After an intense campaign by policymakers and animal rights groups, the Green Hill animal breeding firm closed its doors, having handed more than 2,500 dogs over to animal rights campaigners in line with the court ruling.

Activists – and plenty of ordinary tweeters who just love dogs – celebrated. If you almost never give much thought to animal research, a headline about dogs in Italy being saved rather than sacrificed looks like good news.

But could the Green Hill story prove to be a pyrrhic victory for animal rights campaigners?

A bit of background

The first thing to consider is how many dogs are used in animal research and why scientists have to use dogs at all.

Using dogs for cosmetics is illegal in Europe but limited use for medical purposes is permitted, under strict conditions.

Around 21,000 dogs were used in European research, according to figures from 2008. While rats and mice are the most commonly used animals in laboratories, larger mammals such as dogs are needed for certain kinds of tests. Many of these are required by EU regulations  to ensure that medicines are safe and effective.

In the event that all research on dogs were to end, much of the current work scientists do in search for new cures of heart disease, cancer and dementia would reach a cul-de-sac.

That might be bad news for human and animal health research but what about laboratory animals themselves?

NIMBY

Europe has the strictest animal welfare standards in the world. If European countries were to become openly hostile to this kind of medical research, would it simply move elsewhere?

Is it unfair to suggest that the campaign against Green Hill is a case of ‘Not In My Back Yard’ – or NIMBY as we like to say.

And are European protests simply going to shift research to jurisdictions where standards are less rigorous?

For pragmatic animal welfare advocates – and dog lovers across Europe – the threat to animal research in Europe presents a dilemma: would pushing dog breeding out of Europe do more harm than good?

Read the Europe 2020 strategy and the Innovation Union policy and the message from EU policymakers is clear. Europe says it needs to be in the Premier League of scientific R&D, not just because research delivers solutions that help improve our lives, but because we want to develop and produce things that have value; things people in the US, Japan, China and elsewhere will buy from us.

Rhetoric vs reality

But what is the reality behind the rhetoric? And is Europe sending mixed signals about its support for research?

Last month the European Commission adopted a new regulation on clinical trials explicitly designed to make it easier to do research in the EU.

Just days later a court in Italy ordered the temporary closure of one of Europe’s leading dog-breeding facilities.

The move followed claims by animal rights groups that the Green Hill facility, a major supplier of animals for research use, was mistreating animals. The company flatly denies this. The judge granted the campaigners ‘custody’ of the animals and effectively cast a serious doubt over the future of the company.

Seeds of doubt

This raises questions about the future of dog breeding in Europe given the prominent role that the Green Hill facility played in the research landscape here, and the likelihood that other breeders will be unnerved by the incident.

And, crucially, it sows seeds of doubt too about how European policy is evolving in this area. A number of Italian politicians joined the campaign against Green Hill, tapping into an anti-research sentiment among some sections of their electorate.  

Would the human clinical trials that Europe has vowed to attract and keep be possible without animal research?

Would fewer of us consider enrolling in a trial to test the power of a new medicine if the drug had not been through safety checks on animals first?

The goal is to find ways of alleviating the symptoms of these conditions. We look at how trisomy changes neurological mechanisms and how it influences embryonic development, stem cells, and the programming and function of cells. We identify and target these mechanisms and hope to treat them through therapeutic drugs. These mechanisms are often similar to those affecting humans with comparable conditions.

We can hope to heal humans thanks to the mouse model. Ten years ago there were no real prospects for treating Down syndrome. Today, Roche is testing a new drug to reduce its symptoms, including problems with learning, memory and speech. Other drugs are on their way. Ten years of research mean that we now have several promising leads for treating Down syndrome.

The animals we use also allow us to do research on rare and very rare genetic conditions, those affecting as little as 1 in every 10,000 people. These include 17q21.31 and 16p11.2, two syndromes where a part of a chromosome is “deleted,” and ring chromosome 14, which results in difficult-to-treat epilepsy. The rarity of these conditions means that it can be difficult for doctors to know even what the typical symptoms and their intensity are. The animal experiments can help us determine what is representative and how these symptoms can be treated.

The Three R’s

We take very seriously our efforts to reduce as much as possible the degree of suffering and loss of life among our animals. We have mandatory training on animal handling and well-being before being allowed to work with them and this continues with “on the ground” training as we specialise.

In our work we follow the principles of reduction, refinement, and replacement. By reduction we mean that we follow tightly optimised procedures to reduce the number of animals we need to use. For example, we know exactly how many animals we need to detect a 20% difference between a test population and a “normal” reference population.

By refine we mean making the animals’ lives as positive as possible. This means we emphasise non-invasive methods of experimentation and, when needed, we use anaesthetics and analgesics to reduce any pain felt. In terms of mutations, our animals do not undergo anything that doesn’t occur in nature. Human children with these genetic features are born naturally. If ever there are animals with very serious problems we can put them down (which I have not yet had to do).

Finally we try to replace animals where possible with other means, such as growing and experimenting with cells in Petri dishes. However, this is typically not useful for studying mental disabilities due to Down syndrome, such as long-term memorisation, interaction with space and objects, social recognition, thinking, and senses. For this cell cultures are no substitute. But we are “thrifty,” so to speak, in all we do, including our use of animals. We have to be very careful in how we keep and treat them. In Europe, and certainly in France where I work, the use of animals is very well regulated [hyperlink to French regulation].

There are some who say we don’t need animal testing anymore. But for the kind of research we do, there’s very little that can be achieved with cells in Petri dishes. We do it knowing that people will benefit. In the 1920s, research using dogs and bovines led to knowledge of insulin’s role in diabetes and to the creation of medical treatments (including for animals with diabetes). Today there are still countless diseases which we could treat better. We work knowing that in the end our research will help heal people and improve their lives.