Nautilus

Doctors used to try out their surgical skills on animals before being allowed to work on patients. Now just a handful of US medical schools still have animal labs. A Nature News report (453, 140-141; 8 May 2008) asks if they've lost a vital tool.

This month sees the shutdown of the live-animal laboratory at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. The lab is currently used to train medical students, allowing them to practise on anaesthetized pigs before attempting their first incision into humans. But the school, which has used live cats, dogs and ferrets in its surgery programme in the past, intends to stop using live animals at the end of this semester in favour of technologies such as virtual simulations. It is the latest closure in a phase-out of animal labs across the United States: in 1994, live-animal experiments were on the curriculum in 77 of 125 medical schools; now it is thought that just eight use them.

In the context of a global trend to reduce the use of live non-human animals for surgical training, the News story reports a range of opinions from medical scientists, physicians, directors, students and others on the value of training using simulation or real animals.
See here for previous Nautilus posts and discussion on animal experimentation.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 14, 2008
Categories: Animal experiments | Permalink | Comments (0)

The editorial in this month's Nature Immunology describes how some scientists are working proactively to prevent the harassment and harm of researchers who work on non-human animals. A letter in last week's Correspondence section of Nature (452, 934; 2008) suggests that more researchers need to take on this task. The text of the Correspondence:

Your News story 'Animal-rights activists invade Europe (Nature 451, 1034–1035; 2008) highlights the need for medical researchers to do more to communicate to the public the reasons why they need to use animals in their research and what this involves. All too often, there is a tendency to wait until extremism becomes intolerable before taking steps to counter it (see Nature 452, 282; 2008). The little information about animal research available to the public is frequently oversimplified and tends to be over-reliant on the perceived authority of the author. The scientific literature usually requires subscription to access it and scientific training to understand it. This leaves information gaps through which antivivisectionist groups can push their propaganda.
Organizations such as the Research Defence Society do much to address this deficit, but have limited resources and cannot be expected to counter the animal-rights campaigners alone. Anyone who is wondering why somebody doesn't debunk misleading claims made about them or their colleagues should consider the possibility that they are that 'somebody'. Even those who are not prepared to go public can always provide detailed explanations of their work and that of others in the field to scientific advocacy campaigns.
A fact your report didn't mention is that the new biomedical laboratory in Oxford — which, by the way, will house mostly rodents and very few monkeys — has been built. In a campaign that complemented the efforts of the police and government, Pro-Test were able to counter the animal-rights group Speak ('The voice for the animals') by capitalizing on the overwhelming support for the new laboratory among Oxford students and local politicians.
Extremism can be defeated, but only if scientists stand up and expose the myths and distortions that fuel it.

