This newspaper recently conducted an investigation into animal experimentation performed at Oxford for medical and research purposes. Animal experimentation has long been a divisive issue, and the suffering it causes subjects is always regrettable. But important medical research relies on animal experimentation, and the importance of post-pandemic medical research has never been higher.
The University no longer uses animals in teaching, but their use continues in research. The vast majority of these – over 190,000 – are rats. Over nine years, the number of animals subjected to experiments has fallen by 30,000. In 2023, barely 1% of experiments resulted in fatal outcomes, with most of this burden again falling on mice. Anti-testing protestors and activists have never been shy about expressing themselves.
As the investigation details, bombings in 2008 cost the University £14,000 and saw an extremist jailed for a decade, whilst the construction of the Biomedical Sciences building had to be paused for five months in 2004 after threats were made against it. The late Sir Colin Blakemore, who sewed kitten’s eyelids shut and later killed them to understand lazy eye, the most common then-incurable cause of childhood blindness, had HIV-infected needles sent to his house. It’s clear that research using animals both endures at Oxford and continues to be deeply controversial.
Undoubtedly, some of these experiments are unpleasant, and the maiming, suffering, or death of animals for no good cause should not be celebrated. It’s right that medical students no longer use live animals when recorded demonstrations are available. It’s laudable that both the number of experiments conducted on live animals is falling, and that the number of fatal experiments are so small, and primarily conducted on rats rather than larger mammals such as apes. Elon Musk’s treatment of monkeys in his Neuralink experiments, for example, reaches an unnecessary, insensitive level of cruelty that Oxford doesn’t match.
Avoiding such brutality should be the primary goal of researchers when handling such subjects in experiments, acknowledging that they are experimenting on living, feeling creatures regardless of their intelligence. The use and destruction of animals in pursuit of cosmetics research, a purely commercial application, should be and is rightfully condemned as a disgrace.
Yet an all too easy appeal to simply banning all animal testing would do incomparable harm to quite literally millions of people. The vital role animal testing has played in understanding cognitive development, illnesses, infections, and physiology cannot be waved away as unjustified. Could any well-intentioned protestor, who genuinely cares for the wellbeing of animals, look at a patient suffering from a currently incurable condition, or one which causes chronic pain, and conclude that they deserve to suffer for the benefit of non-human animals who would otherwise be tested upon?
In an ideal world with no pain, animal experimentation would of course be unnecessary. But in a world riven with illness, diseases, and all manner of conditions which can cause great harm and suffering to a great number of people, we as students, and as a country, have to decide what we are more willing to let trouble our conscience. The suffering of animals in pursuit of a cure, or the avoidable suffering of a colossal number of people, who for instance inherit a debilitating condition, in an area of the world with higher levels of disease or worse healthcare facilities, or simply one facing poverty.
I have to confess a personal stake in this question. Not only did my grandfather carry out research on naked mice, testing the efficacy of leprosy cures, but there is a far closer reason I feel animal testing is deeply unfortunate, but necessary. My namesake, my grandfather’s brother, died of TB in the early 1940s in rural Bengal. In 1944, the first effective treatment for TB was deployed, and by the 1960s, TB was widely and easily treatable. How many more families would still suffer the same heartbreak mine did, if animal experimentation had not contributed towards the development of treatments for TB?
In an era of antibiotic-resistant infections, when conspiracy theories regarding science and a lack of trust in medical professionals are rampant, and spread profligately online and by way of leaders themselves, animal experimentation continues to play a small, unfortunate, yet unavoidably important role in the progress of medicine. The suffering and sacrifice of the animal subjects should never be forgotten, nor minimised, and the use of animal testing should remain at a low level.
Yet there is little substitute for the real benefit that can be derived towards medical progress from it, and so no matter how well-intentioned and righteous those who oppose it may be, Oxford’s current position of involving animal testing in research, but not teaching, is the right one. This University may struggle to get many of the big questions right, but it has hit on the correct formula to balance the suffering of test subjects against the benefits of animal testing.
Have an opinion on the points raised in this article? Send us a 150-word letter at [email protected] and see your response in our next print or online.
