Oxford animal facility is a wasted opportunity to invest in better science
Wendy Higgins from the Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research comments on the opening of the multi-million pound Biomedical Sciences Building at Oxford University.
Last week we saw the opening of the multi-million pound Biomedical Sciences Building at Oxford University, a new facility that will house thousands of animals from mice to monkeys used in experiments.
Oxford has allowed restricted and controlled media access to its new facility, presumably in the hope of assuaging public fears about animal suffering. But however tempting it may be to convince ourselves that animals in laboratories do not suffer, it is important to resist such illusion.
Recent BBC footage from inside the existing and new facilities at Oxford, showed groups of macaque monkeys in pens replete with hanging tyres to play with. But the truth is that long after the camera crews have left, and once these monkeys have been surgically brain damaged, a few hanging tyres will be little consolation for the physical and mental distress that they will likely suffer. In fact many of them will no longer even possess the motor skills to even reach out and hold on to the rope.
The university has been keen to emphasise that these animals will be used to research human diseases such as cancer, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, HIV, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. However, in almost every one of these disease areas the contribution that has been made by experimenting on animals remains highly questionable. Indeed in many cases it is clear that the animal research being pursued is of very poor relevance to human patients and effective treatments have remained elusive as a result.
With the level of suffering likely to be experienced by these animals, it simply isn’t sufficient to claim that animal experiments are essential for medical progress when the evidence isn’t there to support such an assertion. Just this year an article in the highly esteemed Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine challenged the scientific community for doing precisely that, making unsubstantiated and unjustified claims about the value of animal experiments1.
Indeed when animal experiments have been subjected to the scrutiny of independent scientific review, the overwhelming conclusion differs markedly from pro-animal research rhetoric. The most recent of these, published last year in the British Medical Journal2, reviewed treatments for brain injury, haemorrhage, stroke, respiratory distress syndrome in newborn babies and osteoporosis. More than 3,000 animals had been used, but the review concluded that the animal results had correlated with real human outcomes only fifty percent of the time, odds no better than flipping a coin.
The Oxford facility has been hailed as being at the forefront of innovative and life-saving medical science, but this simply isn’t the case. There is nothing innovative about persisting with animal ‘models’ of disease we already know bear only a superficial resemblance to the actual illnesses we find in people.
Over 25 years, at least 37 animal-tested HIV vaccines have failed in human trials, none have succeeded. In over 170 years of animal research into stroke, 95 stroke drugs have passed animal tests but failed to be safe and effective in people. For over 100 years multiple sclerosis research has relied on animal ‘models’ now acknowledged by some neurologists as so inappropriate, they have almost certainly delayed vital medical progress.
This hardly represents 21st century science. The hopes of millions of people for better cures and treatments are not going to be advanced by Oxford university’s decision to invest further in an approach to research that was already out of date before the facility even opened its doors.
With such substantial levels of investment, Oxford’s new facility could have been a world-leading centre in the most cutting-edge non-animal research techniques science has to offer. Advanced human cell cultures, molecular studies, safe and ethical volunteer research, computer modelling of human organs and 3-D human tissue engineering, truly represent the future of medical progress. These technologies are developing at an incredible pace, achieving research to replace animals in ways that only a few years ago many argued would be impossible to achieve.
For example, novel human cell-based tests have been introduced to ensure that medicines injected into the bloodstream are safe. They replace a 60-year-old test that involved restraining rabbits in stocks. The new cell methods are more reliable, sensitive and accurate, quicker, more adaptable and less costly, and will replace an estimated 200,000 rabbits in EU laboratories annually. Yet until recently, few people believed that this complex whole-body reaction would ever be transferred to the ‘test-tube’. The Dr Hadwen Trust’s own funded research has also yielded many successes, most recently the world’s first 3-D multi-cellular model of early human breast cancer to replace painful experiments in mice that were once thought the only viable option. This innovation is now taking cancer research in new directions.
As the French writer, Francois de La Rochefoucauld, said, ‘Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.’
And so it is with animal experiments. There will always be some, often those whose academic careers have focused on animal research, who claim that it is not possible to replace certain animal experiments. Yet it is precisely that lack of ambition, and not scientific potential, that is holding back non-animal research.
The Dr Hadwen Trust calculates that the government spends approximately 40 pence on non-animal replacement research for every animal who dies in a British laboratory.3 Such minuscule investment is inexcusable and it is vital that funding levels are significantly increased. The Dr Hadwen Trust believes that with the necessary funding, political will and scientific endeavour, we can achieve the replacement of all animal experiments. And when we do, we will surely look back on the opening of Oxford’s Biomedical Sciences building as a tragic missed opportunity.
Wendy Higgins
Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research
1. Matthews RAJ (2008). Medical progress depends on animal models – doesn’t it? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 101:95-98.
2. Perel P et al (2007). Comparison of treatment effects between animal experiments and clinical trials: systematic review. BMJ 334:197.
3. Calculation based on 2006 figures. Let Down By Labour, a report by the Dr Hadwen Trust, July 2008.
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