Important new science report flags up the ‘3Rs’ as blocking progress
Dr Andre Menache, who testified at the EU Parliament with on May 11th with the president of our medical Board Dr Ray Greek, has published an important new science report against using primates as claimed surrogate humans in medical research. Dr Menache’s report incudes a very important paragraph about the 3Rs’ EU legislation, which blocks progress by entirely failing to challenge the scientific validity of animal models, excerpt below:
An inherent weakness in all European Union AWERBs (as described in articles 26 and 27 of Directive 2010/63/EU) is the 3Rs framework (replacement, reduction, refinement), which does not challenge the validity of animals as models of human disease research. This legislative loophole effectively allows researchers to conduct animal experiments in the absence of scientific proof that animals are predictive and relevant with respect to human health (2, 3). This major flaw in EU legislation carries with it huge consequences for animal welfare and human disease research.
Not in Our Name!!
We agree with Dr Menache and entirely oppose the funding human-based research as part of the 3Rs, mistakenly named an ‘alternative replacement’. Human based research saves lives, animal models kill people, they’re opposites, not alternatives to each other. Words have meanings and their meanings have life and death consequences. Please visit this link to read Dr Menache’s report in full.
Please help us effectively challenge the scientific validity of animal experimentation by asking your MP to sign EDM 373, click on the image below, type in your post code go from there!
Animal experimentation is sold to society as an alleged human medical practice, which also involves subjecting sentient animals to shocking cruelty that would otherwise be prosecuted outside the environment of a medical research laboratory. Animal experiments are now proven by current medical understanding to also cause – including fatal – harm to human patients, and this evidence is increasingly being highlighted by leading scientific journals, including the British Medical Journal. Furthermore, pharmaceutical companies openly acknowledge the failure of animal models in their drug development process and write about this often in the scientific literature.
As a patient advocacy initiative with a growing membership of critically ill people, their families, friends and carers, we find ourselves in the unenviable position of opposing the funding policies of the Dr Hadwen Trust (DTH) which is charity supported by many who also support us, whom we admire and respect. Nevertheless, we feel obliged to speak out and offer the following statement:
The DHT advertises itself as the ‘UK’s leading non-animal medical research charity’, so we were shocked to have recently learnt that over 1/3rd of its scientists are actually animal modelers too, which means that our donations have been supporting those animal labs and their staff. Four of the DHT’s scientists have published results of invasive experiments on mice this year, some of the mice were tumor bearing, others were alleged models of Huntingdon’s disease, others had their kidneys damaged and others were alleged models of prostrate cancer. Three of the scientists used rat and mice cells, but all the scientists claimed that their experiments were predictive of human patients, capable of shedding light on the human situation. Although the DHT are paying these scientists to carry out non-animal work, these researchers will not abandon their animal models. They claim that the ‘whole intact systems of mice’ have important predictive value for humans which is still valuable in medical research today. This position supports their careers, publications and also sustains lucrative grants which support the universities at which they work. And recent Home Office figures confirm that this position has also produced in an all time high number of procedures on laboratory animals, reflecting the money spent and earnt. For more on this money which maintains such false animal models please listen to the recent Talk Radio Europe interview with the president of our medical Board.
We believe that one of the reasons the Dr Hadwen Trust are funding animal modelers is that they are part of the 3Rs system: ‘reduction of animal numbers, refinement of harmful procedures on animals and replacement with alternatives’. The 3Rs are actually promoted by the UK’s PR company for the animal model community ‘Understanding Animal Research‘ and it is for this reason we flag it up. It’s a system which is 50 years out-of-date, introduced half a decade ago by Russell and Burch to encourage ‘humane experimental technique‘ on live animals – surely a contradiction in terms. The 3Rs imposes strict limitations on the language its users can use, thereby avoiding current medical understanding which exposes animal models as also causing serious harm to human patients. We have noticed that many 3Rs users are charities which may be limited by the Charity Commission’s rules about not campaigning politically.
The DHT concentrates on the ‘R’ which stands for ‘replacement with alternatives’. The word ‘alternative’ is employed prolifically on the pages of the DHT’s website, but current medical knowledge now proves that there is no alternative to animal experimentation because it has never worked to begin with. The correct scientific term for human-based research is valid or viable…this is not an alternative.
You’ll see from the animal modelers who are funded by the DHT that they are comfortable using the word alternative, it suggests that their mice models and rat cells are valid for humans – which they claim is true – but in the meantime they can be less cruel to animals by ‘validating an alternative’. This is medical nonsense! Animal models have never been validated in the first place, and human-based methods are not ‘replacements’, they are the only viable option if we are to successfully tackle the increase in crippling diseases afflicting patients and their families today.
In conclusion, all 3Rs users claim that there are times when animal models are still ‘appropriate’, that animal models need to be gradually ‘phased out’ but can be abandoned if a validated ‘alternative exist’ – none of which is true. Animal models do not work, and the funding of animal modelers needs to be abandoned, along with the 3Rs, if the search for effective treatments and cures is to be accelerated.
We hope and trust that our position statement, above, is helpful. There are many medical research funders who do not confine themselves to the 3Rs, and fund human-based research using correct scientific terms. Many of these great causes are listed here, on Animal Aid’s Victims of Charities website.
In closing, we would like to suggest that the DTH develop a programme of funding newly qualified PhDs, who would then be bound to a five year contract that would prevent them stepping onto the animal model ladder. It is completely unnecessary to fund any scientist who experiments on animals, and it is entirely possible develop a funding system outside the 3Rs which can have an immensely positive effect.
Helping universities tick their 3Rs’ ‘alternative’ box to keep the Home Office happy, thereby giving the illusion that your institution is making a difference, actually only helps keep the wheels of false animal models in perpetual motion. We must oppose the 3Rs and use only correct scientific terms if we are to effectively help and heal all involved.
If you haven’t done so already, please ask your MP to sign EDM 373: its vital call for a public, medical science hearing will hear evidence that will be judged by independent experts from the relevant fields of scientific expertise, whose decision can then be submitted to Governments internationally to change the law, (and save them money too!).
For a list of the animal modelers funded by the DHT please visit this link.
Prof. Dominic Wells is making dangerous claims about human medical science that will hurt the effective path of finding cures for muscular dystrophy. He is promoting the purpose breeding of beagle dogs with an illness he advertises as ‘very similar’ to human muscular dystrophy, so that dogs can be treated with drugs that will then be tried out on humans. This ignores every aspect of current medical understanding, which now proves how and why even identical human twins can suffer from entirely different illnesses and require treatments that are specific to their unique genetic profiles. For more please visit this link, or read the Open Letter against using Beagles as surrogate humans in safety testing and medical research, by the president of our medical Board.
We take this opportunity to call Prof. Wells into the medical debate area promoted by MPs signing Parliamentary EDM 373. If Prof. Wells is right, he should jump at the opportunity to prove his claims in a hearing that will have expert judges from the relevant fields of scientific expertise.
Some MPs are responding to requests to sign EDM 400 with a standard letter that ignores up-to-date medical knowledge.
We have drafted a template letter for you to respond with – below – simply cut and paste it into an email, or contact us if you need additional help.
We appreciate that our text is a little on the long side, but this issue is too important to reduce; every aspect needs to be there. Please remember to sign off at the close and include your address!
TEMPLATE LETTER for MPs who are refusing to listen to current scientific evidence:
Dear MP,
Thank you for your letter in response to my request for you to sign Parliamentary EDM 400, which calls for fair, properly moderated public scientific debate between opposing scientists, about claims that animal experiments can ‘predict’ the responses of human patients.
With the confidence you present in your scientific position, surely it would be appropriate to sign the EDM in order to prove your opponents wrong? After all, the debate conditions for the EDM’s called for scientific hearing protect both sides, and are endorsed as “well set out and fair” by Michael Mansfield QC. In signing the EDM you could perhaps make a public statement that you support animal models on medical and scientific grounds, and that you wish your supporting evidence to be heard in public.
I should add, however, that this EDM has a purely scientific focus and must not, therefore, be confused with ethics about animals – including the 3Rs which you highlight in your letter. The National Centre for 3RS exists to implement ‘humane experimental technique’ on animals. Although humane animal ethics is unquestionably of equal significance and value, ethics about animals can never enter a debate about medical science, which – as such – can only ever be about objectively verifiable, factual evidence.
Parliamentary EDM 400’s sole focus is scientific: namely the question of the claimed ‘predictive’ value of animal experiments for human patients. Scientists in the wider community – outside the vested interests of animal-based research – acknowledge the failure of animal models of humans, as reported by the British Medical Journal ‘s Editor’s Choice, June 2014, titled How Predictive and Productive is Animal Research? [1]This article concluded by quoting from the paper it cited:
“If research conducted on animals continues to be unable to reasonably predict what can be expected in humans, the public’s continuing endorsement and funding of preclinical animal research seems misplaced.”
If your claim is true – that animal models still play ‘a small but important role in providing vital safety information for potential new medicines’ – then surely your support of the EDM, with its reference to the ‘Concordat On Openness On Animal Research’ (which proclaims to be committed to developing communications with the media and public), would encourage a senior scientist from the animal experimentation community to agree to debate his/her scientific position?
