About Us
13 May 2008
Welcome
The Dr Hadwen Trust today
Vision, Mission, Values
Science Room
Focus on Alternatives
Policy Statement: Extremism and its portrayal in the media
Policy Statement: Validity of animal experiments
The Dr Hadwen Trust is the UK’s leading medical research charity that funds and promotes exclusively non-animal research techniques to replace animal experiments. Our vital work benefits humans with the development of more relevant and reliable science whilst also benefiting laboratory animals. The Dr Hadwen Trust is a registered charity established in 1970; registered charity number 261096.
Many millions of animals such as mice, dogs, rabbits, primates, guinea pigs and cats continue to be used in laboratory experiments, all of which are classified by the Home Office as having the potential to cause pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm. The Dr Hadwen Trust believes that deliberately subjecting sentient animals to physical and psychological pain and distress is ethically unsupportable. Animal testing is also scientifically unsatisfactory because differences between people and animal species can give rise to misleading results. We want medical research to succeed in finding treatments for human health problems. To achieve that goal we fund research projects at universities and institutes that combine the highest humane principles with the best scientific standards. The Dr Hadwen Trust has supported research in a range of fields including epilepsy, breast cancer, meningitis, asthma, diabetes, drug testing, arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, lung injury, whooping cough vaccine testing, dentistry, heart disease, tropical illness, fetal development and pregnancy, brain tumours and AIDS.
The Dr Hadwen Trust also actively advises on and promotes the wider use of non-animal methods through publications, published research, education and the media. Our Science Director, Dr Gill Langley, served for eight years as a member of the British government’s Animal Procedures Committee which advises the Home Secretary on animal experimentation matters. She has also advised the government on the introduction of the new EU chemicals legislation (REACH), and has been an invited expert on initiatives of the European Commission and of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Dr Langley currently represents the Dr Hadwen Trust as a member of the Replacement Advisory Group of the British National Centre for the Three Rs (Replacement, Refinement & Reduction of animals in research).
Our vision …
is of a world where all animal experiments are either no longer permissible or have been replaced by non-animal testing methods.
Our mission …
is to play a leading role in funding, advancing and developing widespread support for non-animal replacement research and so make a major, practical contribution to the cessation of animal experiments.
Our values …
We believe that excellence in medical research can and should be pursued without animal experiments because they are morally unjustified and scientifically unsatisfactory. We are driven by a respect and compassion for all life, animal and human alike, and strive to always be professional, truthful, effective and innovative.
The Dr Hadwen Trust’s Science Room at www.scienceroom.org is an exciting new source of information which demonstrates how vibrant the world of non-animal research is. The Science Room website aims to highlight the work of the Dr Hadwen Trust for those in the biomedical community keen to know more about this area of advanced science, as well as to stimulate thinking to address biomedical issues from new perspectives.
Focus on Alternatives – working together to replace animal experiments
The Dr Hadwen Trust is the chair of Focus on Alternatives, a coalition of expert non-governmental organisations which fund the development, or promote the acceptance of, methods that replace the use of laboratory animals in research, education and testing. Focus on Alternatives comprises members from the Dr Hadwen Trust, FRAME (Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments), the Humane Research Trust, UK Human Tissue Bank (UKHTB), St Andrew Animal Fund (part of Advocates for Animals), RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) and the Lord Dowding Fund. Focus on Alternatives works by lobbying, facilitating access to information, educating animal researchers and by organising workshops and meetings on specific topics of concern. Find out more at www.focusonalternatives.org.uk
Policy Statement: Extremism and its portrayal in the media*
The Dr Hadwen Trust operates wholly within the law and is opposed to all forms of violence – whether that be violence towards animals in laboratories or the threat or use of violence or intimidation by some protesters outside the laboratory. The Trust’s opposition to violence is central to our desire to advance medical progress and thereby alleviate the suffering of humans, but doing so using non-animal research replacement methods and thereby alleviating the suffering of laboratory animals too.
There are a small number of animal rights protesters who employ extreme or intimidatory methods in their campaign to end animal experiments. Whilst the Dr Hadwen Trust would like to see all animal research ended, we cannot condone such extreme tactics. We believe they are wrong in principle and ultimately counterproductive in the wider campaign to win hearts and minds and secure long-lasting legislative protection for animals.
Extremism has featured widely in media reports, and we would call for a sense of proportion in dealing with this emotive issue. Although extremists don’t characterise mainstream opposition to animal experiments, there is a tendency within some sections of the media, government and the animal research industry, to focus on and exaggerate the extent and scale of extremist activity. In an interview with BBC News on 9 May 2006, Philip Wright from The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) admitted that “there are only a handful of extremists out there.” Furthermore, the Research Defence Society assured its membership (from the animal research industry) in March 2005 that “It is only a small minority of radical animal rights extremists who are prepared to use intimidation or outright violence to further their cause”. (Link to full article).
