PETA Has ‘New Deal’ for Boris Johnson
As lockdown measures are eased across most of the UK, PETA is urging the nation’s top brass to seize this watershed moment in history by rejecting animal experiments and moving all vaccine candidates straight to human trials.
In these unprecedented times, new vaccine candidates have been moved straight to human trials without first going through all the usual animal tests, and PETA scientists want it to stay that way.
In letters sent to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Northern Irish First Minister Arlene Foster, Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford, and other senior politicians, PETA shared our Research Modernisation Deal, which lays bare the failure of animal tests and puts forward a strategy for modernising biomedical research and toxicity testing.
Animal Experiments Get in the Way of Safe Treatments and Vaccines
The Research Modernisation Deal points to studies showing that 90% of “highly promising” basic research findings, most of which involve tests on animals, fail to become routinely used therapies within 20 years and that 95% of all new medications testing safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials.
The failure rates of new drugs developed for certain diseases are even higher: 99.6% for Alzheimer’s, 96.6% for cancer, 100% for HIV/AIDS, and 100% for strokes.
The results of tests on animals confuse and mislead researchers and take resources away from cutting-edge, human-relevant methods – including organs-on-chips, 3-dimensional human tissue models, and advanced computer simulations – that are already being used to develop treatments for diseases like COVID-19.
Yet over 3.4 million procedures were carried out on animals in UK laboratories in 2019 alone – recent reports show that the country is the most prolific user of animals in Europe.
COVID-19 has given impetus to better ways of conducting scientifically sound, human-relevant research.
We’re now safely bypassing animal experiments in favour of methods that’ll tell us what does – and what doesn’t – work in humans far more quickly and reliably. This is the essence of the Research Modernisation Deal, and now is the moment to embrace it.
What Is PETA’s Research Modernisation Deal About?
The Research Modernisation Deal provides a detailed strategy for freeing up funds for available human-relevant methods, including the following proposals:
- Immediately eliminate the use of animals in areas in which they have already been shown to be poor surrogates for humans
- Critically review other areas of research to identify where animal use can be ended
- Apply a robust system for ensuring the most up-to-date, human-relevant methods are used
PETA opposes all animal experiments and campaigns for an immediate end to all animal use. Regulatory and scientific authorities must acknowledge the failure of animal studies and, as a first step, immediately end all animal use in disease research areas in which it is known to fail to produce results that help humans. To do otherwise is unethical, impedes good science, wastes resources, and harms animals.
Support the ‘New Deal’ – Help End All Experiments on Animals
Use your voice to speak up for animals in laboratories – sign our petition urging the government to take action to end all experiments on animals:
