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HUMANE RESEARCH - CAMPAIGN UPDATE
Animal Aid campaigners during our nationwide 20-city campaign tour to promote the Humane Research Donor Card (HRDC) in September. Members of the public responded extremely positively to the tours “Medical Research Without Cruelty” message and local media covered the issue extensively. The campaign team - dressed as laboratory rabbits and with giant donor cards - distributed thousands of donor cards and collected numerous signatures for Animal Aids petition calling on the Department of Health to establish a national network of tissue banks.
On October 29 we published a special report, Human Tissue: A Neglected Resource- Replacing Animals in Research. Its key revelation is that 400,000 animals are bred and killed in the UK every year simply so that their body parts can be used for test tube and other studies. These animals do not even appear in government statistics. They are sciences hidden victims. The bulk of our report is based on a survey of drug companies, hospitals and research institutes throughout the UK. And the results demonstrate that there is substantial support for what we have long demanded: namely, a government-backed network of human tissue banks; also, a new donor card - one that allows carriers the choice of consenting to their tissues being used after their death for medical research, or for their organs to be used to treat others - or to both. The report prompted a full-page editorial in New Scientist magazine that was broadly supportive of our position, if a little patronising. "It is a good sign to see practical thinking, rather than angry dogma, coming from an anti-vivisection group," wrote editor Alun Anderson. "Those holding the research purse strings should respond positively." The article added: "All the major nations already have large networks of tissue banks...But [they] are almost wholly geared up to providing tissues for operations. Could the system be changed so that banks also collected and distributed additional tissue for research? With the right legal and administrative changes the answer is probably yes. Not only would fewer animals then be needed but research would benefit human tissue is often a better test material in medical studies aimed at humans. The Department of Health (DoH) itself had made positive noises three weeks earlier in response to our 200,000-signature petition calling for government action. In a letter to Animal Aid director Andrew Tyler, Health Secretary Frank Dobson wrote that the government "sympathises with the aim of the campaign, that is to increase the supply of human tissue for medical research...Distribution of the Humane Research Donor Card has no doubt increased peoples awareness that they can donate their bodies for research." Mr Dobson said his Department was considering producing a leaflet on the subject. The possibility of a national register of tissue donors would also be considered by his DoH Officials, although he was making no predictions about what decisions would follow. In addition to the New Scientist editorial and accompanying news piece, the BBC ran a positive, detailed TV item on BBC1. |
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Six
years after we launched our Humane Research Donor Card - which promotes the
use of donated human tissue in medical research as a replacement for animal
tissue - there are signs that official distrust and opposition are beginning
to crack.
