Minister calls for end of animal testing
pharmafile | August 1, 2014 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Animal testing
British MP Norman Baker has called for an end to all animal testing in the UK and promised to increase transparency about the use of animals.
The Liberal Democrat, a long-standing anti-vivisection campaigner and the minister responsible for regulating the use of animals in science, says he understood ‘it would not happen tomorrow’, but was trying to convince the industry of the economic as well as moral case for ending testing.
Baker told BBC News: “I am firmly of the belief it is not simply a moral issue but that we as a nation can get a strategic advantage from this – something that will be good for the economy.”
He adds: “I have been encouraging the industry to come up with alternatives to animal testing.”
Following a review of current legislation, he has also promised updated laws before the next General Election to increase transparency – potentially giving the public the chance to see exactly what happens in the laboratories.
Currently, the Home Office blocks requests for data on research contracts and the justification for using live animals as the issue is exempt from the Freedom from Information Act.
Animal testing has long been a contentious issue with critics calling it cruel and pointless.
In May Dr Gill Langley, senior science adviser to Humane Society International, said that animals should no longer be used in Alzheimer’s research calling it a case of “studying the wrong condition in the wrong animal”.
Much of the scientific community however, say that research on animals is still vital to understanding disease and has resulted in new vaccines and treatments for cancer, Parkinson’s disease, asthma and HIV.
Cancer Research argued that breast cancer drug tamoxifen and Novartis’ chronic myeloid leukaemia drug Glivec (imatinib) both would not have been discovered without animal testing.
Currently under EU law animal trials are a legal requirement for any drug going to market.
Animal testing has been on the rise with the number of experiments increasing 52% between 1995 and 2013, according to official statistics.
In 2013, more than 4 million procedures were carried out on animals, a rise of 0.3% from 2012. The majority of these were on mice, fish and rats.
Chris Magee, from the Understanding Animal Reteach campaign, has expressed concerns about Baker’s calls, saying that great deal of research in discovering how biological systems work is needed first, and that ‘you cannot simulate the unknown’.
Emily MacKenzie
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