A Victory for Progress?
Joan Court was cold, tired, and hungry. She hadn't eaten for nearly two days. At 85, most of her peers would be quietly enjoying their retirement. But not Joan.
She was camped out in the heart of Oxford University's science area, conducting a 48-hour hunger strike to draw attention to the new animal centre being built by the university.
"I'm getting light-headed and forgetting everyone's names," said animal-rights activist Joan as she entered the second night of her protest. "But I'm really determined. I'm fed up and appalled at what is still going on in these places".
The place in question is a new £18m biomedical research support centre. The building will provide an improved housing and research facility, centralising work currently being carried out in a number of different departments. The university maintains that this will lead to more effective inter-departmental collaboration and improved standards of animal welfare. But animal rights activists contend that the facility will be an "animal torture centre".
Flushed with success at having scuppered plans for a Primate Research Facility in Cambridge, they now have Oxford in their sights.
So far, the activists appear to be winning. Just a couple of days after my encounter with Joan, the main contractor, the Montpelier Group, pulled out of the project, following threats and attacks against its suppliers, subcontractors, and shareholders. The site now stands deserted, awaiting a company prepared to take over the contract for building the centre, and take on the militant activists who have promised to target anyone involved.
The University is defiant and has vowed to finish the building by the end of next year, as scheduled. But two months on, the only action at the site is on the wrong side of the green fences. Every Thursday, under the keen eye of Thames Valley Police, protesters can be found handing out leaflets to passers-by and brandishing signs reading "STOP ANIMAL CRUELTY" and "SAY NO TO ANIMAL TORTURE". But how much truth is there in their rhetoric?
The nature of experiments carried out is strictly controlled and the law does not allow animals to be used for any experiment if an alternative is available - and advances in technology increasingly mean that they are.
Such alternatives include cell and tissue culture, epidemiological studies and even computer modeling. Oxford University researchers are at the forefront of development in all of these areas, with local achievements including a state-of-the-art computer model of the human heart and a statistical package that allows researchers to gather a range of physiological data and so minimise the use of animals in their own experiments.
However, although such techniques have halved the number of animals used in research over the last thirty years (from a high of 5.6m in 1972), there is, as yet, no substitute for whole animal systems. "What all our researchers here are doing is concentrating on the 'Three Rs' - refinement, reduction, and replacement", says a University animal welfare researcher who wished to remain anonymous.
"Animal management and husbandry are critical. The way they are housed and the health of the animals used has improved enormously in the last ten to fifteen years, and having healthy animals means fewer are needed. As for replacement, well, we do as much as possible; but there's an awful lot of data you can't get from a test tube."
Although there is a continued need for animal experiments, most procedures are only minor, involving a single injection, a blood sample, or a change of diet. All procedures performed on animals must be undertaken by a trained individual, licensed by a specialised Home Office inspectorate. The procedures themselves must also be approved by the inspectorate, made up of veterinarians and doctors, as well as by a local ethical review board. Nothing is done frivolously.
And what is done is done humanely. In the small number of cases where pain or distress could be caused, pain killers, sedatives, or anaesthetics are required. After all, it is not in scientist' interests to cause harm or distress to animals. Just like humans, an animal suffering from stress undergoes physiological changes with widespread effects - ever notice how students succumb to colds and flu en masse around exam time? Such factors are likely to affect experimental results, and chances are the data will be inconsistent over time. Reproducibility is the holy grail of experimental research, and the best way to achieve it is with happy, healthy animals.
One protester (with no experience in a laboratory) insists that abuse does still occur, that the law cannot protect animals. Yet it makes no sense to argue this as a reason for the abolition of vivisection. Child abuse is also illegal, but still happens. We can't stop people having children because some sick individuals harm their kids. Nor would we want to. Society and the legislature deem what is acceptable and what is not, and any aberrant behaviour can and should be punished. Besides, when you define 'torture' as keeping an animal in a clean cage with plenty of food, water, and litter mates for company, as did another one of the protesters, then there is not much ground for debate.
If Joan and her supporters succeed in blocking the construction of the biomedical research support centre, it is likely only to be a Pyrrhic victory.
Animal experimentation will still occur, but in less well-equipped surroundings. And while terror tactics may work in the short-term, they result in the scientific community circling its wagons and the end of any engagement on the subject. Worse, the culture of fear that is being generated may eventually drive the research overseas, where rules about animal welfare are less stringent.
In the long-term, only a true dialogue is going to result in long-lasting changes to the way that science is conducted in this country.
6th Oct 2004