{"id":2178,"date":"2013-07-18T17:12:27","date_gmt":"2013-07-19T01:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/?p=2178"},"modified":"2013-07-24T17:23:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-25T01:23:09","slug":"number-of-animal-experiments-in-britain-jumps-8-to-4-1million-despite-coalition-pledge-to-reduce-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/2013\/07\/18\/number-of-animal-experiments-in-britain-jumps-8-to-4-1million-despite-coalition-pledge-to-reduce-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Number of animal experiments in Britain jumps 8% to 4.1million despite Coalition pledge to reduce them"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\"><span>A<\/span><span>nimal rights groups describe the figure, highest since 1982, as \u2018shocking\u2019<\/span><br \/>\n<span><br \/>\nBy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/home\/search.html?s=&amp;authornamef=Fiona+Macrae\" rel=\"nofollow\">Fiona Macrae<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span>The number of animal experiments carried out in the UK topped four million last year with a sharp increase in the number of monkeys used in laboratories.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Home Office statistics show that 4.11million experiments were carried out in university, charity and commercial labs in 2012 \u2013 an 8 per cent jump on the previous year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The total, the highest since 1982, has emerged three years after the Coalition pledged in its programme for government to \u2018work to reduce the use of animals in scientific research\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2179\" style=\"width: 406px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/2013_primate1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2179\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2179\" alt=\"2013_primate1\" src=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/2013_primate1.jpg\" width=\"406\" height=\"324\" srcset=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/2013_primate1.jpg 634w, https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/2013_primate1-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 406px) 100vw, 406px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2179\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Good science? A monkey is restrained by researchers conducting animal testing in a still from Channel 4&#8217;s controversial ANIMALS documentary. Last year 2,186 monkeys were used in animal experiments<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span>Scientists and medical research charities stress that animals are only used when no other alternatives are available and say that many significant advances in modern medicine have their roots in animal work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>But animal rights groups described the figures as \u2018shocking\u2019 and said that failure to cut numbers was completely unacceptable.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The figures include experiments aimed at improving animal and human health but they also take in the breeding of GM creatures.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The bulk of the rise can be explained by an \u2018explosion\u2019 of interest in mutant mice that have been bred to carry certain genes or to develop symptoms of human disease.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Mice are particularly favoured because they are small, cheap and easy to work with.\u00a0 But, crucially, 99 per cent of mouse genes exist in the human body in some shape or form.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Professor Dominic Wells, of Royal Veterinary College in London, said that GM mice could help in the search for treatments for hundreds of thousands of rare diseases.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>He said that, legally, new drugs must be tested on people and that if he was ill, he would \u2018certainly not queue up\u2019 to take a drug that had only been tried out on cells in a dish.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Research on great apes, such as chimps and gorillas, is banned in the UK.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>But there was a 50 per cent increase on the number of marmosets, macaques and other monkeys used in experiments, taking the total to 2,186.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Monkeys\u2019 intelligence and close biological links to people make them popular for studying brain, fertility and immune diseases.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>They are also of value in gauging how new, highly complex drugs will fare inside the human body.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>However, experts cautioned that the rise may have been a statistical blip, caused by data being carried over from 2011, when the figure for monkeys was unusually low.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Overall, the bulk of the work \u2013 74 per cent \u2013 was carried out on mice.\u00a0 Fish accounted for 12 per cent of the total, rats made up 7 per cent and birds, 4 per cent.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Dogs were used almost 5,000 times and cats on 247 occasions. Work on sheep, goats and guinea pigs rose, while experiments on fish, rabbits and pigs fell.<\/span><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_2180\" style=\"width: 395px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/2013_primate2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2180\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2180 \" alt=\"2013_primate2\" src=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/2013_primate2.jpg\" width=\"395\" height=\"303\" srcset=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/2013_primate2.jpg 634w, https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/2013_primate2-300x229.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 395px) 100vw, 395px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2180\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Injection: Research on great apes, such as chimps and gorillas, is banned in the UK, but there was a 50 per cent increase on the number of marmosets, macaques and other monkeys used in experiments<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span>The British Union for Abolition of Vivisection, described the rise in animal experiments as \u2018shocking\u2019, while People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals urged the Government to keep its promise to cut the number of animals used.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Wendy Jarrett, of the charity Understanding Animal Research said work on GM mice was helping scientists realise the \u2018impossible dream\u2019 of finding new treatments for illnesses such as motor neurone disease.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>She added: \u2018A huge amount of scientific, medical and veterinary research is done without the use of animals but in some cases we still need to use animals if we want to find the medical and veterinary treatments of tomorrow.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Animal rights groups describe the figure, highest since 1982, as \u2018shocking\u2019 By Fiona Macrae The number of animal experiments carried out in the UK topped four million last year with a sharp increase in the number of monkeys used in laboratories. Home Office statistics show that 4.11million experiments were carried out in university, charity and &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/2013\/07\/18\/number-of-animal-experiments-in-britain-jumps-8-to-4-1million-despite-coalition-pledge-to-reduce-them\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2181,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions\/2181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}