Each year inside British laboratories, nearly 4 million animals are experimented on.

Every 8 seconds, one animal dies. Cats, dogs, rats, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, primates and other animals are used to test new products, to study human disease and in the development of new drugs. They are even used in warfare experiments. Animal Aid opposes animal experiments on both moral and scientific grounds. Animals are not laboratory tools. They are sentient creatures capable of experiencing pain, fear, loneliness, frustration and sadness. To imprison animals and deny them their freedom to express natural instincts and to deliberately inflict physical pain in the name of science is unacceptable. All the more so because the experiments are bad science in the first place: they do not produce information that can be reliably applied to people. Ending vivisection will benefit people as well as animals. Supporters of the use of animals in experiments, such as the British Royal Society, argue that virtually every medical achievement in the 20th century relied on the use of animals in some way,[6] with the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences arguing that even sophisticated computers are unable to model interactions between molecules, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, and the environment, making animal research necessary in many areas.[7] Animal rights, and someanimal welfare, organizationssuch as PETA and BUAVquestion the legitimacy of it, arguing that it is cruel, poor scientific practice, poorly regulated, that medical progress is being held back by misleading animal models, that some of the tests are outdated, that it cannot reliably predict effects in humans, that the costs outweigh the benefits, or that animals have an intrinsic right not to be used for experimentation. The earliest references to animal testing are found in the writings of the Greeks in the 2nd and 4th centuries BCE. Aristotle () (384322 BCE) and Erasistratus (304258 BCE) were among the first to perform experiments on living animals.[14] Galen, a physician in 2nd-century Rome, dissected pigs and goats, and is known as the "father of vivisection. What kinds of experiments are carried out? Product safety tests: Medical research: Warfare research: Pain analysis: Psychology research: Two positions on animal experiments In favour of animal experiments: Experimenting on animals is acceptable if (and only if): suffering is minimised in all experiments human benefits are gained which could not be obtained by using other methods Against animal experiments: Experimenting on animals is always unacceptable because: it causes suffering to animals the benefits to human beings are not proven any benefits to human beings that animal testing does provide could be produced in other ways

Harm versus benefit The case for animal experiments is that they will produce such great benefits for humanity that it is morally acceptable to harm a few animals. The equivalent case against is that the level of suffering and the number of animals involved are both so high that the benefits to humanity don't provide moral justification. The three Rs The three Rs are a set of principles that scientists are encouraged to follow in order to reduce the impact of research on animals.

The three Rs are: Reduction, Refinement, Replacement. Reduction: Reducing the number of animals used in experiments by: Improving experimental techniques Improving techniques of data analysis Sharing information with other researchers Refinement: Refining the experiment or the way the animals are cared for so as to reduce their suffering by: Using less invasive techniques Better medical care Better living conditions Replacement: Replacing experiments on animals with alternative techniques such as: Experimenting on cell cultures instead of whole animals Using computer models Studying human volunteers Using epidemiological studies

For many centuries people have experimented on animals. There are two main reasons for doing this: first, to find out more about the animals themselves, and, secondly, to test substances and procedures to see if they are harmful (with a view to deciding whether or not they can be used on human beings). In the second category fall cosmetic products as well as medicines and surgical techniques. There is a growing consensus that it is not acceptable to test cosmetic products on animals. This debate is about whether we should experiment on animals for scientific and medical purposes. The debate about the pros and cons of animal experimentation (or 'vivisection') is one that elicits very strong emotions: animal rights activists have resorted to trespass, violence, death threats, and hunger strikes in their single-minded (and sometimes illegal) mission to end this practice. Pro Experiments on animals should be considered on a caseby-case basis. The proper principle to apply, however, is that the reduction of human suffering is our first priority and the prevention of animal suffering or death is secondary to that (although still important). So that if there is a decent chance that an experiment will result in an important medical breakthrough that will reduce human suffering and death then it is justifiable to allow animal suffering. Animal experimentation is the (sometimes distasteful) means to much greater ends. Although in principle it is more important to reduce human suffering that to prevent animal suffering, in practice it is possible (and absolutely right) to keep animal suffering to an absolute minimum. Animal experimenters should aspire to the highest levels of animal welfare in their laboratories, using anaesthetics wherever possible and keeping animals in clean, comfortable, and healthy conditions. In short, it is possible to experiment on animals without being cruel to animals. Past experience has shown what invaluable advances can be made in medicine by experimenting on animals, and that live animals are the most reliable subjects for testing medicines and other products for toxicity. In many countries (e.g. the US and the UK) all prescription drugs must be tested on animals before they are allowed onto the market. To ban animal experiments would be to Contra Animals have the right to be treated as beings of value in themselves, not as the means to human ends; this principle must be applies in order to guarantee the end of cruelty to animals. The application of this principle means that animals should never be experimented upon whatever the potential gain for humanity. To infect monkeys with the AIDS virus or to expose rodents to toxic chemicals and radiation is simply not acceptable, whatever the supposed benefits. In practice, as everyone knows, animals are not routinely treated well by animal experimenters. Apart from the fact that millions of animals die each year in experiments, others are often not adequately anaesthetised and are abused by handlers and experimenters. It is idealistic to suppose that this will ever stop as long as society endorses vivisection.

