Last year in Britain, 2,649 monkeys – marmosets, tamarins and macaques – were used in scientific procedures regulated by the Home Office.
Research of this nature is always said to be justified on the grounds that it is essential, indeed unavoidable in the interests of medical progress. Now, however, a review of research has concluded that 9% of primate experiments between 1997 and 2006 produced “no clear scientific, medical or social benefit”. In addition:
- Much primate research had a high welfare impact on the animals
- Alternatives to using primates were not always sufficiently explored
- Benefits of primate research were not always commensurate with welfare costs
- Evidence was not always available of actual medical benefit stemming from primate research, such as changes in clinical practice or new treatments
- In some cases, previous work was repeated, or confirmed earlier results from human studies
- Some primate research was never written up for dissemination
But 9% of the grants reviewed were found lacking and did not adequately justify experimenting on primates. For instance, a neurophysiology project that analysed 200 cells each from two animals was not enough to reach a strong conclusion, according to Professor Bateson. Studies using primates to study vision were generally fundamental in nature, meaning the actual and potential medical impacts of most of these studies were low.
The review panel was led by Professor Sir Patrick Bateson, and funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Wellcome Trust. It was based on detailed questionnaires mailed to 72 grant-holders involved in primate research over the ten-year period, of which 67 were returned. They also examined, grant by grant, the justification, conduct and outcomes of the research. In most cases, they concluded that the research met acceptable standards, turning to primates only when justified by the potential for medical or scientific gains.
Given, however, that the review was carried out by scientists who broadly accept animal testing, commissioned by biomedical research funders and based largely on questionnaires returned by researchers, some its conclusions are damning.
As our colleagues in the BUAV have commented:
“What this debate really needs is a truly critical assessment of primate research, to determine to what degree primate data essentially contributes to medical progress, and how predictive of the human situation any given primate study may be. Only then can a value be assigned to it.”
And RSPCA senior scientist Maggy Jennings said: “It’s deeply worrying that it’s taken so many years for this report to emerge and now it’s here it makes recommendations for good practice that people will have assumed would already be happening.
“We agree with Bateson that for too long people have been happy to overstate the importance of experiments using non-human primates in the absence of the evidence to back up their emphatic claims.”
Indeed. And as the UK considers how to transpose the new European directive on the protection of animals used in experiments, it is essential that we press home the need to reduce and replace the use of primates in UK laboratories. That will be one of the key points in our response to the Home Office consultation on transposition.