The battle of animal rights activists with pharmacists
British Science is trapped by animal rights radicals
But because of the aggressive campaigns of animal rights activists, intimidated scientists and pharmaceutical manufacturers refuse important research in the United Kingdom.
"We will become more flexible and competitive than ever and will fight even more actively for your business," the Prime Minister admonished the heads of biotech and pharmaceutical companies gathered at a representative international conference in London. The transformation of the UK into a world leader in high-tech research, mainly pharmaceutical, was one of Cameron's election promises. The headquarters of the world's major pharmaceutical manufacturers, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, are located in England. The BBC estimates the annual turnover of the biomedical sector in the UK at 50 billion pounds a year, 165 thousand highly qualified Englishmen are employed in this field.
But the far-reaching plans of the British government threaten to disrupt numerous animal rights organizations that are increasingly successfully conducting intimidation actions. Pfizer, the world's No. 1 pharmaceutical manufacturer, is closing a research and development center in Sandwich in the southeast of England. AstraZeneca is shutting down its research unit in the central county of Leicester.
Naturally, these steps are primarily related to the consequences of the global crisis, which has noticeably depressed the global pharmaceutical market. But do not discount the increased activity of animal rights activists. As Professor Dominic Wells from the Royal Veterinary College told the BBC, before the extremist antics of animal welfare activists could not influence scientific research and slow down progress in this area. Now this has happened, including due to the fact that British carriers refused to deliver laboratory animals and their frozen embryos to British territory. In March, the last shipping company that supplied the island laboratories with them surrendered. Taking into account the fact that earlier the ban on the import of mice, rabbits, guinea pigs and other animals for experiments was introduced by British air carriers, a rather sad situation has developed for researchers.
Although in 2010, "imports" accounted for less than 1% of the total number of animals that were experimented on (mostly transgenic mice with specially specified properties), supplies from abroad are very important. "Stopping them will slow down progress in vital biomedical research and will affect, first of all, patients suffering from serious illnesses," representatives of the Medical Research Council, the Association of British Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, the Association of Charitable Medical Research Institutions and other organizations warned in a joint statement. – Independent breeding of such lines of laboratory animals will take a lot of time."
Chris Laming, a representative of the British shipping company P&O, told Science magazine that last year activists of organizations opposed to vivisection suddenly became interested in the activities of this carrier. P&O executives began receiving letters with threats and promises of major troubles in ports on both sides of the English Channel. Similar explanations were given by representatives of two other carriers, Stena Lines and DFDS.
Taking into account the fact that in the profit structure of shipping passenger companies connecting the UK with the mainland, the money from the transportation of laboratory animals makes up a negligible share, the rejection of this type of business will be painless. Moreover, there is no doubt about the seriousness of the threats of radical animal rights activists in the UK.
Pharmageddon: the battle of animal rights activists with pharmacists
Reports of explosive devices in correspondence addressed to scientists and heads of pharmaceutical companies, as well as their cars, are common in the UK. In the early 1990s, a letter that came by mail to one of the leaders of Stena Sealink (this is the predecessor company of Stena Lines) exploded. His secretary was injured.
In 2005, more than half a thousand British researchers, including several Nobel laureates, signed a letter demanding to protect them from violent actions by organizations protecting animals. One of the authors, a member of a scientific group engaged in the development of a cancer drug, said: the police recommended that he enclose his house in the north of England with a protective wall.
Oxford in the middle of the last decade resembled a besieged fortress: animal rights activists rallied over the construction of a new university biomedical center. The institution was eventually opened, but behind schedule – frightened contractors left the project one after another. The director of the British Council for Medical Research, Professor Colin Blakemore, told the BBC at the time that not only the university, but the whole of Oxford "live in conditions of constant threat."
The animal rights activists who blocked Oxford were inspired by the success on the "Cambridge front" – a few years earlier, the University of Cambridge, wanting to protect itself from a wave of violence, abandoned plans to create a similar research center for biomedical experiments.
Numerous animal rights organizations in the UK are strong largely due to strong public support and consist of a rather diverse public, he said BFM.ru Igor Goryanin, Executive Director of the Skolkovo Cluster of Biological and Medical Technologies and Professor at the University of Edinburgh. In the past, Goryanin worked in the UK, including at GlaxoSmithKlein, so he knows firsthand about the scale of the conflict. "There are people in the UK who really want to protect animals; but there are also those who support all sorts of actions just to support them. Large centers that used to be engaged in raising animals and experimenting on them were actually blocked, their employees were afraid to go to work," Goryanin says.
Animals are protected with a spark
The UK has a long tradition of protecting animals from abuse, it became the first country in the world to adopt a law on the protection of farm livestock in 1835. In the middle of the XIX century, the Royal Society against Cruelty to Animals was established in England, bringing together caring young men from good families. They spoke, among other things, against the manifestation of excessive cruelty in hunting. Extremist and terrorist methods appeared in the arsenal of their ideological followers relatively recently, in the 1970s.
