Salocin

Tested on animals

It's hard to argue with the point that, over the past few thousand years, Darwinism has led to some pretty impressive improvements in the fundamental design of a human being. Unless, of course, you're a creationist, at which point you're the exception that proves the rule.

From time to time, Darwinism needs a little help. An accelerant. Like the good people who spontaneously take themselves out of the equation.

Sometimes, people who would - given their incompatibility with survival - be troubling us no more, seem to be surviving quite handily, since their stated attitudes are not matched by their behaviours. They say one thing, but do another, and so despite expressing opinions that seem quite compatible with extinction, they remain frustratingly existent.

This apparent conundrum is why I am in violent agreement with a recent proposal from a liberal democrat to put a "tested on animals" label on all drugs that have, as part of their development or approval, been tested on animals.

The BBC provides us with a range of opinions, for example the liberal democrat in question thinks this would counter the claims of animal protesters, and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection claims this would only confuse people and would prove nothing.

Hang on.

So the BUAV is against labelling drugs as "tested on animals"?

Seeing as I disagree with almost everything and anything animal rights campaigners tend to come up with, this sounds like a good idea already. But it does appear a little confusing.

In the last few years, campaigners have managed to make coffee sellers put warnings like "Danger - hot beverage" on the side of coffee mugs, others are seeking to force McDonalds to write "Danger - food makes you fat" or something on the packaging around burgers. If it's genetically modified, the anti-GM crowd wants, "Danger - will turn you into a mutant soy bean" engraved on every item. But if it's tested on animals, then the anti-animal-testing wonks are against marking that on the box. Why on earth could that be?

Because it could confuse people??

If you look at the BUAV's website they have slogans like "Go Cruelty Free". Surely it would help to know what was tested and what wasn't to support non-animal-tested drugs? All the information would do is allow individuals to make a more informed choice. After all, what's confusing about the words "tested on animals"? Seems pretty clear to me.

That's the problem they're facing. Clarity.

If it becomes clear that most of the drugs that will alleviate pain for a number of different illnesses were developed through animal testing, or made use of animals in the safety testing stage of the drug's development, then animal rights campaigners might find themselves in a tricky situation. Suffer your symptoms - possibly for the very long term - or take the drugs and become a hypocrite. In some cases, it might be a question of allowing oneself to die, or living a hypocrite.

The truth is that it wouldn't come to that. If people realised just how key animals have been to the development of so many drugs, the support for animal rights groups would wane quite rapidly among the less radical supporters. It's easy to support something when you can remain comfortably ignorant of the cost, and you can carry on buying almost anything in the shops, safe in the knowledge that if it was tested on animals, there was no way you could know.

I'm all for transparency, and I think that more information is a good thing. If we can handle complex dietary information on every packet of food (and the relevant authorities think that we can) then we should be able to handle a "has been tested on animals" label on the side of a packet of pills.

Alistair Currie, campaigns director for BUAV, said he believed the public should be better informed, but argued that labelling medicines "tested on animals" would just be a statement of fact.
 
"I think that would be misleading to the public as all medicines are tested on animals - that does not mean they have to be tested on animals," he said.
 
"It is just propaganda for animal testing - it's not helping the public to understand the issue better.
 
"It may make people feel 'oh, that means we have to have animal testing', which we don't."

Well, that's not a bad point, but it would also provide a whopping incentive for pharmaceutical companies to start finding alternative ways of testing drugs - since it would allow them to distinguish their drug through the absence of that negative attribute.

Fundamentally, more information remains a good thing, and just because Mr. Currie doesn't like the interpretation people might put on that information doesn't mean it should be kept from them. You can't want transparency where it suits you, but not where it might work against you.

There's another benefit - a huge one as far as I'm concerned.

I'm against the gradual creep in the definition of an illness. An ache or pain that, a few years ago, would have been considered a normal part of being alive, is now treated as an affliction requiring medication. This is the fault of drugs companies forever seeking to create new markets for themselves.

The truth is I would probably think twice if I saw a packet of medicine with "tested on animals" written on it. I would consider whether I really need to buy it, or whether the symptoms I'm feeling will go away on their own, sooner or later. If I felt like I needed the drugs, I would still buy them, but it would do a lot to reduce the market for unnecessary testing on animals, because it would do away with drugs that aren't really needed that fall in that category.

Animal rights campaigners have pushed the pendulum too far, and are idiots if they think they won't suffer a swing in the opposite direction in the coming months and perhaps even years. But this idea, providing transparency and information to consumers, might go some way to restoring some judgement to the discussion. After all, economics is a profound form of democracy - every time you buy something, you are voting in favour of that product, and if you want people to vote against animal-tested drugs, you need to give them the information with which to do it.

Posted by nlvp at May 23, 2006 04:06 PM