The Chief Executive's Blog

The "C" Word

Today, I want to talk to you about the “c” word. Cancer. Did you know that 1 in 4 people will die from cancer. That’s a quarter of the entire population of the world. It’s unbelievable to even imagine how many people that is.

What is even more unbelievable is the number of animals that have been used in trying to find a cure for it. Over 430,000 animals were used for cancer research in the UK alone in 2009, a 12% increase on the previous year and 4.4 million animals were used between 1995 and 2009. In 100 years of animal experimentation, we still don’t have a cure for cancer. Have you ever stopped to wonder why? If animal experiments work, then why hasn’t a cure been found yet, not just for cancer but for other diseases?

If we look at the scientific argument, results from animal experiments are highly questionable in their value to people. Can we really expect to replicate human disease in animals when there are major differences between species? We already know that many diseases simply do not exist in animals so trying to replicate human diseases in animals is not accurate. In addition the way an animal’s body deals with a disease or with a drug is very different to the way our bodies deal with them. And sometimes, what has been deemed to have worked successfully and safely in animals either doesn’t work or can cause severe and sometimes tragic reactions in humans. Remember Thalidomide and the Northwick Park Hospital disaster?

From the ethical standpoint, scientific studies have revealed that animals do have emotions, they do communicate, and they are intelligent and can solve problems and make judgements. It has also been proven that they do feel and experience pain, suffering, fear and depression, all of which can lead to intense distress, insanity and even death. Invariably and tragically for most of them, their lives will end anyway once the experiments have finished.

Combine the ethical and scientific arguments and there are irrefutable reasons why animals should not be used in experiments.

Advanced alternative methods are already regularly replacing animal experiments with successful results and the DHT has been a driving force in funding these advanced and humane techniques. With budget cuts affecting the science sector, even less funding will be available from government level to progress non-animal research, even though the revised European Directive on laboratory animals announced by the Home Office is to be in place by January 2013. This means that the DHT’s grant giving is even more important than ever and that we need your help more than ever.

Our work is vital to saving lives, both animal and human, by funding the development of advanced alternative methods to animal experiments that are relevant to diseases that occur in OUR bodies, not faked in the bodies of defenceless animals.

1 in 4 people will die from cancer. My Dad was one. The odds were stacked against him and next time, it could be someone you love. In one year alone, 430,000 animals also died from cancer but they were artificially infected with the disease for an experiment.

We need to do something about it.

Please help us to fund more of our valuable work by donating here or by helping in many other ways by clicking here.

Please donate what you can but whatever you do, do something.

Thank you, Kailah