Public meeting organised by Voice for Ethical Research at Oxford, on the subject Humane Alternatives to Animal Research: the Way Forward for 21st Century Medicine, November 28th, 2006

The first public meeting held by VERO took place at Oxford Town Hall. It was chaired by Dr Richard Ryder, formerly Senior Psychologist at the Warneford Hospital, Oxford, and a very distinguished leader and author in the animal rights movement. The speakers were Peter Tatchell, Dr Gill Langley, and Dr Katy Taylor. Before the meeting began, Dr Ryder and Peter Tatchell were interviewed by Central News, and so introduced VERO and its aims to a wider public.

Dr Ryder opened the meeting by recalling some of Oxford's recent history. In the late 1960s and early 70s, he and several other University members made Oxford the starting-place for the modern animal rights movement. The group included Andrew Linzey, who has very recently established an Animal Ethics Centre at Oxford. It was Dr Ryder who devised the term "speciesism", and so extended the liberation movements of that time – against racism and sexism – to embrace this next great class of the dispossessed and exploited: the creatures of other species than our own. In 1971, this "Oxford Group" produced the pioneering book of essays entitled Animals, Men, and Morals; but Dr Ryder recalled that he and his colleagues also took the cause out onto the streets of Oxford.

Introducing Peter Tatchell, Dr Ryder spoke of his work as a campaigner for human rights, and mentioned his celebrated citizen's arrest of Robert Mugabe. Like so many of those involved in animal causes – now and in earlier times – Peter came to animal rights through his attention to specifically human suffering and regards them as essentially the same concern.

Peter Tatchell began his talk by reminding the audience of the recent tragic results of a trial of the anti-inflammatory treatment TGN1412. The British Pharmaceutical Company described this event as "exceptional", but Peter showed how often in fact drugs which have similarly done well in animal tests have subsequently harmed or even killed human beings. Such is the justifiable public dread of diseases like cancer and HIV, however, that this flawed animal-based research continues to be lavishly funded, while animal welfare measures are routinely resisted by the pharmaceutical companies.

Peter then spoke in particular about the development of protease inhibitor drugs for the treatment of HIV. Quoting some of the statements made by leaders within the drug company concerned (Merck, Sharpe and Dohme), Peter showed that their trust in the adverse predictions given in animal tests may actually have delayed by some years an effective treatment, and that the finally successful drug Crixivan was developed and tested using animal-free technology. Peter ended his talk with these words: "Those who say that we should put up with the limitations of vivisection and that there is no alternative to animal models are talking unscientific nonsense, and it is time we said so."

The next speaker was Dr Gill Langley, Scientific Director of the Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research. Dr Langley, as well as being a specialist in alternatives to animal-based research, has served on the Animal Procedures Committee which advises the Home Office on the issuing of project licences under the 1986 Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act. This gives her unusual authority to judge practices and attitudes right across the medical research scene.

Dr Langley gave the audience some examples of alternative techniques which are now established in practice. These included the use of donated tissue samples from human joints for research into rheumatism, a technology which has recently led to a new type of anti-rheumatic drug. Another example was the partial replacement of the notorious Draize eye-irritancy test (used on rabbits) with cell- and tissue-based techniques. These and other research achievements were originally sponsored by the Dr Hadwen Trust. Among the exciting developments going forward now is computer modelling to improve knowledge of the cardio-vascular and other complex systems of the human body. Oxford University itself has been involved in this international project, called Reality Grid.

The encouraging progress in humane science instanced in these examples has been achieved, Dr Langley said, with little or no government support, political or financial, and with little enthusiasm on the part of the scientific establishment, although opinion surveys repeatedly show that a large majority of the public desires more investment in these alternative technologies rather than in animal-based research. The universities and medical schools have been especially resistant to change, and it is here that animal experimentation has continued to increase, quite contrary to the trend elsewhere – in fact by a shocking 52% over the last ten years. It is here above all, then, that new technologies, and the ethics of justice and compassion, need promoting.

The final speaker was Dr Katy Taylor, Science Co-ordinator at the British Union against Vivisection. Dr Taylor took up Gill Langley's concluding point, and put the question "Why have institutions like Oxford University been so reluctant to develop and use non-animal research methods?" Part of the answer, astonishingly, is that only about half of the scientists who use animals in research (according to a recent survey) even know that the 1986 Act requires them to use alternative methods where possible. Then, the animal-based research, when completed, is not subject to sufficiently rigorous assessment. Too often the fact of publication is regarded as an adequate result, though the published material may be (and often is) unprofitable to other researchers and inconsequential to human health. This is especially true of so-called "basic" research, the research which is not tied to the development of a particular treatment. Dr Taylor said that much stricter evaluation of such projects, not only beforehand but also retrospectively, would expose unnecessary and unserviceable work, and guide future funds and expertise towards better and more humane programmes of research.

Dr Taylor spoke of other obstacles to progress: the existing infra-structure in laboratories being costly to change, the familiarity of animal-based research as the established paradigm, short-termism in funding and research assessments – all tending to keep things essentially as they are. Funding organisations, the scientific journals, and national government must all take a longer view, and promote the type of scientific research that our society as a whole has shown that it desires. [The full text of Dr Taylor's talk can be read on the BUAV website, www.buav.org]

After Dr Taylor's talk, there was a lively session of questions and discussion. The first questioner reminded us that our exploitation of animals was part of a flawed relation to the rest of nature which has now brought our whole planet within sight of disaster. Another said that although VERO was rightly promoting better alternatives to vivisection, we must not forget that the immorality of the practice remains the essential and sufficient objection to it. There were two questions from Oxford University scientists. One of the questioners, Dr Priestman, is to put his case for the use of animals at more length in a seminar arranged by VERO next term. The other expressed his doubt that any non-animal technology could replace the intact system which an animal represents, but Dr Langley was able to give encouraging news of developments in exactly that area of research.

This inaugural public meeting was well attended, and demonstrated VERO's character as an organisation aimed at promoting progressive, useful, and humane biomedical research in Oxford University. As was hoped, the meeting has produced many enquiries and new supporters, both within the University and beyond it.