'Roadmap to Replacement' needed, says the DHT, following 14% rise in animal experiments
The Dr Hadwen Trust was quick to respond to new Home Office statistics published July 21st that reveal a substantial rise in Britain's animal experiments. With 2009 marking the 50th anniversary of the birth of the 3Rs* (replacement, reduction and refinement of animal experiments) , far greater progress to replace animals with alternatives could and should have been made but instead animal numbers are now as high as they were in the late 1980s. The Dr Hadwen Trust said this was "a wake-up call moment for policy makers" and immediately wrote to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Conservative leader David Cameron, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg and Green Party leader Dr Caroline Lucas, to seek political commitment to devising a national 'Roadmap to Replacement' .Animal research statistics 2008 at a glance
39% increase in animal experiments sinceLabour came to power in 1997
3.656 million animal experiments
3.583 million animals
14% rise in animal experiments
16% rise in experiments on GM animals
16% rise in monkey experiments
17% rise in cat experiments
9% rise in mice experiments
82% rise in experiments on amphibians
85% rise in fish experiments
95% rise in pig experiments
Decreases in use of dogs (-18%), rabbits (-13%)
Click here to read our press release reaction...* What are the 3Rs?In 1959 two British scientists, William Russell and Rex Burch, were the first to define the concept of the replacement, reduction and refinement of animal experiments, now adopted throughout much of the world and incorporated into legislation. Whilst the Dr Hadwen Trust's work focuses on the single 'R' of the replacement of animals, we recognise the enormous significance of the 3Rs concept in stimulating work on non-animal methods over the last fifty years.
DHT tells House of Lords Committee: EU needs new strategic vision to replace animals
In June the Dr Hadwen Trust's science policy team presented oral evidence to the House of Lords EU Committee as part of its consultation with experts on the Directive 86/609 proposals. The DHT told the Committee that policy makers must embrace the vision of a world where animal experiments have either been fully replaced or are prohibited, and that as a solutions-led charity the Dr Hadwen Trust works to find the science to achieve that vision. Once again we promoted the establishment of an EU Centre of Excellence in Alternatives, incorporating a new strategic vision of science for the future. We believe that establishing an EU Centre would be one of the most significant achievements of the revised Directive, setting strategic goals for replacement science across all areas of animal use. The Committee's newly published interim conclusions indicate that it agrees.
Find out more...7th World Congress on Alternatives
The Dr Hadwen Trust's science and policy team is gearing up for the 7th World Congress on Alternatives in Rome. This is the key event of the year attended by non-animal research scientists and experts from around the globe, providing a unique forum to meet, exchange ideas and create opportunities for international collaborations. We are delighted that nineDr Hadwen Trust-funded researchers will be presenting their cutting-edge replacement work at the Congress this year.
Find out more...Ricky Gervais, Joanna Lumley and other stars join cyber march for humane science
Comedian Ricky Gervais, actress and DHT Patron Joanna Lumley OBE and rockers Brian May CBE and Chrissie Hynde, have joined tens of thousands of people taking part in the Make Animal Testing History virtual march to Brussels to update the EU's 20-year old law on animal experiments.
Click here to see the celebrity avatars cheering on the marchers; click each avatar to see what they have to say."With all the non-animal techniques available now and in the future, we really don't need to hurt animals to make medical progress."Ricky Gervais
Dr Hadwen Trust research wins non-animal replacement prize
Dr Hadwen Trust-funded researchers studying breast cancer have won a prestigious non-animal replacement prize at an event hosted by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) and held at the House of Lords. Our researchers at Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine and Queen Mary's, University of London, constructed athree-dimensional model of human breast cancer in the test tube using human cells.
