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http://pnews.org/
Progressive News & Views (since 1982)
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From: Lindy Greene <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I think this is best sent to the views list than the news list. It
appears to be a topic that needs to be discussed more than it has already.
Sharon Howe: Animal testing is both cruel and unnecessary
No one could be keener to see a cure for Parkinson's than I: my mother suffers
from it Published: 06 March 2006 The privilege of studying at Oxford is not
something I have ever taken for granted. I was brought up on a council estate
in Swindon and went to a pretty rough comprehensive. My parents struggled
financially for most of their lives, but they put me and my education first and
that is how - seemingly against all odds - I got into one of the country's top
universities. It was a moment of great pride - for both me and my family - when
I entered the grand Sheldonian Theatre in gown and cap to receive my
first-class honours degree.
It is therefore with great regret that I now find myself forced to return that
degree to an institution of which I can no longer be proud. I simply cannot
continue my association with a university which persists in building a new
laboratory to perpetuate the morally repugnant and scientifically outdated
practice of animal testing. How can painfully and artificially inducing human
diseases in other species with a different genetic make-up to our own possibly
advance the cause of modern medicine?
Of course animal testing has always gone on at Oxford - but here was the
perfect opportunity to move forward and develop a centre of excellence for
cutting-edge, non-animal research which would give us the competitive advantage
Tony Blair is so keen to promote - and inspire other countries to follow our
example.
Yes, animal testing may have brought some fortuitous human benefits in the past
- to argue otherwise would be as disingenuous as Professor John Stein's claim
that "almost all of the medical advances of the last 100 years have happened
through animal experiments" (conveniently ignoring the development of
anaesthetics, the sanitation improvements which saw off infectious diseases
such as TB and cholera long before vaccines were developed, the surgical
techniques developed on the battlefield during the Second World War and the
epidemiological studies which have identified the main - largely diet and
lifestyle-related - causes of heart disease, cancer, strokes and Aids). But how
do we know that the same benefits wouldn't have been achieved - and sooner -
without it?
I wonder how many of the people whom pro-vivisectionists seek to manipulate
emotionally with their specious "dog-or-child" dilemma are aware that, while
alternatives require scientific validation before being approved, the same
rigorous criteria have never been applied to animal experimentation? In fact,
the Home Office has even refused to conduct a cost-benefit analysis on
vivisection. Surely a reasonable request?
And "reasonable" is what the vast majority of people who want to see an end to
animal testing are. They are people like me with a sense of compassion who
campaign peacefully by shaking tins for humane research charities, organising
sponsored walks, collecting names on petitions and talking to people on the
streets. But that's not exciting enough for large sections of the media.
Confrontation and violence make much better copy. Hence their relentless
homing-in on a minority of extremists - which can be gratifyingly found on the
fringes of any movement for social change, from women's emancipation to civil
rights.
No one could be keener to see a cure for Parkinson's than I: my mother has been
suffering from it for many years and it breaks my heart to see her steadily
degenerate. But cutting open the skulls of monkeys - who do not even suffer
from the disease - and injecting chemicals into their brains is at best a crude
and highly circuitous path to achieving this. As for the ethical dimension, the
distinction we seek to make between wild-caught and purpose-bred monkeys, or
between pet cats and dogs and their laboratory counterparts, must be one of
mankind's most monumental feats of hypocrisy.
The technology to achieve change already exists. Organisations such as the Dr
Hadwen Trust and the Humane Research Trust are funding vital research into all
the major human diseases to replace painful procedures on animals. Cancer
research projects use complex 3D human cell cultures and mathematical modelling
to improve the targeting of radiation treatments, for example, while new
generations of brain scanning techniques - some of them developed at Oxford -
are providing far more relevant insights into neurological diseases like
Parkinson's than invasive operations on monkeys are ever likely to do.
OK, so the options were limited in Galen's day - but we are now in the 21st
century, with an arsenal of sophisticated techniques at our disposal from
computer simulation to stem-cell research. The British pharmaceutical company
Pharmagene, for one, tests drugs exclusively on human tissue, arguing that "If
you have information on human genes, what's the point of going back to
animals?"
It is nonsense to suggest that abolishing vivisection would mean the end of
medical progress: on the contrary, it would enable the funds lavished
uncritically on projects such as the £18m Oxford laboratory to be diverted to
directly relevant, human-based research, which is currently being held back by
institutional inertia and vested interests.