Further Nautilus discussion on the topic of animal experimentation can be found here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 08, 2008
Categories: Animal experiments | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Editorial in this month's (May) issue of Nature Immunology (9, 445; 2008) describes how academics are responding to escalating violence by extremist animal-rights groups by working proactively to prevent the harassment and harm of scientists. Some of these violent incidents, and the scientific community's reactions, have been previously discussed at Nautilus.
The Nature Immunology Editorial points out that measures passed by the UK Home Office in July 2004 and the US Congress in late 2006 classify as a criminal offence the use of force, violence and harassment against people and institutions engaging in animal testing. Unfortunately, the Editorial continues, "these measures have apparently done little to dissuade fringe animal-rights activists groups..... Perhaps not understood by extremist organizations is the fact that the creation of suitable alternatives to animal testing would be welcomed by many academics, most of whom are frustrated with the enormous financial and administrative burdens associated with animal research." A few encouraging efforts are under way (see Nature Correspondence from 20 March 2008 issue, for example), but "for the foreseeable future and until technological advances provide suitable alternatives, animal research remains essential to biomedical research into understanding and combating human disease."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 23, 2008
Categories: Animal experiments | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Nature's Correspondence page (Nature 452, 282; 20 March 2008)
Animal-welfare extremism is spreading, as reported in your News Story ‘Animal-rights activists invade Europe’ (Nature 451, 1034–1035; 2008). For example, they blocked plans to build new laboratory facilities in Venray, the Netherlands, with a campaign that included painting threats on the lab directors’ houses.
Although many people are concerned about animal experimentation, most do not understand the rationale behind these illegal activities, which cause considerable fear in the research community. Researchers respond by wanting to reduce transparency and asking the government to increase repression of activists — following the UK example of stricter legislation.
Today’s understanding of animal welfare and of the motivation underlying both normal and abnormal behaviour indicate that this response could be counterproductive. A better solution would be to channel people’s frustrations into more constructive activities. The animal-rights extremists have now received positive reinforcement from their success in blocking the Venray plans. Reduced transparency will only increase societal concern, and repression risks exporting the problem (as it did from the United Kingdom to the Netherlands). Worse, as the extremists are motivated by frustration, repression may amplify the problem.
More constructive solutions include the provision of some form of democratic control, and perceived justice, to people concerned about laboratory-animal welfare. Membership of animal-protection organizations and voting for animal-friendly parties have not proved adequate. As with farm-animal welfare, society could opt for alternative routes. For example, people could request information from medical charities on their funding of animal experiments. Medical treatments developed through animal experimentation could be labelled, as food products are labelled with information about animal welfare. Increased transparency and transfer of at least part of the responsibility from the researcher back to society are key to resolving the wider problem underlying animal extremism.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 19, 2008
Categories: Animal experiments | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Nature (News in Brief), 451, 1041 (2008):
The University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) succeeded last week in getting a temporary restraining order against five vociferous animal-rights activists, as well as organizations such as the Animal Liberation Front, who have claimed responsibility for various property crimes and threats against researchers.
The ruling stipulates that the activists must stay farther than 15 metres from researchers and remove the scientists' addresses from their websites. UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton called the ruling “a clear victory in the continuing process of UCLA protecting its researchers”. The university will seek permanent restraining orders in a hearing on 12 March.
“They are trying to mix above-ground protestors that never do anything illegal in with the Animal Liberation Front and the underground organizations that have flooded homes and broken windows,” says Jerry Vlasak, press officer for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. “The two groups are completely separate; they don't know who each other are.”
There is also a News story in the same issue of Nature, 451; 1034-1035 (2008) 'Animal rights activists invade Europe', which reports that a "rash of vandalism, intimidation and arson across continental Europe in 2008 is evidence of a worrying new wave of animal-rights extremism being exported from Britain", as more stringent law-enforcement is making it harder for these people to carry out their activities there. Several examples are provided in the News story, and there are predictably heated exchanges in the online comments to the article - for a reasoned view on animal experimentation in general, see the UK Research Defence Society.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 07, 2008
Categories: Animal experiments | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the February issue of Nature Medicine 14, 112 (2008):
Attacks against researchers by animal rights extremists have steadily increased in recent years. More than 70 such attacks occured in 2006 alone, according to data collected by the Foundation for Biomedical Research, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization that aims to serve as the voice of scientific reason in the ongoing debate that surrounds animal research. Frankie Trull currently heads the foundation, which she established in 1981. She explains to Nature Medicine why she has devoted her career to improving the public understanding of the essential role of lab animals in medical research and discovery.
The question-and-answer interview that follows covers various issues, including the reasons for the recent increase in extremist actions in the United States, how to safely increase the transparency of animal experimentation, protection measures, approaches to replace animals, and the diseases that are most likely to benefit from the use of live animals in research.
The full article is available at Nature Medicine's website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 26, 2008
Categories: Animal experiments | Permalink | Comments (0)

December's editorial in Nature Neuroscience (10, 1501; 2007) describes how law-enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom are acting before trouble develops to protect researchers from threats and harassment by animal rights extremists. Other countries should consider adopting similar policies and tactics.
There has been "a sudden and very marked decline in targeting individual researchers around the country in a personal way," the director of the UK Research Defence Society (RDS, an organization that monitors such campaigns and receives police briefings) told The Guardian. The RDS website points to an article on Comment is Free, the Guardian blog, about the benefits of animal experiments for medicine.
According to the Nature Neuroscience editorial: "In contrast, Dario Ringach and Michael Podell received little support from law enforcement or their universities in the United States in dealing with sustained campaigns of threats and intimidation, which ultimately led each of them to stop studying animals. The passage of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act raised hopes that the United States might adopt a tougher approach, but one scientist in Los Angeles said that the situation has not improved. In October, the Animal Liberation Front took responsibility for flooding the house of a local researcher, causing $20,000–40,000 in damage. Because the new federal law applies only to crimes committed across state lines, it has not been effective against extremists who act within a state. To crack down on intimidation of researchers, legislatures will need to pass stronger state laws and the police will need to respond proactively to threats."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 29, 2007
Categories: Animal experiments | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are three letters from the several received by Nature in response to its Editorial of 24 May, Unwise Branding (Nature 447, 353; 2007). All three responses were published in the journal's Correspondence section on 5 July. An online commenting facility was provided at the time of publication of the Editorial. The opportunity to comment is again provided via the comment link below this post.

