AR-News: FW: (UK) Cambridge University pulls out of new monkey lab

[AR-News]

Animal rights welcome Cambridge University's decision to pull out of new
monkey lab

Leading animal rights campaigners the British Union for the Abolition of
Vivisection (BUAV) have today welcomed the announcement by Cambridge
University that it is withdrawing its proposal for a new primate brain
research centre.

Wendy Higgins, BUAVs Campaigns Director, says:
"We are delighted and very much welcome this long-awaited news as it will
save thousands of monkeys from a grim and painful death in the laboratory.
It is the right decision but we shouldn't have had to wait this long. Animal
rights campaigners already achieved victory at the public hearing last year
when the planning inspector recommended at that stage that the University's
proposals should be denied, but John Prescott rode rough-shod over that
democratic process."

The BUAV warned, however, that the Government may plan to build the primate
lab in a more secret location:
"We have been afraid for some time that if the University withdraws, the
Government will simply build the monkey lab somewhere else. Last year there
were rumours that the MoD site at Porton Down might be chosen, and if that
were true it would mark a truly worrying development. It would symbolise the
Government's total lack of willingness to engage in the debate and take on
board the up-swell of public concern about vivisection, choosing  instead to
simply hide controversial animal experiments behind razor wire on military
protected land where animal testing is shrouded in even more secrecy than it
is now."

The news comes just as the BUAV launched Judicial Review proceedings against
Home Secretary David Blunkett for breaking the law on animal experiments by
routinely underestimating the level of suffering laboratory animals endure
in UK testing laboratories. Much of the evidence for the BUAV's legal case,
backed by a number of distinguished experts, is taken from the BUAV's
shocking undercover exposé of monkey brain research at Cambridge University
in 2002.

However, the BUAV argues that the problems with the Government's regulation
of animal experiments identified by the exposé are widespread.

The BUAV's investigation showed that the Government licensed highly invasive
brain-damage experiments on marmoset monkeys at Cambridge University under
only a "moderate" instead of a more appropriate "substantial" suffering
banding despite the fact that (for example):

· monkeys had the top of their skull sawn off to be brain-damaged by either
sucking out parts of the brain or injecting it with toxins in attempts to
recreate symptoms of human brain disease
· operations took up to 8½ hours
· several monkeys had to be killed on welfare grounds or were found dead
· in the morning (4% under one project)
· there was no 24 hour care even for very recently brain-damaged monkeys  
· many monkeys endured several brain operations  
· brain-damaged monkeys were deliberately deprived of water for 22 hours a
day, 5 days a week for months on end and forced to undergo repetitive tests
in unfamiliar surroundings which they clearly found distressing
· the monkeys spent the whole of their lives in cramped, barren cages

The BUAV states that the Government's position of underestimating lab animal
suffering is not only morally wrong, it serves to mislead the public about
what animals suffer in UK labs and it is also against the law. The BUAV
contends that in the case of the Cambridge experiments the Home Secretary
clearly ignored obvious suffering - such as water deprivation and
distressing training tasks - and downplayed other suffering, with the result
that he breached the key cost:benefit test in the 1986 Act. 

Particular animal experiments, including primate experiments under a
"substantial suffering" banding, must go through additional ethical &
scientific review before being licensed. The BUAV is concerned that the
Government may be deliberately avoiding this extra scrutiny by passing
controversial experiments under a lower category severity banding. Other
undercover investigations show that the problem of underestimating suffering
is not confined to the Cambridge research.  

Wendy Higgins, BUAV's Campaigns Director, says:
"The BUAV's Cambridge exposé and the Government's whitewash response to it,
confirms what we have long suspected - the Government plays down the
suffering lab animals experience and in the process deceives the public. It
is able to do this because it runs a highly secretive system, denying
information even to Parliament. It is high time the whole system was opened
up to public scrutiny so that people can see the appalling suffering that
animals are forced to endure in UK labs. The BUAV fully supports research
into debilitating diseases, but only using non-animal methods that are both
more humane and scientifically relevant.'


*	A report in Science (vol 302 14 Nov 2003) announced that the
Government could be considering moving the $50 million lab to the Ministry
of Defence testing facility at Porton Down. 
*	For more information about the BUAV's undercover investigation at
Cambridge University please go to http://www.buav.org/zerooption/index.html