National Antivisection Society
Extremists have become smokescreen as animal experiments rise
26 May 2006
The National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) said today that the activities of a handful of extremists are being used as a smokescreen by the Home Office to hide the fact that animal experimentation is steadily rising in the UK, after animal tests dropped consistently for many years.
As Oxford University goes to the High Court to extend the exclusion zone around its latest laboratory, the NAVS points out that despite claims that researchers are being driven abroad, the UK has now overtaken every country in Europe in animal use.
The NAVS condemns violence and intimidation but sees the issue of law-breaking as an entirely different matter to that of the use of animals in research and medical progress.
The Home Office appears to muddle these two issues.
The recent TGN1412 drug trial disaster showed that animal tests are unreliable – with no side effects seen in lab animals, but catastrophic side effects for the volunteers. Yet micro dosing – where ultra-low, safe doses of a drug are given to humans and analysed by an Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) unit, could have been used. It’s safer for humans and avoids the problems of differences between species.
Tim Phillips, Campaigns Director for NAVS, asks: “As Oxford University extends their exclusion zone round the new lab, shouldn’t we be questioning what will happen inside it? At a time when every other Home Office decision is being questioned, do we really believe animal experimentation is as strictly controlled and regulated as we are always assured?”
A MORI Poll in February 2005 found that 81% wanted to see more research into alternatives and 76% wanted an end to unnecessary suffering for animals.
The public wants safe products and new medicines – but without animal tests – and they can have that with the latest 21st century advances in research techniques and computer technology, using tissue cultures, human data, human & environment studies, MRI scans & micro-dosing on human volunteers.
NAVS has funded a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scanner costing nearly £500,000 at Aston University for more effective brain research into strokes and cancer - an alternative to animal experiments where electrodes are inserted into monkey brains.
Tim Phillips added: “It begs the question why is the UK the biggest user of laboratory animals in Europe at a time when more non-animal research methods are available than ever before and acknowledged to be more reliable.”
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