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NAVS condemns Blair support for animal tests

Posted: 15 May 2006

The National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) is deeply concerned and disappointed to hear that the Prime Minister is reported to have signed an online petition in favour of animal testing. NAVS describes the Prime Minister’s action as irresponsible and inappropriate.

Jan Creamer, chief executive of NAVS, commented: “We understand this petition has only 13,000 names, as compared to over 20 times that number of people who support animal welfare groups on non-animal research, plus the overwhelming public support for replacement of animals in testing.”

“This petition is being run by an extremist group of vested interests representing a very narrow area of medical research that wants to see the UK continue with an outdated method of research as opposed to taking up more advanced, non-animal scientific methods. This may be another publicity stunt by the group – yet despite the enormous publicity it has had, the public don’t trust it – and that is why there are so few signatures.”

The MORI Poll for this group of February 2005 also recorded that 81% of people agreed that there needs to be more research into alternatives to animal experimentation and 76% could only accept animal experimentation with no unnecessary suffering to animals.

The public wants safe products and new medicines – but without animal tests – and they can have that. Now, the majority of medical research does not use animals anyway.

Animal tests are unreliable, unethical and unnecessary – as the recent disastrous TGN1412 drug trial showed – where human volunteers were given doses of the drug 500 times weaker than the dose given to the monkeys in the lab. No side effects were seen in the animals, but the consequences for the human volunteers were horrendous.

In the case of TGN1412 there is already an alterative available that is safer for people and avoids the problem of misleading animal results – a technique called microdosing could have been used. This involves giving humans ultra-low doses of the tests drug – too low to cause damaging effects, and analysing the results with computer system called Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS).

Jan Creamer added: “This week also saw a dramatic increase in live animals used in British military experiments, up 76% over the last five years to more than 21,000 animals - monkeys exposed to anthrax, pigs having their blood drained and being injected with Ecoli, while others received fatal doses of poison gas and lethal nerve agents. MPs have expressed concerns in the House of Commons about these tests fearing they may have been conducted on behalf of foreign governments. We await the government response to such an outrage.”

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