Find out more...Spotlight on life-saving research without animal suffering
Huntington's disease: Huntington's disease (HD) is an incurable inherited genetic disorder that affects the nervous system. Currently, much research into HD is conducted on monkeys, pigs and rodents injected with toxic chemicals or genetically modified to mimic symptoms. However, results have been conflicting and there have been no major therapeutic advances so far. Our research at Sheffield University aims to produce a new non-animal model of HD using human skin cells from HD patients. This would be far more useful for understanding the underlying cellular mechanisms that contribute to the disease and enable fast screening of potential drugs.
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Artificial "microlungs" grown using human lung tissue, could replace animal testing for lung toxicity for pharmaceuticals, chemicals and cosmetics.
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Welcome Candida and Adina
Dr Candida Nastrucci (left) is our new Science and Communications Officer. A scientist holding a DPhil in Clinical Biochemistry from the University of Oxford, Candida has expertise in Applied Molecular Biology and Biotechnology with an MSc from University College London (UCL) and a BSc. Hons. in Biochemistry with Biotechnology, from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). She also has experience in post-doctoral research and teaching in academia, as well as animal charity work.
Adina Farmaner (right) has joined the Dr Hadwen Trust team as Fundraising Director. Adina brings with her 15 years experience working for charities such as Christian Aid, the RSPCA and Amnesty International UK, and she now hopes to unite her extensive fundraising experience with her passion for the DHT charity of which she has been a supporter for over 10 years.
The Dr Hadwen Trust is the UK's leading non-animal medical research charity, benefiting people and animals. If you are not already a member,
join us today and help us put your ethics into action with vital medical research to replace animal experiments, like our Huntington's disease research project. You'll receive our quarterly members' magazine Alternative News as well as other exclusive benefits. With your help we can stop the suffering - thank you.
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*Vivisection is a ‘costly distraction’*
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/ blog/7769- why-do-we- need-do-animal- experiments- part-1-drug- discovery- 22800.html# comment-Blog. 8 July 2009.
Animal experiments are a costly distraction in drugdevelopment.Despite extensive tests in animals, 92% of all potential newdrugs fail in clinical trials, usually becasue they do notwork or are unsafe, according to a white paper by the US FDA(Innovation or Stagnation: Challenge and Opportunity on theCritical Path to New Medical Products, 2004). In no other areaof science is the mantra repeated that a decades-oldtechnology is the best we have & will ever have!'The reason we use animal tests is because we have a comfortlevel with the process . . . not because it is the correctprocess, not because it gives us any real new information weneed to make decisions.' Melvin E. Andersen, director,computational systems biology, Hamner Institutes for HealthSciences, USA (quoted by Gaul, Washington Post, Saturday,April 12, 2008; Page A01).Intriguingly, a US National Research Council reportcommissioned by the US Environmental Protection Agency(Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and aStrategy, 2007) identified an urgent need to move from slow,expensive animal tests to more modern, more human-relevantmethods using human cells & tissues and computer programmes.The authors expected the 'paradigm shift' away from animaltests which they advocated to encounter resistance, astoxicological testing practices are 'deeply ingrained' andpressure to maintain the status quo is strong. Speaking toreporters at an American Association for the Advancement ofScience conference in 2008, after the launch of a tripleagency initiative to realise the goals outlined in the report,Christopher Austin, Director, US National Institutes of HealthChemical Genomics Center, said that 'Traditional animaltesting is expensive, time-consuming, uses a lot of animalsand from a scientific perspective the results do notnecessarily translate to humans. It’s a bold, ambitious thingto try to do but our goal is to eliminate animal use intoxicology in ten years.' More information about theinitiative can be found in Collins et al, Science, 319,906-907.Experts from academia & industry gathered at the Speed &Safety in Drug Discovery conference held at the Royal Societylast November were enthusiastic about the ability of thelatest in vitro, in silico and safer first-in-man technologiessuch as microdosing & microdialysis to out-perform thetraditional animal-based tests currently required by drugregulators (www.drugtestingcon ference.com) . They were alsovery supportive of an initiative to identify the best means ofpredicting human side effects. This could be achieved bytesting a panel of drugs for which both human and animal dataare already available in a battery of human biology-basedassays. The three data sets could then be compared to seewhether the human biology-based assays identified more of theeffects of drugs in humans than were identified by the animaltests. This comparison is called for by the Safety ofMedicines (Evaluation) Bill 2009.More information about new technologies in drug safety testingcan be found in our short film, Safer Medicines, freelyavailable on our website: www.safermedicines. org.Dr Margaret Clotworthy, Science Consultant, Safer MedicinesTrust.www.safermedicines. org/
"Tests on animals have led to around 100 drugs being thought potentially useful for stroke; not one has proved effective in humans. You don't need to be a balaclava-wearing animal rights activist to question the value of animal studies in this area of medical research." TheFirstPost. 25 January 2007.============ ========= ========= ========= ========= ===
"The ARISE Campaign: Animal Replacements Innovate Scientific Experimentation"
Stuart Chaifetz sent a message to the members of The ARISE Campaign: Animal Replacements Innovate Scientific Experimentation.
