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Animal Experiments
Steps towards greater openness: first lay summaries published
As part of the Government's moves towards greater openness, the first lay summaries of project licences have been published online. These are available on the Home Office web-site. We commend the Government on fulfilling their commitment to greater openness, and also the academic projects which have taken the lead in this matter. The Home Office state that all new projects which have received approval from early 2005 onwards will produce publishable abstracts; however they are vague as to when this will be fully implemented.
It would be churlish to slam the projects which have taken such significant steps towards greater openness so we will refrain from detailed comment; however, we are surprised that no attempt is made to justify the numbers of animals used, particularly those where more than 1000 rodents per year are being used. We would hope that other project summaries would attempt to do so.
| Nature of project | Animals to be used |
|---|---|
| Balance disorders Damaging inner ear of rats to discover biochemical reactions with or without additional stressors. Full summary |
150 rats/year |
| Cancer and the immune system Implanting tumour cells under skin of rats. Full summary |
1500 mice/year |
| Safety of catheter and wound dressings Dressing applied to skin wound or catheter inserted into animal. Full summary |
Insufficient detail |
| Relief from chronic pain by use of antidepressants Four groups of experiments: two mild, one moderate; one unclassified. Unclassified experiments involve terminally anaesthetising one quarter of the rodents and inserting a brain probe to monitor noradrenaline and glutamate. Full summary |
2000 rodents/year |
| Developing a GM strain of mice for cancer studies Strain will have no thymus gland, so that they have substantially reduced immunity to disease. Bred to be receptive to tumour cells. Full summary |
120 mice/year |
| Studying respiratory diseases with GM mice Different strains of mice used to produce tissue samples for later in vitro studies. Full summary |
1500 mice/year |
| Metabolism and excretion studies for new candidate drugs Toxicology of new drug candidates. Full summary |
3100 rodents, 100 rabbits, 4 dogs (total for project) |
| New drugs for respiratory diseases Toxicology of new drug candidates. Full summary |
5000 rodents, 50 rabbits per year |
| Healing of wounds and cleft palate Anaesthetised animals will have skin wounds; these will be dressed and allowed to heal with or without treatment. Full summary |
6000 rodents, 5 pigs per year |