Statistics on the incidence of animal rights extremism‚ released by the ABPI on July 26 2006, were reported widely in the media, often merely quoting the top-line figure of 1,500‚ such incidents in 2005. And yet this was a clear perversion of the truth; what the media neglected to say was that of the 1,508 so-called incidents‚ 1,205 were merely demonstrations and hardly representative of animal rights terrorism. The statistics went on to reveal a far more realistic picture than is largely portrayed in the media – in the whole of 2005 there were a mere 36 abusive or threatening letters or text messages.
Without question, the use of intimidation is to be condemned, but such a figure is hardly indicative of the alleged barrage of abuse that many would have the public believe is being perpetrated by animal rights campaigners. And yet, despite the law-abiding practices of those who are the true representative majority of anti-vivisection campaigners, animal rights extremism and opposition to animal experiments – two quite separate issues – continue to be conflated. (Link to the ABPI’s statistics).
A disproportionate media focus on the extreme activities of a small minority of individuals, plus neglect to promote or engage meaningfully with the wholly lawful activities of the vast majority of anti-vivisection campaigners, gives the general public a very much distorted view of the debate. This distortion can only serve to conveniently marginalise and discredit the anti-vivisection agenda as an issue of the militant‚ few rather than the concern of many millions of people including professionals from medical, scientific, legal and academic quarters, who share a rational, considered and firm objection, both ethically and scientifically, to experiments on animals. Attempting to obscure the debate and divert attention away from the very real and challenging issues of scientific inefficacy, regulatory intransigency and animal suffering, is not in anybody’s interests, least of all the general public who are entitled to an informed and measured debate.
The Dr Hadwen Trust believes in the democratic right to legitimate protest. We oppose unreservedly the use of violence or intimidation and acknowledge the need to take appropriate action when the law is broken. However, we are also concerned that the extreme activities of the minority are being exploited to allow for draconian measures that risk compromising democratic rights. This is something that all law-abiding campaign organisations and citizens should be concerned about; once freedoms are lost they are often very difficult to win back and it is important that harassment by the few is not used as an excuse to clamp down on lawful protest by the many, simply because it throws an uncomfortable spotlight on the animal testing activities of the biotechnology industry, universities or contract testing laboratories.
Policy Statement: Validity of animal experiments
Overview
It is important to understand that all research approaches have some limitations. This will apply to non-animal as well as animal research approaches. The Dr Hadwen Trust believes that, in medical research, animal experiments have serious scientific limitations which are of particular concern given the degree of confidence that is generally placed in them, often without proof of validity.
Species differences in anatomy, metabolism, physiology or pharmacology inevitably will arise, underlaid by further species-specific genetic variations. Even subtle molecular differences can have a significant effect on the validity of results for extrapolation from animals to humans.
Laboratory animals almost never suffer naturally from human illnesses; but artificially inducing symptoms similar to human disease in so-called ‘animal models’, can never replicate the actual human disease needing to be studied. Blocking an animal’s artery in the brain does not replicate a human stroke; clamping an animal’s artery is not the same as spontaneous high blood pressure and injecting chemicals into animals‚ joints does not create real arthritis. Therefore the relevance of animal disease models to the human condition is highly questionable.
With animal experiments providing unreliable and potentially misleading results, it is irresponsible to portray animal research in general as a ‘gold standard’ and all the more vital that we replace it with more humane and scientifically rigorous techniques.
Species variations
Animal studies offer the advantage of researching a whole organism, but for medical research and safety testing they are simply the wrong organisms. Thus species differences – in anatomy (body structures), metabolism, physiology (systems functions) or pharmacology (cellular receptors, drug effects) – inevitably will arise. These differences are underlaid by genetic variations between species, and may be very subtle at the molecular level. However, at the organ or systems level, a small molecular difference can have a significant effect on the validity of results for extrapolation to humans.
Even when species differences are known in one area (e.g. through many years’ use of an animal species in the laboratory) and can be taken into account, there will always be unpredictable outcomes, for example in responses to a new drug.
Species differences also impact on the validity of animal ‘models’. For example, when it became possible to genetically modify mice to have exactly the same gene mutation as do people with cystic fibrosis, they didn’t develop the same condition: because their lungs, pancreas, intestines and salivary glands were simply not affected in the same way as in human patients. This was because of subtle differences in physiology and pharmacology, obvious differences in anatomy, and the fact that the gene mutation was operating in a mouse ‘environment’, not a human one. This is a fundamental drawback with the much-touted GM animal ‘models’: altering one or two genes in a mouse will never re-create the complex gene/environment interactions seen in humans.
