UK Records Increase in Animal Testing

Bad news from the Guardian....

Nearly 3.7m experiments were performed on animals last year, a rise of 454,000 or 14% on the previous year, the Home Office said. The increase marks the greatest leap in animal use in medical research since 1986, when the government introduced new auditing procedures.

The growth in animal experiments reflects an expansion in biomedical research in Britain and is driven by advances in genetics and the development of new drugs that must be tested rigorously in monkeys before they are allowed to be given to humans. The experiments range from small procedures such as taking blood and tissue samples to invasive brain surgery and inducing incurable diseases such as Parkinson's and cancer. Substantial numbers of animals are used to test the safety of new drugs before they are allowed to be used in human trials.