From Pandora Pound, Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol
It is not just animal rights campaigners who question the scientific rationale behind animal experimentation (23 November, p 5 and p 16). So do scientists, researchers and experts in neurological diseases.
Defenders of the proposed international neuroscience centre in Cambridge, which would experiment on primates, often cite stroke research. There have been animal models of ischaemic stroke for at least 160 years. But the only two treatments of proven efficacy in acute stroke, aspirin and admission to a stroke unit, were not the result of animal models. If animal models have not led to treatments for stroke during the past 160 years, how much longer should the public reasonably be expected to wait for a return on their investment in this sort of research?
You rightly mention that the government puts hardly any money into “alternatives” to animal research. But calling them “alternatives” implies that animal research is the gold standard. It is not. In fact there is currently no evidence either to support or to refute the practice of using animals as models of human diseases.
Bristol, UK