Limitations of animal ‘models’
Another major limitation of animal research is the artificiality of animal ‘models’ used to study human diseases. Because common laboratory animals almost never suffer from human illnesses, animal ‘models’ usually involve inducing selected symptoms of a human illness in animals, as a model of the condition.
For example, a stroke may involve deliberately blocking an artery in the brain; high blood pressure may be induced in animals by clamping an artery; mice are genetically modified; proteins that cause an allergic reaction are injected into the nervous system to simulate multiple sclerosis, and irritant chemicals are injected into joints and paws to cause inflammation that mimics arthritis.
The relevance of all these animal models to their respective human conditions is highly questionable. They never re-create the entire spectrum of the human disease, but only selected signs and symptoms. As scientists must guess in advance which are the crucial signs and symptoms to mimic in animals, they may choose the wrong ones – in which case subsequent research will be led far astray.
Because symptoms are artificially induced in animals, for example by genetic modification, application of chemicals or physical interference/damage, it is very rare for an animal ‘model’ to shed any light on the underlying causes of human illness. Yet prevention is a highly important goal, as well as treatment.
Animal ‘models’ cannot simulate the complex interactions of the genetic and environmental influences experienced by humans. Additionally, there are often many different types of animal experiment protocols for the same human condition, and results can vary or even be contradictory, between the protocols. This makes interpretation for humans extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Assessing validity
Because of their long history of use, it is often assumed that animal ‘models’ are sufficiently valid and relevant, despite a lack of proper evidence. So far there have been very few objective ‘systematic reviews’ of the validity of animal experiments. Those reviews which have been done, almost without exception, have been critical either of the predictive accuracy for humans and/or of the quality and design of the animal studies.
The latest independent review, Testing Treatment on Animals: Relevance to Humans, was written by Professor Ian Roberts (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) commissioned by the NHS and published in May 2006. Nine independent researchers conducted rigorous and detailed reviews of six medical treatments by comparing human, clinical data with predictions from animal experiments. A total of 221 animal studies were reviewed, which had used over 7,100 animals. In three-quarters of cases the quality of the animal research was heavily criticised and in half the studies, the animal results failed to correctly predict the human outcome. (View the full report).
When defending the validity of animal experiments in drug development, animal researchers sometimes select examples where the results of human clinical trials have correlated positively with the results of previously conducted animal experiments. However, unless a review is carried out according to strict standards and criteria, these claims are unsubstantiated. Furthermore, even where a review might reveal that a particular set of animal experiments in defined circumstances correlated positively with human data, this conclusion cannot be generalised to all animal research.
The inescapable fact remains that, far too often, other animals react to substances or develop symptoms in entirely different or subtle but significant ways to humans (and indeed to each other). The established but unproven view of the supremacy of animal experiments should be urgently revised.
In the case of safety testing, where the same tests are repeated for different compounds (e.g. drugs and chemicals), it is possible to build up data from subsequent human experience and use this to analyse the positive correspondence rate of the animal tests ie: looking back, did the animal tests predict the human response? Where this has been done, the animal tests have performed very poorly (e.g. LD50 tests, eye irritation tests, carcinogenicity). Figures from the USA’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) speaks volumes: 92% of new drugs that pass preclinical tests, including tests on animals, fail to reach the market either because of safety or efficacy failures (US FDA: Report on Challenge and Opportunity on the Critical Path to New Medical Products, March 2004).
A century or more ago, when medical research was asking simple questions about the basic circulation of the blood, or whether rats have adrenaline, using animals as surrogates would have been more scientifically advantageous (although no less unethical). But today the medical questions we need to answer are far more subtle. If a new drug depends for its safety and efficacy on stimulating, via a precise receptor mechanism, a chosen subset of immune cells in the bloodstream, then very minor species variations can spell disaster – as we saw with the TGN 1412 clinical trial catastrophe in 2006, when six healthy volunteers nearly died.
For some diseases where little progress has been made in spite of decades of animal experiments, the conclusion must be that the animal models are failing to elucidate the human condition, and may well have obscured our understanding of it. There are numerous examples of animal research delaying medical progress because results from animal studies have sent research in the wrong direction. For example, the recently revealed deficiencies of the mouse and rabbit ‘models’ of multiple sclerosis (MS) provide a reason why research into this disease has remained largely unproductive over many decades (New Scientist 28/02/04, 2436:17; J. Roy. Coll. Physicians Edinb. 2002, 32: 244-65).
Animal experiments are fraught with difficulties arising from species variations and the artificiality of animal ‘models’ of disease. There is little objective evidence so far of their reliability or their relevance to human outcomes. By contrast, at the start of the 21st century, non-animal techniques have become the cutting edge of medical research. Animal experiments are being replaced by a range of non-animal methods that as well as being more humane, frequently prove cheaper, quicker and more effective – as well as saving lives.
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September 2006