Animals have been used in medical tests for hundreds of years, and the horrific experiments are common practice in the UK. Here, we break down what the law is, whether the tests work, and what the alternatives are.

Millions of animals are routinely tortured and murdered each year in the name of pharmaceutical testing. 

Unlike in the cosmetics industry - where the practice is both illegal and highly controversial - animal testing for medicine is not only accepted but required by law in the UK. 

• Is animal testing for cosmetics returning to the UK? Everything we know

Regulations here require that all new drugs must be tested on two mammals as part of the trial process - a rat or mouse first, followed by non-rodent species such as a dog or monkey.

While public support of all animal testing has been falling in recent years, there does remain a general acceptance of the practice in the context of pharmaceutical testing.

Using animals for drug tests is often thought of as a sort of necessary evil. Many of us have been brought up being told that there is no other option and that we wouldn’t have the medicine we do today without them. 

But how true is what we’ve been told about medical animal testing? While it’s correct that life-saving drugs have indeed been tested on animals, and there is certainly nothing wrong with any of us using these, it is increasingly the subject of debate as to whether animal tests are a viable option for the future. Questions are being raised by scientists over whether these tests are necessary, productive and truly helpful to medical progress.

What is pharmaceutical animal testing?

Medical animal testing is the practice of using non-human animals to test the safety and efficacy of drugs for humans.

According to Cruelty Free International (CFI), each new drug will be tested on 4,000 to 5,000 animals just for the standard regulatory tests. The total number of animals tested on in the full development pipeline - from laboratory to market - is likely to be considerably higher. 

What animals are used for experiments? 

Mice and rats are among the most commonly used animals in UK experiments, as they are cheap and easy to breed. Others include cats, dogs, monkeys, guinea pigs, rabbits, birds, pigs, sheep, horses and fish.

What is the law on pharmaceutical animal testing in the UK?

Currently, all new drugs must be tested on two animals (rodent and non-rodent) before progressing to human trials. 

Animal testing for medicine is regulated by the Animal (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986.

The Act was introduced to regulate the use of protected animals - which include any living non-human vertebrate and any living cephalopod - used in experimental procedures that are ‘likely to cause [...] pain, suffering, distress, or lasting harm’ to the animal. 

Supposedly, the Act ensures that animals bred and used for these purposes are cared for in accordance with the ‘best standards of modern animal husbandry’ - but this means very little in practice. According to Animal Aid, no animal researcher has ever been prosecuted under the Act, despite multiple undercover investigations showing scenes like researchers laughing as they smash live mice against benchtops to kill them, dogs being violently punched, and brain-damaged monkeys left unmonitored overnight following surgery.

How are animals used for pharmaceutical testing in the UK?

Animals used for medical tests are generally kept in tiny cages or kennels and denied the chance to move around or exhibit natural instincts and behaviours.

Those being experimented on are often subject to a horror beyond our imaginations. There are almost no limits on what we are allowed to do to them in this country, as long as the right forms are filled out.

Shockingly, despite the fact that many of these experiments are tax-payer funded, we in the UK are denied the right to know what exactly happens to these animals. Section 24 of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 allows vivisectors to conduct procedures in secret without any public scrutiny, and exposing what is happening at a lab can carry a prison sentence of up to two years. 

Because of this, we have very little understanding of the full extent of the horrors that happen at labs - but undercover investigations have provided a small glimpse behind the veil of secrecy.

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In one lab at a London University, mice had tubes inserted in their brains before being subjected to major organ damage and surgical mutilation. They were starved and deprived of water for days, before being forced to run on treadmills and avoid electric shocks. When no longer needed, animals are often killed by carbon monoxide poisoning, and infant rats have been seen being decapitated with scissors. At other universities, kittens have been paralysed, had their skulls cracked, and electrodes put into their brain.

Does pharmaceutical animal testing work?

The aim of animal testing is to test out new medicines and understand their effects before they are given to humans, but the fundamental issue with this is that animals have very different physiologies to humans. They do not get the same diseases as us and very rarely respond to drugs in the same way.