You are absolutely correct: ‘a large number of potential new drugs never get as far as being tested in humans’ – and that is because of the failure of animal models; indeed the National Cancer Institute has said we have lost cures for cancer because studies in rodents have been believed. However, your statement that ‘some aspects of the toxicological assessment of new human medicines cannot be adequately assessed in humans, and animal data will be the only kind available’ is now opposed by up-to-date scientific understanding, as highlighted by the BMJ demonstrating unequivocally that animal data actually poses a serious threat to human health [2-3].
Animals – promoted as intact testing systems – have now been proven a consistent disaster for the prediction of responses in human patients. Drug manufacturers openly acknowledge this fact and write about it often in the scientific literature; please visit this link for extensive quotes from pharmaceutical companies. It is incorrect of you to state that ‘a large number of potentially dangerous new medicines would be tested in healthy human volunteers and patients in clinical trials’. Current science has developed tiered testing, human biology-based strategies which begin with simple cell culture (2 dimensional) and move on to 3D cell culture; 2D or 3D co-cultures (e.g. organ slices); ethically sourced stem cells that are programmed to behave like differentiated cells (e.g. liver cells, neural cells, etc); toxicogenomics; pharmacogenomics; microfluidic organ on a chip and non invasive or minimally invasive clinical and imaging studies (e.g. pharmaco-magnetoencephalography). All of this means, at the very least, that the correct physiological system is being presented with a potential new chemical, thus avoiding an entirely wrong intact system, which offers no predictive value whatsoever.
In today’s world of gene-based medicine, new treatments are being targeted to individual patients’ and their personal genetic profiles. Science now understands that even identical twins suffer differently from illnesses, and require entirely treatments that are unique for their genetic profiles. As the BMJ states: the continued funding of animal models is entirely unacceptable in this current scientific climate.
The definition of ‘prediction’ in science
The definition of prediction in science is precise because it has life and death consequences for humans. For a test to be accepted as predictive in medical practice – in our hospitals and at our GP surgeries – it has to get the answer correct at least 90% of the time, otherwise it is abandoned [4]. And as you correctly point out, the Predictive Toxicology project shows that animals predict correctly in human patients less than 50 % of the time: this is not ‘prediction’ in medical science when human lives depend on the outcome: it is less than the value of a coin toss [5].
Finally, you mention that ‘animals are only used when there are no suitable alternatives’ but the word ‘alternative’ is highly misleading when employed within this context. In reality there is no such thing as an ‘alternative’ to a method that is now demonstrated to have never existed. Animal models are now proven to have never held predictive value for humans. The correct scientific term for human-based research is ‘viable’ or ‘valid’ – this is not an ‘alternative’, it is quite simply the opposite.
Some MPs are still under the influence of the vested interests, namely those who make money directly from animal models falsely claimed as ‘predictive’ for humans. It is certainly worth mentioning that such animal experiments were first institutionalized in 1847, by Claude Bernard who went on to reject the Theory of Evolution! Please visit this link for more on this vital historical perspective.
I’d like to conclude my letter by inviting your support and interest for the scientific evidence which illustrates EDM 400, it is provided by the leading medical Board in its field who represent the new initiative Patients Campaigning For Cures, highlighted in the EDM. These experts are available to speak with you at any time. But certainly, at the very least, please sign the EDM to encourage the ‘Concordat On Openness on Animal Research’ to agree to submit a scientist to debate their position, in a fair public hearing – including evidence reported by no less than the British Medical Journal.
5. Heywood R. In: Animal Toxicity Studies: Their Relevance for Man.Lumley CE, Walker S Lancaster, Quay, editor. 1990. Clinical Toxicity – Could it have been predicted? Post-marketing experience; pp. 57–67.
Resources:
Referenced quotes from pharmaceutical companies, available here
Referenced document citing fifty failures of animal experiments that have led to human deaths, available here
What a week we’re having! Downton Abbey stars Peter Egan and Lesley Nicol are advertising Parliamentary EDM 373 which highlights our new campaign (less than a year old!). We are simply thrilled to pieces that such influential stars are beginning to tweet this issue as one of great trauma and concern for human patients too. THANK YOU to both these great actors for their amazing dedication and help.
Please+take+immediate+action:+support+#MPs+confronting+the+false+scientific+claims+of+animal+experiments+http://t.co/royt9HiLAJ Please help
No sane parent would ever take their sick child to the veterinary clinic for treatment, and at last animal models are being exposed as the damaging, malpractice they truly are proved to be by current medical expertise, increasingly highlighted by scientific journals including the British Medical Journal.
Please click on the image below to ask your MP to sign EDM 373, which calls for a thorough, public scientific debate hearing about the false claims that animal models are able to ‘predict’ the responses of human patients:
This is a helpful document which is referenced, and provides fifty examples of failed experiments on animal models which have led to human deaths; please read more.
