Heavyweight enters animal testing debate
Geneticist Lord Robert Winston, a familiar face in the UK from his work with the BBC, has entered the debate over animal testing, which has gained significant momentum recently, by placing his weight emphatically in favour of testing. An article by Lord Winston was published in the Guardian newspaper on 31 May. Although high profile names such as UK Prime Minister Tony Blair have already added their signatures to a pro-animal testing petition, Lord Winston is the first with both popular appeal and academic clout to enter the fray. The EU is also in the process of renegotiating its legislation on the treatment of animals used for testing, and is currently conducting a consultation on the subject. The debate into animal testing has run for many years in the UK, with the anti animal testing lobby winning many of the arguments - the UK has the tightest animal testing laws in the world for example. However, some at the extreme end of the anti-lobby have done serious damage to the movement's credibility through high-profile, sometimes anti-social and occasionally criminal tactics. Earlier this month, three British protestors were jailed for 12 years, and another for four years, for their part in a campaign of terror against a family that bred guinea pigs for use in animal testing. The severe sentence reflected the viciousness of the attacks - a six-year campaign that included death threats and criminal damage, culminating in the gang digging-up the body a dead family member and holding it to ransom. The case was so shocking that it appears to have had unexpected and counterproductive consequences. In his article in the Guardian, Lord Winston explains: 'How disgraceful that a 16-year-old boy has put the medical and scientific establishment, drug companies and universities to shame. Laurie Pycroft was in Oxford when he was outraged to see animal rights protesters marching through the street. He wrote out his own pro-testing placard and waved it furiously. Within days Laurie had enthused thousands of students and academics.' From this solitary beginning has grown a movement to mirror the more familiar protests against animal testing. This does give a flavour of how the debate has changed - two years ago, a demonstration in favour of animal testing would have seemed bizarre and more than a little distasteful. Today such protests have unambiguous and growing support. Before, the debate was between an active and vocal opposition to animal testing and a more passive and reserved pro lobby, made up largely of academics. Now, the pro-lobbyists are increasingly confident. Lord Winston labels much of the anti campaign's strongest images simply as 'a misrepresentation'. 'Animal rights activists talk about cruelty and torture, some backing their assertions by publishing out-of-date photographs of 'experiments' banned long ago,' he writes. 'The work we do is performed with compassion, care, humanity and humility. I have never seen an animal suffer pain.' This addresses one of the most powerful of the anti animal testing lobby's arguments - that much of the work carried out is unnecessary. Lord Winston goes on to tackle the argument that animal testing simply does not work. The recent near-fatal accidents during the testing of the experimental TGN 1412 drug in March in the UK appear to give fuel to this assertion. Far from it, according to Lord Winston. 'This tragedy was a rare case, and the best guard against it probably would have been more research on animals before the human trial. In my view, every drug packet should be marked: 'The safety and efficacy of this product were only made possible with animal tests',' he says. He goes on to point out that 70 per cent of Nobel prizes for medicine and physiology have only been possible due to the use of animals in tests. The Pro-test website points out that animal testing is currently kept to a minimum - obliging researchers to use other means where possible, but then enforcing animal studies where non animal tests are impossible. 'Alternatives to animal testing do exist - and scientists already use them. In fact, they are mandated to do so by law wherever possible,' reads a statement. The EU leads the world in finding alternatives to animal testing. Resources have been allocated under the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) to find more non-animal methods for research. Projects such as A-CUTE-TOX, managed by the University of Oulu in Finland, together with ongoing research by the JRC, are reducing the scope for animal tests by developing alternative methods for toxicity testing. A-CUTE-TOX is a large-scale Integrated Project, taking in 34 individual partners in the UK, Belgium, Spain, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Ireland. The 12.15 million euro project will run until 2010, and aims to 'develop a simple and robust in vitro testing strategy for prediction of human acute systemic toxicity, which could replace the animal acute toxicity tests used today', according to the project site. Meanwhile, the EU's legislation on animal testing is under review. Directive 86/609/EEC, signed on 24 November 1986, aimed to eliminate the disparities between Member States in their legislation on animal testing. The welfare of the animals is paramount in the wording of the legislation. For example, all experiments should be conducted under anaesthesia, unless the anaesthesia is considered to be more distressing to the animal than the experiment. The use of animals is limited to the development of drugs, foodstuffs or other products for the treatment of disease, for ascertaining any possible side-effects, and for research into the protection of the natural environment. The revision of the legislation is due to the advancements in alternative, non-animal, methods of testing, and will be based on the three Rs, proposed by William Russell in the 1959 paper 'The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique'. The Three Rs are: Replacement, Reduction and Refinement. Many of the Rs are already in place. For example, the infamous 'LD50' test has been abolished. It required lethal doses of chemicals to be administered to 200 animals, to determine a dose so that half would survive. However, at the other end of the spectrum there are innumerable tests that still do not have adequate non-animal alternatives. This last fact leaves little alternative but to continue with animal testing until reliable other means are found. If the welfare of the animal is of the highest priority, then naturally cruel treatment must be eliminated, but the boundaries between cruel and kind will be the subject of continued debate in the meantime. 'It is time my colleagues got real,' says Lord Winston. 'All British universities doing worthwhile research use animals, and, instead of hiding, they should be boasting of their achievements. Pharmaceutical companies could do far more to promote investigations that are humane, ethical and legal. Scientists should demonstrate the care taken in their research and the benefits it brings to society. And government? Shockingly, my family feels nervous because I speak out on animal research. So politicians have a duty to pursue animal extremists with vigour,' he says.
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