Animal Aid

Researchers have devised endless ways of injuring animals in experiments. They use them to test substances, including weedkillers and pesticides and new ingredients for cleaning fluids, paints, food and drinks. Animals are also used in medical research, in an attempt to find the causes of, and treatments for, human disease.

Animal Aid believes that it is morally indefensible to incarcerate, experiment upon, deliberately injure or kill any animal for the intended benefit of people (or other animals).

As well as being unethical, animal experiments are unreliable and can be dangerously misleading. This is because animals’ bodies are different from ours, and they do not suffer from the same diseases.

Drugs also affect animals and us differently. For example, products such as aspirin and paracetamol, commonly used to treat people, are highly poisonous to cats. On the other hand, each year, drugs that were passed safe in animal tests have to be withdrawn after causing serious side-effects, even deaths, when given to people.

The many differences subtle - between humans and other species make animal experiments a waste of time, effort and money - and a proven hazard to human health.

The scope and nature of animal experiments in the UK today

The total number of animal experiments conducted annually in the UK is around three million. After the total declined for a number of years, the trend is now upwards. This is due to a massive increase in experiments involving GM (genetically modified) animals. Such ‘procedures’ now account for about one third of the total of all experiments. The public is especially uneasy about the UK conducting far more experiments on monkeys (about 3,000 annually) than any other European Union member.

The types of animals used in experiments include mice, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, cats, dogs, pigs, sheep, goats, primates and birds. Many people do not know that reptiles, amphibians, octopuses and large numbers of fish are also experimented upon. In addition, an estimated five to six million animals are bred but then killed, simply because they are surplus to requirements. These victims are not recorded in official Home Office statistics. Another half a million animals, bred for their body parts and tissues, are also conveniently omitted.

Details of animal research are set out in the Home Office annual publication, Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals. Category headings include: fundamental and applied research, education, training and toxicity testing. These titles fail to reveal the true nature of what the animals actually endure. Many experiments cause severe suffering, often to the point of the animal’s death. Some routinely include food deprivation, electric shocks, surgical mutilation, pain tests and extreme stress. Additionally, animals are infected with lethal viruses and other damaging disease organisms. They undergo deliberate brain damage and are forced to inhale toxic gases. Animal experiments are carried out by drug and chemical companies, university and hospital departments and other non-commercial bodies. Animal testing is also conducted by the military. Some weapons tests are as secretive as they are horrific, and include studies into the effects of chemical and biological warfare.

The significance of animal pain and suffering

Pain is one of the most important and fundamental survival mechanisms provided by nature. Any animal possessing a nervous system and pain receptors is capable of suffering the effects of pain. That includes fish (The government’s own Farm Animal Welfare Council (1) has found that fish experience fear, stress and pain when removed from water, and that the physiological mechanisms in fish for experiencing pain are very similar to those in mammals).

Pain in humans is a subjective experience whose assessment and treatment can be complex, but, in general, most people can tell a doctor what hurts and how much. Clearly, this is not possible for animals, in whom the measurement of pain must rey on other indicators, such as attempted movement away from a painful stimulus. Researchers reflexively declare that the potential gain to humanity outweighs the animal suffering and specify whether that suffering will be mild, moderate or substantial. In 2002, Cambridge University judged that bleeding head wounds, fits, vomiting, severe bruising and whole-body tremors suffered by marmosets amounted to ‘moderate’ suffering. Such documented cases strongly suggest that researchers have become desensitised to the animal suffering that they cause.

Recent examples of published scientific papers reveal a culture of brutality - rats’ screams of pain recorded by researchers at Nottingham University (2) deliberate nerve damage to the tongues of cats at Sheffield School of Dentistry (3) experimental liver damage to dogs at Liverpool University (4) and 16 years of curiosity-driven heart experiments on dogs at Leeds Medical School (5).

Equally extreme in terms of animal suffering is the testing of toxic chemicals and drugs. These experiments are often designed to produce death as an end point. In 2005, more than 130,000 rats, nearly 5,000 dogs and 3,000 monkeys were used in such tests.

In addition to the physical stress of being restrained and exposed to painful experimental procedures (e.g. the surgical mutilation or removal of vital organs, or the insertion of electrodes into their brains), animals in laboratories also experience psychological stress. Institutionalising any species, from rats to primates, fundamentally compromises their wellbeing.

The laboratory environment is one of constant stress. The animals are unable to move freely, cannot get away from their own wastes, and, at intervals, are taken from their cages for blood tests, surgery, weighing and other interventions. These procedures are routine for the laboratory staff, but can be terrifying for the animals. When animals are stressed, their immune function, hormone levels and susceptibility to cancer and to viral and bacterial infections all increase. Stressed animals frequently suffer from illnesses, leaving experimenters to try to sort out which symptoms are caused by the drugs being tested and which are caused by lab conditions or other unknown factors (6).

