Education and Training in Laboratory Animal Science & Welfare

The UK Department of Health is being urged to review the national immunisation programme against cervical cancer, in response to a dramatic rise in throat cancer linked to oral sex. Cases of oropharyngeal cancer have more than doubled to over 1,000 annually since the mid-1990s after remaining stable for many years. Since 2008 in the UK, girls between the ages of 12 and 13 have been given a protective vaccine against cervical cancer. Now, there are calls for a similar immunisation programme for boys.

Animals were used to understand the virus that triggers most cases of cervical cancer and aided the development of the cervical cancer vaccine. The papilloma virus, or wart virus, was discovered in real jackalopes, rabbits with horns, in the 1930s.

Before January 1922, a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes was in effect a death sentence: many died of starvation. And before 1945 when the NHS was founded in the UK, you could only get insulin if you could afford it.

Monday 23 January 2012 is, they say, the 90th anniversary of the first successful use of insulin, saving the life of teenager Leonard Thompson in Toronto General Hospital.

According to Michael Bliss, who wrote the definitive history The Discovery of Insulin, the only creature which had received more insulin than Leonard or any other animal was Fred Banting and Charles Best's famous dog Marjorie. The dog became diabetic when she had her pancreas removed on 18 November 1921 and was still receiving her daily insulin, at that time a fairly crude pancreatic extract, in late January.

The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, Lynne Featherstone, advanced an animal research policy based on evidence in a Commons debate on Wednesday 7 December. She said that she was looking for 'substantive evidence' when legislating for particular issues related to animal research, such as genetically modified animals.

She also praised the work that her department do to ensure that animal research is only licensed 'where it is essential and there is no alternative'. However, she was clear that animal research was necessary at the moment, calling the idea of human clinical trials without prior safety testing on animals 'unacceptable'.

UAR's popular A5 leaflets have been revised and are now available in print. The five titles are Why Do We Use Animals in Medical Research? Animal Research Benefits Us - and Animals Too, How Much Animal Research is Done in the UK? How is Animal Research Regulated? and Animal Welfare and the Three Rs: Replacement, Refinement and Reduction.

All the leaflets may also be downloaded from the document library on this website, where you may also request hard copies.

As anyone who reads it will see, a recent (11 November) Freedom of Information ruling falls some way short of the 'landmark decision' claimed by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection. The 'first tier' tribunal ruling about releasing information on primate research found partly in favour of the antivivisection group and partly for Newcastle University.

Like all animal research conducted in the UK, the work at Newcastle is strictly regulated. It is only allowed when there is no alternative, the animals must be properly cared for and each study must be fully justified. It would be illegal to use animals if there was no potential benefit, and this is especially true of the small number of studies that involve primates. In the past, primate studies have been crucial in developing polio and hepatitis vaccines, treatments for HIV, and deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease.