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Unit 5 Animal Rights

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Unit 5

Animal Rights

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Research agencies have ordered UK scientists to
improve the way they use animals in experiments.
Too often poorly designed projects – to test
new medicines for strokes, cancer and other
conditions – have produced meaningless results
and wasted animals’ lives, the organisations
have warned.
In some cases, researchers – desperate to control
the costs of their work – have underestimated
the number of animals needed to test a new
medicine. As a result, their tiny studies have
lacked the power to pinpoint biological effects in
the drugs under scrutiny. These unreliable results
mean the lives of the animals involved have
been wasted, along with scientists’ time and
resources. The over-use of animals in experiments
has also led to unnecessary loss of their lives.
The problem of poorly designed studies has
been under investigation for two years and
culminated, last week, in Research Councils UK –
the umbrella group for the councils that fund UK
research –announcing changes to its guidelines
for those carrying out research using animals.
Scientists will now have to show their work will
not only produce physiological insights but will
also generate statistically robust data. If not,
they will lose their funding.
“There has been an increasing awareness that
some animal experiments are not sufficiently
robust. These guidelines should therefore be
welcomed, although they have taken a long time
to be introduced,” said neuroscientist Malcolm
Macleod of Edinburgh University.
In 2013, 4.12 million scientific procedures on
animals – mostly rats and mice – were started in
Great Britain. Half involved breeding genetically
modified animals while the other half involved
experiments on unmodified animals. Many of
these are done to test drugs before human trials
are launched. However, it takes a fairly large
number of animals to reveal whether a drug is
having a pharmacological effect, said Macleod.
Mark Prescott, head of research policy for the UK
National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement
and Reduction of Animals in Research, said
the guidelines represented a change for the
scientific community.
“Yes, you can use animals in experiments, but
no more than necessary – and no fewer. It is
ethically questionable to get the numbers wrong
either way.”