And what better way for the university to maintain its reputation as a
world-class seat of human progress and enlightenment than to be at the
forefront of this endeavour?
The writer is a university lecturer and translator
The privilege of studying at Oxford is not something I have ever taken for
granted. I was brought up on a council estate in Swindon and went to a pretty
rough comprehensive. My parents struggled financially for most of their lives,
but they put me and my education first and that is how - seemingly against all
odds - I got into one of the country's top universities. It was a moment of
great pride - for both me and my family - when I entered the grand Sheldonian
Theatre in gown and cap to receive my first-class honours degree.
It is therefore with great regret that I now find myself forced to return that
degree to an institution of which I can no longer be proud. I simply cannot
continue my association with a university which persists in building a new
laboratory to perpetuate the morally repugnant and scientifically outdated
practice of animal testing. How can painfully and artificially inducing human
diseases in other species with a different genetic make-up to our own possibly
advance the cause of modern medicine?
Of course animal testing has always gone on at Oxford - but here was the
perfect opportunity to move forward and develop a centre of excellence for
cutting-edge, non-animal research which would give us the competitive advantage
Tony Blair is so keen to promote - and inspire other countries to follow our
example.
Yes, animal testing may have brought some fortuitous human benefits in the past
- to argue otherwise would be as disingenuous as Professor John Stein's claim
that "almost all of the medical advances of the last 100 years have happened
through animal experiments" (conveniently ignoring the development of
anaesthetics, the sanitation improvements which saw off infectious diseases
such as TB and cholera long before vaccines were developed, the surgical
techniques developed on the battlefield during the Second World War and the
epidemiological studies which have identified the main - largely diet and
lifestyle-related - causes of heart disease, cancer, strokes and Aids). But how
do we know that the same benefits wouldn't have been achieved - and sooner -
without it?
I wonder how many of the people whom pro-vivisectionists seek to manipulate
emotionally with their specious "dog-or-child" dilemma are aware that, while
alternatives require scientific validation before being approved, the same
rigorous criteria have never been applied to animal experimentation? In fact,
the Home Office has even refused to conduct a cost-benefit analysis on
vivisection. Surely a reasonable request?
And "reasonable" is what the vast majority of people who want to see an end to
animal testing are. They are people like me with a sense of compassion who
campaign peacefully by shaking tins for humane research charities, organising
sponsored walks, collecting names on petitions and talking to people on the
streets. But that's not exciting enough for large sections of the media.
Confrontation and violence make much better copy. Hence their relentless
homing-in on a minority of extremists - which can be gratifyingly found on the
fringes of any movement for social change, from women's emancipation to civil
rights.
No one could be keener to see a cure for Parkinson's than I: my mother has been
suffering from it for many years and it breaks my heart to see her steadily
degenerate. But cutting open the skulls of monkeys - who do not even suffer
from the disease - and injecting chemicals into their brains is at best a crude
and highly circuitous path to achieving this. As for the ethical dimension, the
distinction we seek to make between wild-caught and purpose-bred monkeys, or
between pet cats and dogs and their laboratory counterparts, must be one of
mankind's most monumental feats of hypocrisy.
The technology to achieve change already exists. Organisations such as the Dr
Hadwen Trust and the Humane Research Trust are funding vital research into all
the major human diseases to replace painful procedures on animals. Cancer
research projects use complex 3D human cell cultures and mathematical modelling
to improve the targeting of radiation treatments, for example, while new
generations of brain scanning techniques - some of them developed at Oxford -
are providing far more relevant insights into neurological diseases like
Parkinson's than invasive operations on monkeys are ever likely to do.
OK, so the options were limited in Galen's day - but we are now in the 21st
century, with an arsenal of sophisticated techniques at our disposal from
computer simulation to stem-cell research. The British pharmaceutical company
Pharmagene, for one, tests drugs exclusively on human tissue, arguing that "If
you have information on human genes, what's the point of going back to
animals?"
It is nonsense to suggest that abolishing vivisection would mean the end of
medical progress: on the contrary, it would enable the funds lavished
uncritically on projects such as the £18m Oxford laboratory to be diverted to
directly relevant, human-based research, which is currently being held back by
institutional inertia and vested interests.
And what better way for the university to maintain its reputation as a
world-class seat of human progress and enlightenment than to be at the
forefront of this endeavour?
The writer is a university lecturer and translator
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article349525.ece
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