Subject: The New ARISE Blog 7/24/09
Hi everyone,Here is our latest blog. Check out the site for working links to the mentioned articles:
http://www.facebook.com/l/http://arisenj.blogspot.com/Thanks!
And if you like what we are doing, please spread the word!Stuart ChaifetzProgram Director, the ARISE Campaign (Animal Replacements Innovate Scientific Experimentation) In the spirit of the Summer movie season, and its long history of producing sequels and trilogies, I would like to offer a third and final take on stories of research ‘breakthroughs’ being front page news, while failures are either never reported, or are dumped into the business section (grab a keg of soda and a garbage bag full of popcorn that cost more than the computer I am writing on if you really want to get that movie theater experience while reading this).In the course of my research on this issue, I found one exception to the rule that is stated above: For the first and perhaps last time, in May of 1998, scrutiny was poured over a front page story that over-promoted a supposed cure for cancer.The story “Cancer Drugs Face Long Road From Mice to Men” - published in the Los Angeles Times, May 6, 1998, was a direct response to this story - “HOPE IN THE LAB: A special report.; A Cautious Awe Greets Drugs That Eradicate Tumors in Mice,”which was printed on the front page of the NY Times three days earlier.There were two things that appear to have set off the counter-reaction to the NY Times story; a massive rush of people wanting to get the ‘cure,’ which didn’t exist, and the fact that the reporter who wrote the story created a possible conflict of interest by trying to get a book deal on it the next day. The Times itself was forced to cover the scandal:“...Peter Osnos, the publisher of Public Affairs Press, said: ''When a reporter writes a story that 24 hours later turns into a book proposal for which they're going to be paid a ton of money, that calls into a question the story they've written to begin with.”The LA Times story covering the controversy was something short of miraculous, for, once the glamor was lifted from the original article, a hard and honest look was finally taken regarding how cures in animals do not translate to cures in humans:“"The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse," said Dr. Richard Klausner, director of the National Cancer Institute. "We have cured mice of cancer for decades--and it simply didn't work in humans."Recent medical history is rife with stories of cancer "cures," such as interferon, interleukin and taxol, that produced exciting results in animals and later proved disappointing in humans.Dr. LaMar McGinnis, an oncologist and medical consultant to the American Cancer Society, agreed. "We thought interferon was 'chicken soup' in the early '80s," he said. "I remember how excited everyone was; it seemed to work miracles in animals, but it didn't work in humans."”“"People do not understand how very far off this [clinical trials] is; these proteins are very difficult to make . . . and we are working very hard to make the human versions," Klausner said. "The mouse versions don't work in humans."”These statements are devastating to the pro-animal research lobby, but the question is this; eleven years after the NY Times debacle, has the media learn its lesson? In my opinion, no. Unfortunately, we still see screaming headlines telling us a cure for this disease or that one is just around the corner. And while that drives interest and support for research higher, these hopeful rays of light flash, fade, then dissolve into the darkness and reality that is the failure of animal research.
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