In the world of politics, public opinion is powerful. Voters expect their leaders to take action on issues that matter to them.
A 2023 YouGov poll found that a whopping 77% of respondents said they supported a government-led strategy to phase out the use of animals in research and testing. It is clear that lawmakers must address these concerns if they are to meet the needs of their constituents.
In its manifesto, Keir Starmer’s Labor government “is committed to working with scientists, industry and civil society. [they] “We will work to phase out animal testing.” This promise is encouraging, but the government must deliver on it.
treatment
In 2023, an estimated 2.7 million animals were used in experiments in British laboratories, where experimenters bled, poisoned, starved or isolated them, inflicting psychological and physical pain and keeping them in miserable conditions.
They brain-damaged and decapitated mice, broke the bones of rabbits, and starved piglets to death. And because not all animals met the experimenter’s needs, millions of animals were bred and discarded as “surplus.”
So far, leaders have done little to implement Innovate UK’s 2015 vision for non-animal technologies to be standard in the UK by 2030.
Our continued reliance on animal-based methods is a significant obstacle to our ability to become a world leader in this field. Already we are behind the EU, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, which have pledged to approve plans to end the use of animals in a variety of experiments.
What experimenters do to animals is disgusting. Not only is it cruel, it’s also bad science. Numerous studies and reviews have confirmed that animal testing does not translate well into effective treatments for humans.
old fashioned
Continued use of animals diverts resources from more promising research methods and delays potentially life-saving treatments.
For example, stroke affects more than 100,000 people in the UK every year and costs around £26 billion. Nonetheless, although many of the more than 1,000 compounds reported to have been tested on rodents in stroke research reduced brain damage in animals, none of the compounds that reached clinical trials improved stroke outcomes in humans.
Scientific advances in recent decades have made the call to end testing on animals more realistic than ever.
Technologies such as organ-on-chip, human tissue culture, sophisticated computer models and machine learning now offer methods that are not only more humane, but often more accurate and cost-effective, allowing products to reach the market faster than would otherwise be cumbersome. Ancient experiments on animals.
safety
Numerous reports have highlighted the economic benefits of investing in these advanced humanitarian technologies.
