MEPs’ debate on animal research ban worries scientists

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/09/animal-research-vivisection-ban-eu-parliament-debate

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The European parliament will on Monday debate a call – backed by a petition signed by 1.2 million people – to scrap animal research in the EU. The proposal has alarmed scientists, who worked for six years to set up the 2010 European directive that controls animal experimentation and welfare in the EU.

Researchers fear that the petition, which was drawn up by the Italian-based Stop Vivisection European citizens’ initiative, could sway many newly elected MEPs who would then press the European commission into scrapping the directive which, in the UK, is enshrined in an amendment to the 1986 Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act.

“Without the directive, research using animals would be blocked and that would have terrible consequences,” said Nancy Lee, senior policy adviser at the Wellcome Trust. “New medicines for Alzheimer’s, heart disease, cancer and other conditions could no longer be tested. Similarly, new drugs for animals would also be blocked.”

This view is backed by Dame Kay Davies, director of the MRC functional genomics unit at Oxford University. “Removal of the directive would be a significant step backwards both for animal welfare in the EU and for Europe’s leading role in advancing human and animal health,” she said in last week’s Nature.

Other citizens’ initiatives, which require a minimum of a million signatures before they are heard by the European parliament, have included calls for improved water supplies and stricter speed limits in Europe.

At the meeting in Brussels, MEPs will listen to speeches from the initiative’s organisers before Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, the French Nobel laureate and virologist, outlines the importance of animal research in the development of new medicines.