#Human Rights
Target:
UK government
Region:
United Kingdom
Website:
www.curedisease.net

Doctors and research scientists are increasingly speaking out against animal testing. All animals are different, so they feel the results from animals can't be applied to humans, and it is dangerous for human patients if we try to do so.

In 1997 Labour came to power in the UK. One of their pre-election pledges was to hold an historic investigation into the medical relevance and safety for human patients of using animal experiments.

The medical relevance of animal testing has come under more doubt since then, but they have still refused to honour the pledge.

Among the developments in that time were:

§ 83% of doctors, in an independent poll, supported the idea of an independent evaluation.

§ A 2004 paper in the British Medical Journal concluded that "the contribution of animal studies to clinical medicine requires urgent formal evaluation."

§ Scientifically evaluated cell culture tests have been discovered to be 80-85% accurate: easily more accurate than animal testing.

§ Adverse drug reactions have been estimated to be our fourth leading cause of death: killing over 10,000 people a year in the UK and costing the NHS £466 million, according to medical journal studies. All drugs contributing to this have passed tests on animals.

An Early Day Motion raised by a concerned MP requesting such an inquiry attracted the support of hundreds of MPs across the parties and was among the 1% most popular EDMs. The MP consulted with doctor's group Europeans For Medical Progress (see www.curedisease.net) who actively supported the move.

UK CITIZENS - SUPPORT THIS CRUCIAL INQUIRY
If you live in the UK, your MP has until November 2006 to sign EDM92 - go to www.vote4animals.org.uk and enter your postcode to find ways of contacting him or her. It takes about 5 minutes.

See http://www.vote4animals.org.uk/edm92.htm and www.curedisease.net for more reasons why we need this inquiry.

For more about why animal experiments don't work, see www.vivisection-absurd.org.uk.

FREE NEWS LIST
Email vivisectionkills@hotmail.com to receive free email medical news and details of what you can do about this.

We, the undersigned, express our concern that the practice of testing medical drugs should still involve much-criticized animal methods.

The validity of data for humans is widely doubted, and many scientists feel animal methods should be immediately abandoned.

We urge the UK government to honour it's pre-election pledge to investigate the practice, and endorse the views expressed by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 83% of General Practitioners, The Toxicology Working Group of the House of Lords Select Committee on Animals in Scientific and the hundreds of MPs from all major parties who support an inquiry.

We call upon the UK government to initiate a thorough, transparent independent inquiry without delay.

The Inquiry into medical animal testing in the UK petition to UK government was written by Cris Iles and is in the category Human Rights at GoPetition.