Legislation governing UK animal experiments

Animal experiments are ‘regulated’ by the Home Office, under the 1986 Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act. In order to perform an animal experiment (referred to as a ‘procedure’), a researcher must first obtain a personal licence. A project licence is also required. Finally, the place or premises where the research is being carried out must be officially approved. The number of Home Office inspectors, responsible for monitoring the experiments carried out at the UK’s nearly 300 research establishments, currently stands at around 30. Few welfare infringements are reported by them and, of these, none has ever led to the conviction of a researcher under the 1986 Act.

Based on the above, one might be tempted to conclude that all animal research is conducted and monitored to very high welfare standards. Alas, this is not the case. Leaked documents and undercover video footage have revealed horrific animal suffering and researcher incompetence, which Home Office inspectors failed to detect. This is despite the fact that 60 per cent of inspections are purportedly unannounced. When breaches have been revealed, criminal charges have still not been brought.

Government's shock admission on animal tests

In March 2004, Mike Hancock MP asked the Home Secretary whether the efficacy (value to human medicine) of animal experiments had ever been studied. Caroline Flint MP, responding on behalf of the Home Secretary, stated that ‘The Home Office has not commissioned or evaluated any formal research on the efficacy of animal experiments’.

In a subsequent question, Mr Hancock asked whether ‘an evaluation of the efficacy of animal experimentation’ would be commissioned. The reply was that: ‘The government has no plans to do so’. And yet the minister went on to declare that ‘animal experiments must be judged to be potentially efficacious in order to be licensed under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986’. The startling inconsistency in this answer is hardly difficult to detect - the Home Office will not grant permission for animals to be experimented upon, it was saying, unless it is sure that such experiments will produce benefits to humans that outweigh the harm done to the animals. Yet it has never bothered to conduct its own research - or look at anyone else’s - into whether or not animal experiments are reliable.

Significantly, a recent poll of 500 GPs (7) revealed a high level of distrust of results obtained from animal experiments. More than 80 per cent were concerned that animal data can be misleading when applied to humans. Eighty-three per cent said they would support an independent scientific evaluation of the clinical relevance of animal testing. The results of this survey led to the formulation of parliamentary Early Day Motion 92, calling for a transparent scientific inquiry into the efficacy of animal experiments. This EDM has received massive parliamentary support, with the signatures of 250 MPs.

Click here for part 2 of Bad Ethics, Bad Science, in which we look at the 'animal mode' in medical research.

Differences between Rats and humans

• Rats have four legs, a tail and whiskers.
• They can eat scraps off the street that would make us violently ill.
• They have no gall bladder.
• They cannot vomit.
• Their bodies manufacture vitamin C (ours cannot).
• Forty per cent of marketed drugs and food additives cause cancer in rodents.

Differences between non-human primates and humans

• Chimpanzees are essentially immune to human killer diseases such as AIDS, hepatitis B and common malaria.
• Our brain is 16 times larger than that of the macaque monkey, yet these animals are used to study human neurological diseases.
• Parkinson’s disease becomes progressively worse in people, while marmoset monkeys subjected to the chemically-induced version gradually recover.
• Countless treatments for stroke have been developed in non-human primates, yet all of them have failed or even harmed patients in clinical trials.
• Plaques and tangles in the brain are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease in humans but not in monkeys, in whom it is artificially induced.
• There are no comparable regions in the monkey brain that correspond to the language areas in the human brain.

Some findings from undercover exposés

• The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection infiltrated Cambridge University twice and revealed the findings in 2002. Secret video footage showed the suffering of genetically modified mice. In addition, a ten-month undercover investigation into monkey brain research at the University documented the miserable fate of hundreds of marmoset monkeys imprisoned inside small, barren cages for their entire lives and deliberately brain-damaged.
• On September 21, 2000, Uncaged Campaigns uncovered the shocking secret history of pig-to-primate organ transplants. Between 1994 and 2000, hearts and kidneys from genetically engineered piglets were transplanted into the necks, abdomens and chests of hundreds of monkeys and baboons captured from the wild. The research was conducted by the biotech company Imutran, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS).
• Channel 4’s shocking undercover documentary, ‘It’s a Dog's Life’ (March 1997), showed beagle dogs being punched, violently shaken and yelping, as technicians from HLS made repeated, failed attempts to take blood samples from the terrified animals.
• In March 1998, Animal Aid obtained and published details of an internal document from Oxford University, marked ‘strictly confidential’, which revealed that some researchers lacked the basic surgical competence to stitch up wounds that they had deliberately inflicted during experiments.
• Undercover footage filmed by the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London revealed Tamarin monkeys being injected with excrement. At Toxicol Laboratories in Hertfordshire, NAVS investigators discovered beagle puppies being fed weedkiller that had already been tested; while at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford University, the NAVS documented laboratory technicians laughing as they smashed live mice against bench tops to kill them.