A 2014 review published in the BMJ - formerly known as the British Medical Journal - stated: “Several studies have shown that even the most promising findings from animal research often fail in human trials and are rarely adopted into clinical practice.

“[I]f research conducted on animals continues to be unable to reasonably predict what can be expected in humans, the public’s continuing endorsement and funding of preclinical animal research seems misplaced.”

According to CFI, 90 per cent of drugs that deliver promising results in animal tests go on to fail in human trials. In drugs that treat particularly complex conditions - notably Alzheimer’s - the failure rate is estimated to be greater than 99 per cent.

What’s more, animal experiments can give results so inaccurate that they have the potential to be a hindrance to the testing process. There are many examples of drugs that have completely contrasting effects on animals compared to humans.

Two of the most widely-used drugs - aspirin and paracetamol - are highly poisonous to cats;  morphine, which is a depressant in humans, stimulates goats, cats, and horses; and it was lucky, perhaps, that scientists chose to test penicillin on mice in the 1940s. If they had used guinea pigs or hamsters, for whom it is poisonous, it may have been discarded. 

Furthermore, drugs found to be safe in animal trials have in the past been withdrawn after causing serious side effects and death in humans. Vioxx, an arthritis drug, was administered to people after passing animal tests yet it was estimated to have caused up to 140,000 deaths from heart attacks and other cardiovascular issues before being withdrawn from the global market in 2004. The associate safety director of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) described it as the ‘single greatest drug-safety catastrophe in the history of the world’.

Dr Albert Sabin, the inventor of the polio vaccine, swore under oath that the inoculation “was long delayed by the erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading experimental models of [it] in monkeys”.

Dr Richard Klausner, former director of the US National Cancer Institute, said: “The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades and it simply didn’t work in humans.”

Dr Clifton E. Barry, chief of the Tuberculosis Research Section at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said: “[M]ice are mice, and people are people. If we look to the mouse to model every aspect of the disease for man, and to model cures, we’re just wasting our time.”

Animal testing continues not because it is necessary or useful but - as CFI puts it - because of ‘conservatism within the scientific establishment’. They added that “it is easier and more comfortable to simply do what has always been done.”

The team at Animal Justice Project, who campaign against vivisection, have also highlighted that the UK government does not allocate much funding to the search for a  replacement for animals in research. They explain: “Funding is currently directed more towards the other two ‘R’s’– Refinement and Reduction. Even the third ‘R’ Replacement, in the eyes of the government and industry, does not mean an actual replacement as animal tissues, cells and live invertebrates are used. Total replacement is the only morally ethical ‘R’, and the only ‘R’ which will truly advance medical progress.”

What are the alternatives to animal testing?

There are a number of alternatives to animal testing, which often yield far better results. As highlighted by CFI: “Replacing animal tests does not mean putting human patients at risk. It also does not mean halting medical progress. Instead, replacing animals used in testing will improve the quality as well as the humanity of our science.”

The following have been outlined as alternatives:

• Human tissues

• Cell cultures

• Computer models

• Volunteer studies

Find out more about alternatives to animal testing here. 

Can you be vegan and still use medicine tested on animals?

The fact that medicine is tested on animals is often used by meat-eaters as a misguided attempt to ‘catch out’ vegans, but it is absolutely fine to use any medicine you need when following a vegan lifestyle. 

The definition of veganism, as outlined by the Vegan Society, is “a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose”. 

‘As far as is possible and practicable’ is the operative phrase here. We live in a non-vegan world, and it would neither be possible nor practical to avoid all indirect animal exploitation. Rather than refuse medicine tested on animals, we should instead campaign to put an end to this horrific practise for future generations.

Further reading on animal testing

• Cruelty Free International campaign against the use of animals in experiments worldwide. You can donate to them here. 

• Animal Justice Project is a non-profit organisation working towards a vegan world, which investigates and campaigns against vivisection in the UK. You can donate to them here.

Polly Foreman is a writer and digital journalist based in London. Since going vegan in 2014, Polly has stood firmly against all forms of animal oppression and exploitation. She is passionate about tackling misconceptions of veganism and challenging accepted norms about the way we use animals in this country.

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