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The Medical Research Council has published its report on how an 89-year-old
professor came to perform unauthorised and painful experiments on rabbits
in the MRC’s flagship laboratory, the National Institute of Medical Research,
last year.

The MRC’s report blames the professor, Wilhelm Feldberg, his technician,
John Stean, the director of the NIMR and its vet, the Home Office and itself
for a series of failures to enforce the 1986 Animals (Scientific Procedures)
Act. But the report stresses that the incident is not typical and does not
represent ‘the tip of the iceberg’.

Advocates for Animals, the moderate animal welfare group that brought
the Feldberg case to light, is unconvinced. ‘When the story broke we had
phone calls from several scientists who described other contraventions,’
says Fiona McLaren, campaigns officer for Advocates for Animals. ‘Give us
access to laboratories for a year so that we can see what is going on and
know that our faith in the 1986 act is justified.’

The breaches of the act came to light last year when Advocates for Animals
released a videotape showing Feldberg and Stean performing experiments on
living rabbits at the NIMR, in Mill Hill, London. The experiments involved
burning a rabbit’s abdomen with an electric lamp to observe the effects
on levels of insulin in the blood.

The MCR inquiry criticised the Home Office for giving Feldberg permission
to perform these experiments. According to the report: ‘The Home Secretary
failed to weigh adequately the likely benefit of the research against the
likely adverse effects on the animals involved,’ as the act requires. The
MRC eventually refused to fund the research because some referees questioned
its scientific value. One said the work was ‘of no importance’.

Feldberg contravened the act, first by going ahead with the experiments
before Home Office approval came through, and then by failing to ensure
that the rabbits were properly anaesthetised. The most clear-cut case of
suffering on the videotape showed a rabbit repeatedly moving its head during
an operation that lasted six minutes.

The inquiry, chaired by Brian Bailey, chairman of Television South West,
also condemned the Home Office inspectors. It stated they were aware of
‘difficulties’ involving Feldberg several years ago when they convinced
him to switch from cats to rabbits. ‘The publicity forced them to take the
action which they should have taken much earlier,’ the report concludes.

Both the director of the NIMR and its veterinary surgeon, as well as
the MRC hierarchy, came under fire for failing to prevent the abuses. ‘The
central problem is that the legislation is still comparatively young,’ says
Bailey. ‘There need to be proper lines of delegation so laboratory practice
is properly monitored at the sharp end. That is the thrust of our report.’

Bailey continues: ‘We have provided an interpretation of the act which
may well remove some of the doubt as to who is entitled and indeed required
to do certain things, to make sure that research is properly authorised
and adequately monitored.’

Dai Rees, director of the MRC, says that the MRC’s council accepted
the report and has already acted on its recommendations. It has set up a
Laboratory Animals Care Secretariat to oversee animal experiments within
30 MRC research units and has ‘intensified’ supervision of experiments.

The Home Office has yet to respond to the report, but it is unlikely
that it will initiate criminal proceedings against the now 90-year-old Feldberg
or anyone else. No scientist has ever been prosecuted for breaking the law
on animal experiments. The report recommends that the Home Office hire more
inspectors to ‘monitor the treatment of animals during experiments’. At
the moment, 20 Home Office inspectors must police some 18,000 licence holders.