Animals: Experimentation

Lord Winston Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston]

My Lords, in congratulating my noble friend Lord Wills on securing this debate I declare an interest. I have held a licence to carry out animal research for more than 40 years. I may be the only Member of this House to do so. I still have an active licence and, indeed, went to see the Home Office inspector only two weeks ago. I am also chairman of a company that is involved in transplantation work using pig organs. I recently had to go to the Home Office for revalidation. I have a certificate from the Institute of Biology hanging up in my lavatory. Unfortunately, that institute does not have a typewriter that works terribly well. The certificate states:

“This is to certify that Professor Robert Winston is licensed to operate on mouse, rat, guinea pig, hamster and rabbi”.

No rabbi has visited my house to inspect the certificate, which is probably just as well. I replied using a typewriter which had all the “t”s missing; I felt that was the only way in which I could reply.

I am not sure that this matter is as deeply contentious as the noble Lord, Lord Willis, says it is. Let us face it: 95 per cent of us perfectly happily wear leather shoes. We should put the animal rights lobby into some kind of focus. I regularly speak at all sorts of public meetings around the country and I do not get the impression that animal research is so contentious. Of course, various issues still need to be addressed, but I fear that we might exaggerate the public response to this, which serves no good purpose.

My field has largely been that of in vitro fertilisation and reproductive biology. It is interesting to consider that more than 1 million babies could not have existed without the research that has been carried out on rodents. That is true of my work in the screening of embryos for genetic disorders. This has been a revolution in reproductive medicine. It means that women can embark on a pregnancy knowing for certain that they will be free from having a baby which will die in the first few years of life. That was made possible purely through extensive animal research. Animal research has contributed hugely to physiological medical research in virtually every field, whether it be the liver, heart, brain or kidneys, or neuroscience or any major discipline. Last year’s Nobel prize in my field was won as a result of medical research on animals, as has often been the case with many Nobel prize winners.

I am now involved in the field of transplantation. One of the interesting issues is that organ failure is extremely common. Around the world every 15 minutes or so a new person is put on an organ transplant waiting list. I work at Imperial College London. Using mice initially but also pigs, we are trying to modify the cell surface antigens of the pig so that they are not recognised by the human immune system, so that when an organ is transplanted—a kidney, heart or liver—it may not be rejected. That is an ethical imperative. It saves human life in a way that no artificial organ appears to be capable of doing. We may talk about bionics in our society but I think that it will be at least 20 or 30 years before an artificially made organ is remotely possible. However, xenotransplantation now has a real possibility of saving vast numbers of lives and improving medical care.

I do not think we can argue that there is any substitute for animal research. Of course, reduction is possible but I do not think that substitution is. I give an example. Much has been made of the use of cell culture to replace animal research. I speak with some knowledge of cell culture, having worked in that field for a very long time with my embryos and with other tissues. However, the problem with cell cultures is that they produce huge numbers of aberrations which are not produced in the intact animal. In the intact rodent we are able to study cell signalling in a way that goes completely awry in a cell culture. The epigenetic changes that occur in cell culture mean that genes often do not express in the way that they would do normally in the intact animal. Of course, even organ culture will not do that either. It is a very technical issue.

I have worked with animals in the United States, in Belgium for a year, in France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. In Britain, the overall standard of inspection, control and regulation as it stands—with or without the European directive—is remarkably high. We should, however, try to improve our animal houses; that would be a great help. The problem, of course, is that universities often do not have enough money to do that.

We need to say very clearly that it would be unthinkable to take any drug which has not been tested on an intact animal. In fact, there is a case for having legislation to make it clear that a particular drug has only been possible for human consumption because of animal testing. This could be stamped on the packet, rather like a cigarette packet. With the medical advances, and the advances in animal well-being which have resulted from animal research, we should not lose focus on the overall picture. I urge the Minister to consider those in his deliberations in Europe.

Finally, one of the key issues is public engagement. It is a matter of great disappointment to many of us that, for example, the pharmaceutical industry, which has so much at stake in this country, and which contributes so enormously to our economy, has not been much more forward in trying to point out that it uses animal research. It is quite shocking that every university in this country does not admit that we have an animal house where we do animal experiments. If we do not say this very clearly to the public, if we do not make that message clear, then of course people will start to think there is something clandestine or something to be ashamed of in our research programmes. I really do not think that is true. Overall, from what I have seen in 40 years, the standards in animal care, improving as they are, are remarkably better than in almost any other jurisdiction, except for the circumstances in animal houses, which are sometimes not as good as they should be because of the financial limits in what we can provide for their housing.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we are having a great debate, but can we please watch the clock?