Terrorists are activists who renounce non-violence
Sarah Reichard, Thomas M. Hinckley & H. D. Bradshaw, Jr
As faculty members whose research was affected severely by a 2001 firebomb attack by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), we object to the assertion in your Editorial 'Unwise branding' (Nature 447, 353; 2007) that charging ELF arsonists with terrorism could amount to erecting an "unbreachable wall" to dialogue between them and scientists.
The ELF and its sister the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) use violence against civilian targets to further a political viewpoint: this is the definition of terrorism. Calling the ELF and ALF terrorist organizations is a simple statement of fact. There is no need to mince words in a vain effort to placate groups whose members, through a dangerous combination of wilful ignorance and willingness to enforce their world view 'by any means necessary', eschew reason in favour of senseless violence.
Some ELF and ALF apologists believe that 'property damage' (including destruction of research buildings at universities) does not qualify as terrorism. Perhaps the ELF statement from which we quote below will give those apologists a glimpse of the perspective shared by those of us whose names and addresses have been posted on ELF or ALF websites (which link to instructions on firebomb construction and deployment). After the firebombing of a US Forest Service laboratory in Pennsylvania in 2002, the ELF declared: "segments of this global revolutionary movement are no longer limiting their revolutionary potential by adhering to a flawed, inconsistent 'non-violent' ideology. While innocent life will never be harmed in any action we undertake, where it is necessary, we will no longer hesitate to pick up the gun to implement justice, and provide the needed protection for our planet that decades of legal battles, pleading, protest, and economic sabotage have failed so drastically to achieve."
Simply put, ELF and ALF members are anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-human fundamentalists — certain that they have privileged access to some universal truth, deaf to alternative arguments, blind to evidence and determined to intimidate those who disagree with them. They are self-righteous in firebombing the very institutions (such as ours) that sponsor research and open discourse to understand and improve the state of the Earth for all its inhabitants. ELF and ALF terrorists have built the wall of naive, intolerant fundamentalism between themselves and us — only they can breach it. Rational people are, and always have been, waiting on the other side in the hope of receiving some form of communication other than a bomb or a bullet.
College of Forest Resources and Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle.

Activists: arson risks killing innocent people
Mike Fainzilber
Your Editorial 'Unwise branding' (Nature 447, 353; 2007) is against equating animal-rights activism with terrorism. In it you state that "there is no such objective thing as a terrorist". This statement is yet another example of the moral blindness invading public discourse in the United Kingdom.
It is straightforward to define terrorism in an objective and legally egalitarian manner, for example by defining as a terrorist any person who uses violence to further his or her ideology, without taking into consideration the likelihood that innocent people may be injured, maimed or killed by such violent acts. Arson fuelled by ideology would certainly fit this definition of terrorism, and the animal-rights arsonists discussed in your Editorial were apparently not deterred by the possibility that people might be injured or killed in the fires they set.
Your second concern, regarding "who will be willing to publicly break bread with a terrorist, reformed or otherwise", is answered by current reality in Northern Ireland, South Africa and other places around the globe.
Biological Chemistry, Weizmann Institute, Rehovot.

Activists: some walls are not meant to be breached
Beverly E. Barton
Your Editorial 'Unwise branding' (Nature 447, 353; 2007) stated: "We should avoid building an unbreachable wall between criminal activists and their victims." Am I mistaken, then, in the purpose for incarceration of criminals after conviction?
Department of Surgery, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 06, 2007
Categories: Animal experiments, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