We are honored to be highlighted in the new Parliamentary EDM 373, please click on the image below to send your MP up-to-date information about current medical understanding, so that old school activists from the animal model community can be held to thorough, public scientific account in debate hearings that will be overseen by independent judges from the relevant fields of scientific expertise.
We are not yet a year old, yet we are already being named and recognized in Parliament by a new Early Day Motion, number 373, tabled by Kelvin Hopkins MP and calling for the false claims that animal experiments can ‘predict’ the responses of human patients to be held to effective public scientific account.
Britain’s foremost human rights defence barrister Michael Mansfield QC has endorsed the debate conditions for EDM 373, which require a senior scientist from the animal experimentation community to agree face his/her medical opposition in open, fair debate with Dr Ray Greek, the president of our medical Board which leads its field. The British Medical Journal reflects the need for this thorough scientific debate hearing in its Editor’s Choice published in June 2014 titled How Predictive and Productive is Animal Research? This article concludes by quoting the paper it cites:
“If research conducted on animals continues to be unable to reasonably predict what can be expected in humans, the public’s continuing endorsement and funding of preclinical animal research seems misplaced.”
Please ask your MP to sign this historic EDM, simply click on the image below to type in your post code and go from there:
Our founder, Rebecca Groves, is a very inspiring 27 year old young lady who has multiple sclerosis. Rebecca’s life is constantly enriched and uplifted by the devoted companionship of her gorgeous Jack Russel dog, Patch, and Rebecca also always buys Cruelty Free products. So this post about Cruelty Free International’s (CFI) misleading statements about medical science is not published lightly.
CFI are asking people to help fund their court case against the Govt.’s decision to allow B&K Universal’s beagle breeding unit to keep dogs indoors – this is a moral issue about animals not being given access to outside runs. However, CFI do not limit their evidence to animal cruelty issues and have, much to our great sadness and alarm, published false statements about science on their website and in The Times to support their court case, details below:
The Govt. falsely argue that infections, which may be caught by dogs spending time in outside runs, would impact on their ability to predict the responses of human patients and ‘could potentially invalidate any experiment they are used in’. CFI respond by stating the opposite, that there’s ‘greater risk of experiments being distorted if dogs were kept indoors”. Both positions are medically false, and cloud the very grave medical truth that such animal experiments are now already proven to be entirely invalid for human medical research; please visit our science Board for more on this.
It is solely up-to-date medical understanding – about crucial differences in evolutionary biology, which have evolved over millions of years – that now invalidates the continued use of cruel experiments on animals, falsely claimed able to ‘predict’ the responses of human patients. This scientific fact has absolutely nothing to do with whether dogs have access to the outside, or if they are kept indoors. To be perfectly honest we are surprised that CFI is serious about asking for donations to fund a court action based on the outside run issue, but we will be keeping a close eye on developments and will comment where appropriate.
The experts who represent us are the foremost in their field, and their position, thankfully, is increasingly becoming the focus of leading scientific journals, including the British Medical Journal which published its Editor’s Choice in June 2014, titled ‘How Predictive and Productive is Animal Research?’ (the full article is available here ). You can listen to the president of our medical Board, Dr Ray Greek, testifying at an EU Parliament science hearing earlier this year, below:
Please click on the image below to type in your post code and ask your MP to sign Parliamentary EDM 373. This EDM has been tabled by Kelvin Hopkins MP and calls for properly moderated public scientific debates about the false claims that animal models are able to ‘predict’ the responses of human patients. These science debate hearings have conditions endorsed by Britain’s foremost human rights defence barrister Michael Mansfield QC, and will be overseen by independent judges from the scientific community.
We have responded to today’s shocking piece in The Sun, which pitches a violinist against a pharmacology professor, to try and convince readers that animal experiments help human patients. Please read our response
Two of the most common false claims from the PR organisation for animal experimentation – ‘Understanding Animal Research’ (UAR) – are that penicillin and insulin would never have been discovered without the use of animal models – specifically dogs regarding the insulin claim. Both these claims are untrue and could be proved as such if UAR would agree to our called for medical debate hearing.
The following documents give a referenced history of the discovery of penicillin and insulin, and demonstrate that a) animal experimentation actually delayed the use of penicillin for humans for over a decade, because it has no effect on rabbits and b) insulin was derailed for humans becuase experiments on dogs led scientists to believe it was a liver disease. Here’s the penicillin document and here’s insulin document.
We support FLOE’s call for UAR to agree to debate our experts, supported by many MPs including Paul Flynn MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Diane Abbott MP, Sir Greg Knight MP, Gordon Henderson MP and Caroline Lucas MP. No scientist from UAR will agree to the MPs’ called for thorough medical debate hearing, which would be overseen by independent judges from the relevant fields of scientific expertise, qualified and capable of reaching a decision about such medical history.
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