2013-05-22T11:30:32-04:00 Alistair Currie http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=alistair-currie Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Alistair Currie Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1455529 2012-04-26T19:00:00-04:00 2012-06-26T05:12:01-04:00

Alistair Currie http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alistair-currie/
Back in 1998, cosmetics tests on animals were ended in the UK in a long-overdue recognition of what the British public had understood for years: killing animals in tests for vanity products is morally reprehensible. The UK ban sidestepped years of dithering and delays in the European Union, where good intentions had constantly been thwarted by compromises and reversals.

Finally, in 2003, the European Parliament voted to ban all testing of cosmetics and their ingredients on animals by 2009 and - crucially - to end the sales of all cosmetics and toiletries containing ingredients tested on animals by March 2013.

That sales ban was a remarkable achievement for the campaigners and parliamentarians who had laboured for so long. It established that not just testing cosmetics on animals but profiting from that testing is wrong, and cosmetics companies worldwide knew that if they wanted to sell to the EU's 500 million consumers, they needed to take a hard look at their policies. The result was a boom in investment in non-animal testing methods and the acknowledgement that there are thousands of safe cosmetics ingredients that don't require testing. We've since seen major high street companies such as Marks & Spencer turn their backs completely on animal-tested ingredients for their cosmetics and toiletries and, even more excitingly, we've seen the complete replacement of some animal tests worldwide with superior, cheaper and more effective non-animal methods.

But now this good news story for science, animals and consumers has taken a dark twist. Under pressure from influential players in the cosmetics industry, the European Commission is considering postponing the 2013 deadline, perhaps indefinitely. Companies whose marketing relies on novel ingredients promising miracle results worry that without being able to use the animal tests that some regulators still expect for new ingredients, those ingredients will stay in the labs and their profits may suffer. Scandalously, their concerns have found sympathy in the corridors of Brussels, where alarmist rhetoric about the impact on business is swallowed rather more enthusiastically than are the shampoo ingredients being force-fed to pregnant rabbits in laboratories.

European Commissioner John Dalli is expected to announce his decision in the summer, but the deadline cannot be postponed unless the European Parliament and the individual countries of the EU agree. A number of EU countries have already declared support for the ban, but shockingly, the UK has refused to take a position.

Everyone knows that cosmetics testing on animals is wrong, and Europe's precedent-setting policy against it should be a point of pride for all of us. But in 2012, companies are still profiting from the blood of animals used in cosmetics tests, and it shouldn't take campaigners or the public to tell our politicians that the 2013 deadline to end that must not be postponed by a single day. Sadly though, until Commissioner Dalli and Vince Cable and his team at the Department of Business stand up for what is right, it looks like that's what we'll need to do.

See PETA'S action alert here]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1357871 2012-03-18T19:00:00-04:00 2012-05-18T05:12:01-04:00

Alistair Currie http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alistair-currie/
Most of those imported animals are genetically modified rodents. The media seems to always fall for the latest hype surrounding the use of animals who have been genetically modified to approximate human medical conditions. This PR always contains gee-whizz science, astonishing effects, and inflated claims about potential human benefits but ignores even a hint of the price paid by animals. Yet the outcome is always predictable: animals can never be "humanised," there will always be thousands of important differences between species, and the link to humans will remain assumed and unproven.

Like all animal tests, those performed with genetically modified animals aren't delivering. In 2004, a paper published in the British Medical Journal concluded that there was little actual scientific evidence that animal experimentation was essential to medical research. Experimenters perpetually attempt to justify the terrible suffering they inflict on animals by claiming there is a cure just around the corner, but decades of animal experiments on AIDS vaccines (more than 80 that passed animal tests have failed in people), strokes (150 treatments have worked in animals and failed in people) and other diseases have failed to deliver any cures for the millions of people who suffer from these conditions.

That's because while humans and animals are alike in our ability to feel pain, fear, sadness, joy, and other emotions, we vary enormously in our physical reactions to toxins and diseases and in how our bodies metabolise drugs. Trying to apply the results of animal tests to humans is a shot in the dark. US Food and Drug Administration figures show that 92% of drugs which pass animal trials are later found to be unsafe or ineffective in human trials.

Clinging to archaic animal experiments even seems to blind experimenters to the obvious. When PETA US experts reviewed more than 500 rodent cancer studies to assess their scientific validity according to current, internationally accepted criteria, they found that critical public-health and worker-protection measures related to cigarette smoke, asbestos, benzene and other cancer-causing substances were delayed for many years because of misplaced trust in animal tests, which could not replicate the health effects already well-documented in humans.

Medical research may now finally be able to progress into the 21st century because the British public is demanding human-relevant, modern research techniques instead of obsolete and unreliable animal tests. Sophisticated, cutting-edge techniques and technologies such as cell lines, tissue cultures, computer and mathematical modeling, clinical investigations, epidemiological research and autopsy studies are cheaper, faster and more reliable than animal tests - not to mention infinitely kinder.

Let's hope the refusal of transport companies to carry animal victims to UK laboratories causes the scientific community to rethink its psychological dependence on cruel and unreliable animal tests. Switching to advanced non-animal methods now would result in a future filled with less suffering for all species.]]>