The current issue of EMBO Reports features a Talking Point collection of articles on the use of animals in scientific research. Frank Gannon writes in his introduction:
The balance between the rights of animals and their use in biomedical research is a delicate issue with huge societal implications. The debate over whether and how scientists should use animal models has been inflammatory, and the opposing viewpoints are difficult to reconcile. Many animal-rights activists call for nothing less than the total abolition of all research involving animals. Conversely, many scientists insist that some experiments require the use of animals and want to minimize regulation, arguing that it would impede their research. Most scientists, however, try to defend the well-established and generally beneficial practice of selective experimentation on animals, but struggle to do so on an intellectual basis. Somehow, society must find the middle ground—avoiding the cruel and unnecessary abuse of animals in research while accepting and allowing their use if it benefits society.
In any debate, one should first know the facts and arguments from each side before making an educated judgement.
The article continues here.
The other articles in the Talking Point are:
Animal research: a moral science by Bernard E. Rollin.
The ethics of animal research by Simon Festing and Robin Wilkinson.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 06, 2007
Categories: Animal experiments, Policies | Permalink | Comments (0)

Equating animal-rights activism with terrorism increases the penalties for offenders and will please many of their victims. But it is not in the interests of science. So states this week's lead Editorial in Nature (447, 353; 2007)

Last November, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act was signed into law in the United States. It creates tough penalties for damaging property, making threats and conspiring against zoos, animal labs and the like. Leaving aside the merits of this act, its very name enshrines into law the idea that destructive activists are terrorists.

As one of the communities targeted by these activists, scientists may be tempted to embrace this rhetoric. Indeed, many people have personally felt terrified by the actions of the most extreme. But 'terrorist' is a word so debased and loaded by political use that, if it has any meaning at all, it is counterproductive. There is no such objective thing as a terrorist. A criminal is a person who has been convicted of a crime. We can examine a person's records and make an unemotional determination of whether or not they are a criminal. But a terrorist is, in practice, a person who fights for a cause we do not believe in using methods that we do not approve of. Calling someone a terrorist is a value judgement.

The full text of the Editorial is available here (site licence or subscription required).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 24, 2007
Categories: Animal experiments, Ethics, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (1)

Animal-welfare section in papers would be a burden : Article : Nature

Dr C. Jimenez writes in Correspondence this week (Nature 447, 259; 2007):

Victoria Buck in Correspondence ('Who will start the 3Rs ball rolling for animal welfare?' Nature 446, 856; 2007) calls for journals to include an animal-welfare category in the methods section of papers describing research on live animals. I disagree.

We scientists have far too many things to do to add yet another bureaucratic burden to writing papers for no useful reason. I agree that sharing information about the way animals are treated and handled during experiments could be useful, but that can and should be done in another forum.

We pay expensive rates for our animal-care facilities and personnel, and are quite often stymied by the countless new rules and regulations, many of which serve no real useful purpose other than making us jump through more hoops. We are almost regulated to inaction.

It is time for scientists to stand up and say enough is enough, even if it bucks the trend, so we can get on with our work.

See previous Nautilus post and comments on the question of animal-welfare sections in scientific papers.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 22, 2007
Categories: Animal experiments | Permalink | Comments (0)

In this week's Nature, Hanno Wuerbel of the Justus Liebig University of Giessen, points out that although a large majority of the public is supportive of the principles of animal experimentation to improve biological knowledge, human and veterinary health, nature conservation and animal welfare, the public also expects strict adherence to the 3R-principle (replace, reduce, refine) to minimize animal numbers, pain, suffering and lasting harm.
A set of News Features in Nature (444; 807-816; 14 December 2006) identified considerable scope for advancing the 3Rs. Dr Wuerbel proposes that journals could play a much more effective role by including a 3R section in the methods section of published papers: first, to allow authors of controversial papers to detail their measures to minimize pain, suffering and lasting harm in the animals; and second, to allow authors to describe novel tools or techniques applied in the published work that serve the 3Rs.
More details about the proposal are described in the Nature Correspondence. We welcome views from authors and other scientists about the proposed policy.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 14, 2007
Categories: Animal experiments, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (17)

This week's Nature devotes its entire News Feature section to the topic of laboratory animals, with articles about Nature's poll to find out what scientists really think about the use of animals in research; attitudes to research on primates; and the implications of the expected explosion in the number of mice used in experiments, as mouse disease models proliferate and are refined. All these features, and more, are collected in a special web focus. Join the discussion of these pieces and the reaction to them in the news blog .

The Nature journals' policy on publication of work that involves research on anmial subjects can be seen at this link. We welcome your views on this publication policy in the comments to this post.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 15, 2006
Categories: Animal experiments | Permalink | Comments (0)