These were not only banal arson (it is believed that fire was first used as a method of influencing unyielding pharmacists in the UK 30 years ago), Molotov cocktails and explosive devices, but also more exotic measures of influence. So, in 2005, a farm that supplied British laboratories with guinea pigs was closed in Stafford County. One of the owners of the company, an avid sports fan, went out of business after unknown plowed the golf course of the club of which he was a member. Animal rights activists promised to poison food and drinks at the bar, where the golfer's companions often visited. Neighbors of guinea pig breeders received letters claiming that they had been noticed in pedophilia. The businessmen surrendered only after the grave of a relative of one of them was excavated at the local cemetery.
In 2009, Daniel Vasella, chairman of the board of directors of the pharmaceutical giant Novartis, who had recently been recognized as the most influential businessman in Europe over the past 25 years, felt the wrath of radicals from animal rights organizations. Unknown persons burned down his chalet in the Austrian Alps. Fortunately, Vasella himself was not in the house, which was extinguished by about a hundred firefighters, at that moment.
At the same time, in the Swiss Alps, someone exhumed the ashes of Vasella's mother, who died eight years earlier. On her grave, spray paint was written: "Stop cooperating with HLS." This meant Huntingdon Life Sciences, the largest research center in the UK, whose laboratories are actively used by pharmaceutical and chemical companies to test their products.
Every year, HLS conducts experiments involving 75 thousand animals (rats, rabbits, pigs, dogs and primates). Both the scientific center itself and its numerous clients have been attacked by animal rights activists for many years, so the Austrian police considered that the traces of the arson of the Alpine house of Vasella lead to the UK. By the way, Novartis had not cooperated with HLS for several years at the time of the events described.
Double standards
In the UK, there is very strict legislation on animal protection, says Igor Goryanin from Skolkovo. For keeping them in the wrong conditions, you can get a large fine and even a real prison term, which sometimes leads to legal incidents: animal rights are sometimes better protected than human rights. So, a few years ago in the UK, a woman who did not put a sick dog to sleep in time was sentenced to a fine and wearing an electronic bracelet on her leg – this is usually done with especially dangerous criminals. At the same time, euthanasia for terminally ill people is not allowed in the UK.
In an interview with the BBC Russian Service, a biologist working in the UK, Andrey (the surname is not given in the article), said that despite the severity of the law, work with animals in British laboratories is built less humanely than in other countries where there are no such strict restrictions.
In England, the least humane method of killing is used than in Germany or Russia, says Andrey, "in any case, at the university where I worked." "The method of killing animals causes enormous stress both to the animal and to the one who does it. When I got my license [in Britain], I had to take a course," the biologist continues. – There was an hour on psychology, the question was considered whether a researcher should experience stress when he works with animals, and I was the only one in the audience who answered "yes". That is, the correct answer was "no," but I'm always stressed."
A distinctive feature of Russian legislation is that regulations prescribe the use of laboratory animals where it is quite possible to do without them. The correspondent could be convinced of this BFM.ru , who recently visited the laboratory of fire and technical expertise of building materials at the Northern (Arctic) Federal University (SAFU) in Arkhangelsk. They check, in particular, how dangerous are gorenje products of wood covered with protective impregnations. Theoretically, a gas analyzer would be enough for this. "But we have to put a mouse in the camera. Without these experiments, the laboratories would not have issued a certificate," said Alexander Tutygin, senior lecturer at the Department of Composite Materials and Construction Ecology of the SAFU.
Will they go to Skolkovo?The intensity of passions due to animal protection in the UK unexpectedly turned out to be in the hands of the Russian Skolkovo.
With innograd not yet built, a few weeks ago it was decided to open a preclinical research center, which will contain a full line of certified animals needed for experiments.
"A very good opportunity is opening up for us to join the global biotech market," he claimed in an interview BFM.ru Igor Goryanin, head of the Skolkovo Biomedical Cluster. He expects that world-renowned scientists will move to Russia: "We have more lenient legislation, it is possible to conduct such experiments with animals that are prohibited in Europe."
There are no centers certified according to international standards in Russia yet, where experiments on the safety, toxicology and efficacy of drugs would be conducted and the results of which would be accepted in international organizations like the American Food and Drug Administration (Food and Drug Administration) and the European Commission. Therefore, Russian companies, including residents of Skolkovo, are forced to perform preclinical research abroad, thus financing the development of biotechnologies in other countries, Goryanin complains. According to his estimates, about 1.5 billion rubles will be needed to create a preclinical research center. The Russian Venture Company and a pool of private investors agreed to finance the project.
Will scientists ever be able to abandon the use of animals, replacing them with computer models? Probably yes, but not too quickly, Goryanin replies: "There are already good models for bacterial diseases and some types of oncology. It is very difficult to find a computer model for viral diseases and diseases of the nervous system."
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru17.04.2012