Animal Testing

Given it was the budget yesterday, I feel I should offer some sort of comment on that. However given that I'm neither an economist nor an accountant, I don't really feel qualified to comment beyond being quite glad the personal allowance has gone up and a bit disappointed alcohol tax has gone up. Instead, I am going to write about something else which has been in the news a fair bit recently; animal testing.

A few weeks ago, several transport companies announced that they would no longer bring animals into the UK for the purpose of testing. To me, this seems more than a little short-sighted.

During my scientific training, I participated in several activities which involved animals. As well as the dissection I'm sure everyone is familiar with, animal models were used to demonstrate certain phenomena. In addition to this, in my latter years, I was involved in research that used animal matter as it's bedrock.

Animal testing goes on in almost all institutions where biological or psychological research occurs and I think it is a good thing.

The most obvious use for vivisection to most people is drug testing. Before any compounds which may have therapeutic effects gets anywhere near humans, they are tested on animals to see if they work. To those that ask if it can be done either in test tubes or by way of computer modelling, the short answer is no. Certainly, the initial tests are usually done in vitro however even on it's largest scale, this only allows investigation of substances on individual cells. Useful but by no means conclusive. Science is yet to understand all the complexities of how cells work in larger structures such as organs and the interplay each organ has with the others. This makes computer modelling virtually impossible. The only way to gain a true idea of what a compound does in a large scale complex organism is to test it on one. Animal testing provides essential information as to the effects of potentially therapeutic compounds on systems not too different from our own. Some people may suggest that we skip the animal test and go straight from in vitro trials to human trials. This has been done; most notably by Edward Jenner with his smallpox vaccine. If people want to take that risk then I suppose it's up to them but would you send your children, partner, parents, friends, etc to be filled with a compound of largely unknown effects. I certainly wouldn't.

Another use for animals in science is disease modelling. Because of their shorter lifespans, it is possible to recreate diseases and follow their progress over a much shorter space of times. This allows theories to be developed and tested over months to years rather than decades. Such conditions have allowed medical science to progress very rapidly over a relatively short space of time. The explosion of knowledge on horrendous diseases such as cancer and alzheimers can be directly attributed to this. In short, this isn't progress for the sake of progress. This is progress for the good of the world and all the creatures in it.

Animals have also aided our understanding of how things exist "normally". Our knowledge of genetics can be attributed in large part to the fruit fly. Again, it's rapid life-cycle can be used to test theories rapidly and the knowledge gained has been taken forward and used for greater good.

At this point it is worth noting, whatever the end use of the animals, it is not done lightly. Proposals for experiments are rigorously scrutinised by both academics and an ethics committee (even down to first year undergraduate practicals) and if a viable alternative can be found then it will be used. The people involved in this scrutiny take their role very seriously. One thing that animal testing is certainly not is cruelty for the sake of it although I will admit, some of the experiments must be pretty unpleasant.

The fact is that humans have always had what could be regarded as an exploitative relationship with animals. Since time immemorial we have eaten them and used their skins for warmth and shelter. We have used feathers for comfort, fats for light and bones for decoration. In short they have kept us alive. Using animals for the sake of research is little more than continuing the to use animals to keep us alive. As long as the research doesn't involve wanton and gratuitous cruelty and any suffering which may occur is kept to an absolute minimum then I think animal testing still has a place in research and will do for a long time.

JR