Animal testing in the 21st century
In 2021, the number of scientific procedures involving living animals in Britain rose for the first time since 2015, to 3.06 million.
Despite an EU-wide ban prohibiting the use of animal testing on cosmetic products, which was launched ten years ago today, animal experiments (also called vivisection) are still prolific.
Animal Concern, as an entity, started life as the Scottish Anti-Vivisection Society in the late 19th century. For much of our history, we campaigned for the legislation we have today which establishes both a testing ban on the use of cosmetics tests on animals, as well as a ban on selling them in the UK. But this legislation doesn’t go far enough. As more than 130 years later, with all the advancements of technology and medicine in that time, we are still living in a nation where 3 million experiments are conducted on live animals every single year.
One of the most common arguments people make in favour of animal testing is that at the end of the day, it’s preferable to the alternative of experimenting on humans. Of course, that does rather put the value of human life over and above the value of a non-human animal life, which is ethically problematic in itself. But it’s also not true.
There are dozens of alternatives to vivisection available which utilise modern medical technology such as computational modelling, where software programs are able to predict the effects of compounds in particular microbial environments; as well as cell culturing, where chemicals can be tested on groups of cells outside the animals’ body, as has happened in human medicine. These and other biomedical technologies offer a way of carrying out scientific research and experiments in a manner that not only invalidates the prolonged suffering and death of millions of animals but is more accurate and cheaper.
It sounds obvious to say but – animals are not biologically identical to humans. And so the accuracy of a test conducted on a mouse having the same results as when used on a human is simply not scientifically rigorous. We may never have allowed the use of penicillin, aspirin or morphine – all vital medication used commonly on humans, but which may have been debarred had they been tested on animals beforehand. Such test would have revealed that each of them cause extreme behaviour, birth defects and even death in certain animal species.
Similarly, some of the most significant medical discoveries were made without animal testing. For instance, the link between the pancreas and diabetes which was discovered through clinical observation, as well as the beneficial effect of urethane on leukaemia which may have evaded discover if attention had been directed to the research in mice and rats. One of the forefathers of modern surgery, R. Lawson Tait once said: “…the conclusions of vivisection are absolutely worthless…” and “I have been led astray again and again by the published results of experiments on animals and I have had to discard them entirely.”
Animal testing is also incredibly expensive. Estimates put the total spend on animal testing in the UK at £1 billion annually. This is largely due to the need for 24-hour accommodation, food and water as well as transportation costs for potentially thousands of animals for several years sometimes, while the experiment is being conducted. Alternatives are believed to be, on average, 10% of the mean cost for tests done on live animals.
With the right investment and a change in the entrenched attitude towards animal testing in the medical community, we could consign this expensive, inaccurate, arcane and unjustified practice to the history books. This would be a win not just for animal welfare, but for economy and science.