I have long been an advocate about removing animals from medical testing. I am the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Phasing Out Animal Experiments and on behalf of the Petitions Committee recently opened a Westminster Hall debate on banning dogs from medical research, as well as an adjournment debate on phasing out all animal experiments.
There needs to be a big shift in priorities for medical research funding, and a change in focus from traditional animal research to modern non-animal funding. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Relevant Science found that ‘human relevant non-animal method funding represents between 0.2% and 0.6% of total biomedical research funding in the UK and ~0.02% of the total public expenditure on R&D.’ For us to make a shift to more human relevant and less cruel methods, we need to address this gap.
A similar shift happened not too long ago, when the UK phased out testing on animals for cosmetic purposes. In March 2013, the complete ban on all endpoints for animal testing on cosmetics was introduced. In response, the European Commission confirmed that ‘between 2007 and 2011, a total of 238 million EUR was invested in research into alternatives to animal testing in the EU’.
There is an opportunity for us to find more scientifically relevant tests for the human body. About 92% of drugs fail in human clinical trials, despite passing preclinical trials which include animal tests. There are a wide variety of successful new approach methodologies, for example organ-on-a-chip technology, which are chips that mimic the functions of organs or tissues, and computer simulations of complex biological processes. At the University of Liverpool, scientists are developing a new 3D human liver model which would improve drug safety predictions for patients with fatty liver disease, which would replace guinea pigs, mice, rats and rabbits.
Animal Free Research UK found that ‘dogs are highly inconsistent predictors of toxic responses in humans and that the predictions they can provide are little better than those that could be obtained by chance or tossing a coin ― when considering whether or not a compound should proceed to testing in humans.’ For example, there are many toxic drugs which passed animal testing but had deadly effects on humans. The painkiller Vioxx was linked to heart attacks and death, Thalidomide caused sever birth defects in thousands of babies, and Propulsid was a heartburn medication which was withdrawn due to fatal heart complications.
In 2023, over 2.5 million experiments were carried out on animals in British laboratories, and nearly 50,000 of these were assessed as severe. Many people will also be surprised to hear that nearly 2.5 thousand dogs were used in experiments too, even though only 14% of the UK public feel that we should be using dogs for medical experiments. Dogs have high emotional and intellectual capabilities, and many people would call them man’s best friend, and so it is not surprising that the vast majority of the British public are uncomfortable with the idea of them being harshly experimented on.
In fact, in a debate in the House of Lords on the Protection of Dogs Bill of 1927, Lord Banbry of Soltham quoted the surgeon Sir Lambert Ormsby, who said “Experiments on dogs may now be discontinued. All that can be found out by physiological experiments for application to human beings has long since been discovered, and repetitions are unnecessary and cruel.” 100 years on, we are still having this debate.
Many other countries have roadmaps to end animal testing, like Canada, Australia and other countries in the European Union, as well as the Food and Drug Administration in the USA, who are working to reduce and replace animal testing in drug development and regulation.
I am proud to have been elected on a Labour manifesto which pledged to phase out animal testing, as part of a wider dedication to animal welfare, and I am looking forward to the publication of the UK roadmap later this year. However, in order to achieve the phasing out of animals in medical research, we need a robust timeline included in the roadmap, to get us to a better world for both humans and animals.
Labour is committed to ending medical testing on animals, but we need to know when this will happen
