testing, before moving on to human trials. Data is needed from two separate species of animal – one rodent and one non-rodent (usually a dog) – before a medicine can be used in clinical trials.
The entire process can take 10 years or more.
Supporters of animal testing and those against it often use the same example to prove their point.
Thalidomide, a drug developed to combat morning sickness, was found to cause birth defects and subsequently withdrawn.
The group Understanding Animal Research points out that the drug was not tested on pregnant animals and if it had been then its full effects would have been known before it was licensed.
Those who oppose animal testing say that research on laboratory animals failed to prove the drug’s safety for use in humans and even if had been tested on pregnant animals the results might not have highlighted a problem as animals often don’t respond to drugs in the same way as humans.
THE British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection has long campaigned for an end to animal testing. Its chief executive, Michelle Thew, said: “The public is fully aware that medicines are tested on animals. What people want to know – but animal researchers refuse to disclose – is, first, what exactly is done to animals and how they suffer and, second, much more information about the over 90% of drugs which, according to the US Food & Drug Administration, fail in clinical trials despite passing animal experiments.
“Time and again BUAV investigations have shown that conditions for animals in laboratories are certainly not to the highest standards that the Government claims. Our recent investigation at Imperial College London revealed horrific conditions for animals who were forced to endure experiments without always receiving adequate levels of anaesthesia and pain relief.”
Labelling medicines to show that they have been tested on animals will raise awareness of the issue and hopefully lead to change.
So says Dr Laura Waters, principal enterprise fellow in pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Huddersfield.
A senior researcher, Dr Waters comes down firmly against animal testing on the grounds that it simply isn’t useful to research for human medicines.
She explained: “The only reason I would be against Dr Winston’s bill is that I’m worried it might stop people taking their medication.
“But it will highlight what goes on.
“I just think there is no point to testing on animals unless it is for a veterinary use.
“ You can’t use animals to predict how a human will react. Animal testing doesn’t add anything to what we can find out about a compound in other ways.”
Following this year’s EU ban on animal testing of cosmetics in Europe, Dr Waters says she has been approached by cosmetic companies looking for alternatives.
She is leading a research project to find a working skin mimic that will replicate how human skin works.
“We have definitely got more companies approaching us now and I would like to think that it could translate across to pharmaceuticals. If animal testing was banned they would also have to find alternatives,” she said.
Tighter rules on animal testing mean that welfare standards in laboratories are now higher but Dr Waters, who is a vegetarian, still believes there is a moral issue of whether animals should be used at all.
She added: “Most people thought that cosmetic testing was wrong and yet think that testing for life saving drugs is OK, but there is a whole range of drugs that are not life saving and at the end of the day the animals are not being allowed to live a normal life.”
Dr Waters points out that researchers have many ways of checking the efficacy and safety of medicines, including computer modelling, using existing data and tissue cultures.
Animals are used in both pharmaceutical and university research (although not in Huddersfield’s university), also to test the safety of household products.
They may have to endure painful procedures or take part in lengthy experiments.
Dr Waters says she would like to see the European government change the law so that animal testing would be optional. She explained: “So that if the scientists involved in a study feel that there is some other way they can get the data they need that doesn’t involve animal experimentation then that would be allowed.”
Animal rights campaigner Jane Speller believes animal testing is not only cruel and ethically wrong it is also failing to find the answers to medicine's biggest challenges.
Animal experimentation, she says, is out of date and the European government should be seriously considering newly-developed alternatives so that it will no longer need to make animal testing a legal requirement for drugs.
“There are such differences between humans and animals at a cellular and molecular level that it makes little sense to use animals for human research,” she explained.
Jane, who lives in Brighouse, is a volunteer for the Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research, which has been supporting the development of techniques and procedures to replace the use of animals in biomedical research and testing for more than 40 years.
She believes that raising awareness of the shortfalls of animal testing and fund-raising to develop alternative research methods is the best way to bring an end to animal experimentation.
“Maybe 100 years ago using animals was better than nothing, but today there are many new technologies that can be used,” she added. “For example, a 3D multi-cellular model of breast cancer, which could be used in the development of new drugs, has been developed at London University, funded by the Dr Hadwen Trust.”
Jane points out that animal testing can give misleading results. She explained: “A big concern is that animal tests can put human clinical trial volunteers at risk because there are substances toxic to people that are tolerated by animals. And it happens the other way around as well. How many potentially life-saving drugs have been discarded because they proved harmful to rats? Rats can be more sensitive to toxins than we are.”
Concerns from campaigners like Jane are shared by members of the medical profession itself. Back in 2004 a survey of GPs found that more than 80% were worried that data from animal testing could be misleading.
The Safer Medicines Campaign says that the effectiveness of animal testing has yet to be compared with the many new technologies developed in recent years – such as tissue culturing and computer modelling.
For more information check out www.drhadwentrust.org
Pharmacists are worried that labelling medicines to show they have been tested on animals would lead some patients to stop taking their medication.
According to Dr Gillian Hawksworth, Royal Pharmaceutical Society Local Practice Forum lead, there is already a problem with people not following medical advice. The society estimates that as many as 50% of patients don’t take their medication properly.
“If there was labelling on every single box of tablets then my personal view is that it might add to the problem,” she said.
“You might get someone who is an animal lover and with a long-term condition who decides that they don’t want to take their medicines.”
Dr Hawksworth, a visiting professor at the University of Huddersfield, added: “The big focus of the profession is about getting people to take their medicines optimally and as they have been prescribed.”
