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Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs must educate the public about the medical benefits of experiments
on animals. That was the message from leading scientists who gathered to
defend animal research at a packed meeting of the Research Defence Society
in London held last week. ‘We must make the public realise the extent to
which their lives depend on animal experiments,’ said Colin Blakemore, professor
of physiology at the University of Oxford.

‘Animalism’ should be aligned with ‘quackery, cults and terrorism’,
said John Vane, director of the William Harvey Research Institute at St
Bartholomew’s Hospital and a Nobel prizewinner. ‘Animalists have allied
themselves with environmentalists as greens. This must be vigorously contested.’

GPs, schoolteachers and the media should also spread the word, argued
David Hubel, professor of neurology at Harvard University and winner of
a Nobel prize for his research on vision in cats. Hubel said that doctors
should tell patients every time they prescribed drugs that these products
are available only because of animal experiments. They should also place
posters and leaflets in their waiting rooms.

Several speakers called on scientists themselves to be more vigorous
and open about their work. Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs are being too defensive, too secretive,
too closed in on themselves, in the face of animal rights activists, said
Steven Rose, professor of biology at the Open University.

Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs should also acknowledge public concern about the use of animals
in experimental surgery and toxicity testing. ‘These have to be justified
not only by scientists but by society,’ said Sydney Brenner, director of
the Medical Research Council’s Molecular Genetics Group in Cambridge. On
safety testing, scientists could work to devise systems that would not use
animals.

The big question for modern biological researchers now, said Brenner,
surrounds the use of ‘transgenic’ animals, created by the transfer of foreign
genes. Using this technique scientists can create animals which suffer human-like
diseases and provide models on which researchers can test new treatments.
Transgenesis has also become an invaluable technique in basic biological
research. ‘There are important ethical issues here,’ he said, which scientists
should acknowledge in public. Issues involved in genetic manipulation in
general already hold enormous fear in the public mind, he said. ‘The conjoining
of these issues in the public mind with animal experiments creates quite
an explosive mixture,’ Brenner said.

Another controversial issue was the need to understand the public and
why the animal rights groups were so powerful. Only one scientist ventured
an explanation. Hubel put concern over animal experiments down to a popular
failure to understand the animal kingdom with its predators and prey, and
‘excessive squeamishness, partly the result of advanced technological civilisation’.

Advocates for Animals, the antivivisection group, has published its
response to the Medical Research Council’s inquiry into the ‘Feldberg case’.
Wilhelm Feldberg, who worked at the National Institute for Medical Research
in London allegedly operated on rabbits that were not properly anaesthetised.

Les Ward, director of Advocates for Animals, says there are ‘individuals
within the MRC, NIMR and Home Office who must be held responsible’. Ward
says the Home Secretary should submit details of the case to the Director
of Public Prosecutions for consideration of a number of prosecutions or
give his reasons for not so doing.