She looked at me gravely and said “I am deeply offended by this conference”. I let out a sigh of relief. Someone finally understood how I felt in this pantomime. The woman in question was in fact Dr Lisa Jones-Engel, a senior science advisor at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA.org). Believe me, I asked a number of animal welfare advocates how they felt about this conference, and none quite echoed my outrage. It was as if, 1. being at an international conference and 2. merely touching on the topic of replacing animals somehow absolved this conference of its sins. “Oh but look at how many animal welfare organisations have come together for this conference” and “oh look at the discussions we’re having”. No one quite saw it was an opportunity for all the vivisectors to get together and congratulate themselves on widening the cages by an inch to give the animals more room to “live a better life”. As if they could ever comprehend what goes through a sentient animal’s feelings when they are locked up and tested on repeatedly and brutally.
“Well let me tell you that wouldn’t fly in Europe” said the representative from the Department of Health, Ireland, in response to the size of monkey cages in America. I was dumbfounded. Were we still debating cage measurements at a World Congress on the Alternatives to Animal Testing? We should be talking about removing the cage entirely and 21st Century human-focussed animal-free science. But here we are, a congress of leading experts in the field of life sciences, toxicology, and animal welfare, and we’re discussing cage lengths so the animal could stretch their legs before undergoing another severe and life-threatening procedure.
I should have known that if the conference is titled “Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences” it was clear. We were tossing around the idea of alternatives like one would have at a wedding “chicken or fish and sorry we’ve run out of the vegan option!”. And the sentiments at this World Congress were much the same, they were still spitting the narrative that animal testing is a necessary inescapable evil that we all must endure. For a conference slogan that reads “3Rs over the edge”, the 3Rs being reduce, refine and replace animal testing, they could have deduced that serving meat at the conference was entirely replaceable as it was unnecessary. Though, my displeasure of the conference extends far beyond its meal options.
It was if the mere bringing together of so many scientists and animal welfare advocates was enough to feel it was a roaring success. One need only look at the list of sponsors to feel cheated by the organisers. Among the diamond sponsors of the event were Unilever, manufactures of a range of home, personal care and food products that are sold in over 190 countries with well-known brands including Dove, Comfort and Knorr (unilever.co.uk). They have supported World Congress events for over 25 years, are one of the biggest companies in the world and are waist deep in the swamp of animal testing. The problem is they’ve covered themselves almost too perfectly and most of us have accepted their lie as truth, that they’re trying to make their products cruelty-free. However, like Proctor and Gamble (P&G, another diamond sponsor), what they are doing is buying more and more cruelty-free companies to cover up their true nature, as an animal tester of epic proportions. P&G in particular state they test on animals where required by law (such as mainland China) but a company is not required to sell products there. Therefore, any company choosing to sell products where is it necessary by law is guilty of directly causing unnecessary testing satisfying solely their own greed. Let’s not forget Charles River, a pharmaceutical laboratory who supported a session within the conference and are currently centre of a US government monkey trafficking investigation for selling wild macaques to US research laboratories. The mind boggles how they were allowed to sponsor a session if they’re involved in a federal investigation.
There were over 400 speakers at this conference which were divided into sessions that were run in different rooms in parallel. The way these talks were split meant that one could easily attend the rather more human-focussed research and animal welfare ethics talks and consequently turn a blind eye to the sessions clearly glorifying animal research. The themes of each session and each talk was supposedly chosen by the attendees which we can add to the lengthy list of what shocked me about this conference. So, you’re telling me the Washington National Primate Research Centre invited themselves to speak at a panel about transparency and openness in animal research? If anyone had done their research, they would have seen the numerous PETA demonstrations and exposés about the painful and deadly animal experiments done on monkeys, some of these species being listed as endangered. These publicly funded centres do not abide by the basic minimum animal protection laws and have left monkeys in an appalling state (dehydrated, starved, strangled, and incredibly stressed). How were they given space to speak at a conference pushing “alternatives to animal testing”? Among other notable animal experimentation supporters we saw the European Animal Research Association and the Americans for Medical Progress – both of which are very much in favour of animal testing and will go to great lengths to prove their agenda.
“Better them than us” is the reason many people accept animal testing. Better these animals undergo cruel procedures and test toxic chemicals before us humans get exposed to them in our household cleaners, makeup, weed killers and medicines. What if I told you animals hold no guarantee that these chemicals will be safe for us humans? I have studied genetics and worked as an NHS clinical scientist identifying and reporting genetic diagnoses and even a single mutation in our DNA (the genetic code which makes us who we are) can cause such profound symptoms of a disease. So what makes us believe that other species of animals, who are quite different from us at a DNA level, will prove a product is safe for humans? These differences at DNA level between us and them is imperative when considering how effective a medicine is and equally important, which chemicals are toxic to human health.
Hence, it would be a better investment of our time if we screened medical drugs using human tissues. This is no abstract thought, but rather a reality brought to life by leading scientists in the field of cutting-edge human focussed technology. Human stem cells can be used to generate complete organs in cell culture known as organoids. We can detect the interactions between different organoids using “Organ-on-a-chip” technology, a revolutionary technique developed by Don Ingber who is the founding director of Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. These organ chip models can mimic the interaction between different tissues as you would see within an intact animal. These kinds of systems can transform the industry for testing drugs, other chemicals and many other purposes compared to archaic animal methods.
Why wasn’t this technology and other human-focussed techniques one of the key focal points of the conference? Moreover, why weren’t there more roundtable discussions about how to implement these techniques into policy and legislation? This conference had multiple representatives from government health departments and key stakeholders (let’s not forget one of the biggest companies in the world, Unilever). So why weren’t we having the conversations that mattered? The closing speech showed me all I needed to hear by Professor Peter Singer, bioethicist at Princeton University. His talk was supposed to be on what’s the future for alternatives to animal testing and yet again he completed the narrative, that for science animal testing was still a necessity and he couldn’t be further from the truth.
Some of the posters were absolutely ridiculous ranging from the handling of monkeys so as not to let them bite you during testing to developing a mouse organoid. You read that correctly, they grew an organ in a dish from mouse stem cells, completely unnecessary as human stem cell derived organoids is clearly a reality. One of the organisers had said they specifically encouraged animal testers to come to the conference so that they could learn about alternatives. I’m sorry but unless you were planning on bringing them up to the stage to talk directly to them, that’s about as effective as bringing a match to a fire.
What really shocked me to the core is the fact that this World Congress has been going on for the past 30 years and if you attended the latest one, you’d have little faith in a world without horrific animal testing. And the sheer number of animal welfare organisations working closely with these companies need to be aware that if these companies are not making any concrete plans to remove animals from testing, they’re simply not worth working with. They are cashing in on the association with these cruelty-free organisations to simply tick a box and carry-on barbaric unnecessary testing. No doubt it will come with profits attached. I paid 750 Canadian dollars for this conference and regret every dollar that will line the pockets of these animal testing companies.
So, what’s the answer to all of this you ask? The solution is firmly and resolutely this – we need to stop being grateful for having a seat at their table and learn to start building our own.
Savita Nutan
Medicine Without Cruelty