July 27, 2007

experts respond to judicial review of Home Office animal research

In a judicial review brought by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, the High Court ruled that the Home Office had acted unlawfully in the licensing of brain experiments at Cambridge University.

Sarah Wolfenson, head of veterinary services at Oxford University, said:

“If informed lay people were to have a role in offering us the public view of what is mild, moderate or substantial I would welcome that. Reflecting the public’s view on levels of animal suffering is important to the public perception of what scientists do to animals.”

Alistair Kent, director of the Genetics Interest Group, said:

“Deciding that the public should have a say about levels of suffering in animals in biomedical research seems bizarre when the public are unable to have any say in the levels of suffering inflicted on patients by incurable diseases.”

Prof Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council, said:

“At the moment we have an objective system of reporting animal suffering based on the professional judgements of vets, scientists and doctors who have the expertise to understand the effects that these procedures have on animals. It seems very worrying to me that the court has apparently decided that this should be replaced by categorisation based on the subjective views of lay people. We are happy to hear that the Home Office are appealing this decision.”

Dr Vicky Robinson, chief executive of the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction Animals in Research (NC3Rs), said:

“This case has raised important issues about the regulation of research using animals in the UK. It is often said that this country has the tightest regulations in the world, but today’s verdict suggests there is still scope for review. In particular, it is essential that the definitions used to classify the suffering of animals are reconsidered and there already initiatives underway which should address this. But beyond regulation, all researchers have a personal responsibility to ensure that the actual harms caused to the animals are outweighed by the benefits of the research and that any suffering is kept to the absolute minimum.”

Professor Tipu Aziz, an Oxford surgeon who performs successful open brain surgery on patients with severe Parkinson’s, said:

“I think this could result in more experiments on animals. In order to help me to cure people of the symptoms of severe Parkinson’s I need to create animal models with similar severe symptoms. If I could only use animals with mild Parkinson’s I would have to use more monkeys.”

Prof Dominic Wells, Professor of Gene Transfer, Imperial College London, said:

“Currently animal experiments are reported at the start of a procedure which does not actually report what the animal experiences. We have been working on a scheme for retrospectively reporting what actually happens to experimental animals. Interestingly our initial analysis shows that most experimental animals only experience very mild or no pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm.

“A change in the system for reporting animal experiments from the current system which records how many animals were subject to what sort of procedure to a system of retrospective reporting of what the animal experiences in the experiment would better inform the public about animal experiments and could help to refine or educe such experiments.

“Earlier this year we reported our progress in developing a system for retrospectively reporting animal experiments. This system would more accurately record what experimental animals actually experience.”