In fact few breakthroughs have been made as a result of animal experimentation - its advocates have overstated its achievements. There has been a catalogue of errors and failures in animal testing, which its advocates gloss over; as many as half the drugs that have been approved in the US and the UK after animal testing have subsequently had to be withdrawn because of harmful

paralyse modern medicine, to perpetuate human suffering, and to endanger human health by allowing products such as insecticides onto the market before testing them for toxicity. Human beings share about 99% of their genes with chimpanzees and only slightly fewer with other monkeys. As a result, the reactions of these creatures are a very good guide to possible reactions of human patients. Even lower down the scale, other animals share the same basic physiology with humans. Furthermore, it would be immoral to risk the life of a human being when a medicine or procedure could instead be tested on a non-human animal. There are indeed new issues raised by the advent of genetic engineering and 'transgenic' animals; these, like all animal experiments should be closely monitored so as to minimise animal suffering. The fact that there are new issues here does not mean that there should never be any experiments on animals What is often overlooked in this debate is the subject of veterinary medicine. It is in the interests of animals themselves that experiments be done on animals to test medicines and surgical procedures for using on animals themselves, not just on humans. Animal experimentation can be in the interests of animals as well as of humans.

side-effects. Furthermore, there are alternatives to many tests that are currently done on animals - e.g. growing tissue or cell cultures from human cells in the laboratory. In fact, most animal experiments are done on animals that are nothing like human beings - rats and mice which undermines the argument that these experiments are a reliable guide to human reactions. Scientifically, as well as morally, most animal experimentation is to be rejected - the reaction of a mouse to a substance is no guide to human reactions. Each species has its own unique physiology. And the more similar an animal is to a human being - e.g. a chimpanzee - the more intelligent and sentient it is, and so the more immoral it is to treat is as a disposable and worthless biological object. The advent of genetic technologies has made possible all sorts of new and horrific acts of animal exploitation, from cloning sheep to creating mutant and hybrid creatures with no dignity or quality of life at all. We should end animal experimentation before things get even worse. It is only acceptable to test human medicines on human beings if they give their consent. Non-human animals are never able to give such consent. It is therefore never acceptable to test medicines on perfectly healthy animals, even if the treatments are for use on other animals.

The main changes proposed are: to make it compulsory to carry out ethical reviews and require that experiments where animals are used be

subject to authorisation to widen the scope of the directive to include specific invertebrate species and foetuses in their last

trimester of development and also larvae and other animals used in basic research, education and training to set minimum housing and care requirements to require that only animals of second or older generations be used, subject to transitional periods, to avoid

taking animals from the wild and exhausting wild populations to state that alternatives to testing on animals must be used when available and that the number of animals

used in projects be reduced to a minimum to require member states to improve the breeding, accommodation and care measures and methods used in

procedures so as to eliminate or reduce to a minimum any possible pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm caused to animals The proposal also introduces a ban on the use of great apes - chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans - in scientific procedures, other than in exceptional circumstances, but there is no proposal to phase out the use of other non-human primates in the immediate foreseeable future.