 A curious moralityThe London Guardian Banning the use of primates in medical research might ease guilty consciences, but the cost will be human lives November 23, 2007 4:30 PM | Printable version Like most people, I am instinctively uncomfortable about the use primates in medical research. But to argue that it should be banned, as Gill Langley did in her comment piece, is to deprive thousands upon thousands of people suffering from terrible diseases of potential cures and treatments. Mike Robins has Parkinson's disease. Like many sufferers, Mike had severe, debilitating and untreatable tremors every day from the moment he woke until the time he finally managed to sleep at night. Yet following ground-breaking research involving macaques, neurosurgeons developed a "brain pacemaker" that helped eliminate these devastating symptoms. This work has given Mike his life back. Of course animal research using monkeys, as with any animals, is not a universal panacea - how could it be? But the vast majority of leading scientists in the field testify to the importance of monkeys in research not only to develop new treatments, but also to understand the brain and to test the safety of new medicines and vaccines. A report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in 2005 showed how research using primates had been vital in the development of treatments for hepatitis C and vaccines for polio. And a year ago, an independent UK committee chaired by Professor Sir David Weatherall concluded (pdf) that: "There is a strong scientific case for the carefully regulated use of non-human primates where there are no other means to address clearly defined questions of particular biological or medical importance." It is the strength and weight of this scientific and medical evidence that has forced many anti-vivisectionist This position was adopted by MEPs who recently signed a written declaration cautiously calling for a timetable to work towards a ban on the use of primates in research. I, like everyone else, would like to feel that one day medical research using primates may not be necessary, and a great deal of effort is being invested to find successful alternatives to such work. But we should not delude ourselves about how far such alternatives can replace the use of live animals. One anti-vivisection group, for example, has suggested that functional MRI scans of human patients' brains can replace studies using monkeys. Yet specialists have been able to refute this unequivocally, saying that human imaging does not even come close to providing the vital information those engaged in medical research require. The plain, if awkward, truth is that most serious players in the scientific community believe that a programme for an arbitrary ban - in an area where the rate and direction of research is inevitable unpredictable - is not compatible with making further medical progress. The level of public opposition to the use of animals in medical research is now probably at an all-time low. More and more medical researchers and practitioners are choosing to speak out in support of their vital work to help cure disease and treat sickness, and tough action by the police and courts have successfully reduced the activities of the violent extremists. So the tactics of the anti-vivisection movement is shifting, and part of that shift is to identify and target particular aspects of medical research it perceives to carry less public support. Research using primates is an obvious choice for those whose real agenda goes much wider. Only a very small number of primates are actually used in medical research (about 0.2% of all procedures using animals in the UK involve primates, mainly small monkeys like macaques and marmosets), and no great apes are ever used. But the value of such work is, for the foreseeable future at least, beyond reasonable doubt. Banning primate research might ease the guilty consciences of some. But its effect would be to confront us with the much greater moral responsibility of stopping countless thousands of people from receiving the medical interventions they need to protect and prolong their lives. It is really that simple. |
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