 |
|
Choose a category:
More Alternatives | High Welfare | Strict Controls | Greatest Benefits | Other
Or, if you cannot find the answer you require, ask us your question...
|
|
Strict Controls
|
Is animal testing required by law?
Around 15% of experiments in the UK are required by different laws. For medicines the key legislation is the Medicines Act. For non-medical items there are others, e.g. the Consumer Protection Act and the Food Safety Act
Further Information:
Laws that protect and require animal research
|
Isn't deliberately inducing seizures for epilepsy research unacceptable? (Manchester meeting)
This is where the decision isn't and shouldn't be made by scientists. It's made the ethical committees and by the Government. Deciding whether it is justified to use 50 mice that may lead to improvments for 50,000 people is a difficult decision to make. (Prof Nancy Rothwell, brain scientist)
|
It's barbaric what researchers do to monkeys. They inject into the brain, remove parts of the brain. How can this ever be justified? (Question to CMP Manchester meeting)
Primates are treated very specially in British law and by British scientists. Their use can be justifed by advances to diseases of the brain, for example, but that does not mean any scientist can or should simply say "I want to inject something into the brain of a monkey." (Prof Nancy Rothwell, brain scientist)
|
What are your comments regarding frequent revelations of the number of people who are killed or injured from properly tested drugs?
The main purpose of safety testing with animals is to protect the healthy volunteers and patients who participate in clinical trials. When it comes to world-wide prescription you would need to have vast animal and human trials to find the sort of side effect that takes place in 1 in 500 patients, say.
A recent BMJ paper, shows that at least 93% of the adverse drug reactions that cause hospital admissions are to do with type A responses, i.e. the drug did exactly as expected. For example, aspirin can cause bleeding, this is known but people don't follow the guidance. Or - as yet another paper suggested - they don't tell their doctors that they are taking complementary medicines that might interact. The authors estimated at least three quarters of the admissions could have been avoided if best medical practice had been used.
Also the drugs that cause the problems - aspirin, digitalis, warfarin, diuretics - are at least 30 years old. Drugs being discovered using modern toxicology cause far fewer adverse reactions than the older ones.
So when prescription medicines cause problems it is usually because patient compliance and monitoring was not as good as it might be or the side effect was so rare as to have been missed in human trials as well as animal ones.
Further Information:
Adverse drug reactions as cause of admission to hospital
|
Why are researchers so secretive, they must have something to hide?
Extremists have targeted researchers and colleagues violently. This impedes openness.
Nevertheless, experimental methods and results are published in journals and at conferences. Visitors do see animal facilities, talks are given to school students. And British researchers and laboratories are subject to more inspection than anywhere else in the world.
|
Why aren't there more inspectors?
There are around 30 Home Office Inspectors. Between them, they make about 2500 visits a year to the 240 places that can carry out research using animals. Two-thirds of those visits are unannounced. Compared with other parts of the world this is vastly more scrutiny. Compared with other forms of inspection, e.g. schools and hospitals, this is vastly more scrutiny.
Further Information:
Information from the Home Office
|
Will the number of animal procedures go up or down in the short term? (Manchester meeting)
There has been an increase recently, almost exclusively in mice. In some of these nothing has been done to them apart from breeding. I think we may move to monitoring suffering rather than the number of mice that lived happily and were then humanely killed.
We need more meaninful numbers. I often quote that the British Mammal Society estimated 100 times the number of laboratory animals were killed by domestic cats. (Prof Nancy Rothwell, brain scientist)
|
Home 
FAQs 
