Huge increase in experiments on GM animals

BRITAIN'S LABORATORIES are using 350,000 genetically modified animals every year and the number is rocketing as the use of normal breeds has fallen.

Many of the GM, or transgenic, animals used had human genes added in order to study human diseases. Examples included Polly, a cloned sheep incorporating a human gene which makes a protein used to treat cystic fibrosis (CF), and animals which have been given the human gene that leads to CF.

Other applications have led to hairless mutant mice, which are used to study the effects of carcinogens and other products on the skin. However, there are no plans to develop GM animals for food.

Home Office figures show that in 1997, the last year for which full data is available, there were 353,000 GM animals used in experiments, an increase of 17 per cent over the previous year, and of 65 per cent over 1995.

At the same time, 237,000 animals bred to display a "harmful genetic defect" - such as congenital disabilities causing blindness or stunted growth - were used in experiments.

The proportion is expected to grow over the next few years, although a leading scientist says that it could drop almost to zero within a decade when the pattern of human genes is unravelled.

The pressure group Animal Aid claims that such animals are in effect "bred to suffer" - and that the addition of the genes has frequently proved to be useless, especially in mice, where the human genes do not necessarily lead to the human disease. Mice do not develop CF, for example.

"Much of this is research which you can't extrapolate into human heart disease or illnesses such as cystic fibrosis," said Andrew Tyler, director of the group.

"The more that you argue that you can learn things about people by using transgenic mice, the more damage you could cause by applying that to people."

The group is calling for all such research to be stopped, in favour of test-tube experiments with donated human tissue.

However, Professor Gordon McVie, who heads the Cancer Research Campaign, said that experiments with transgenic animals are useful, and reduce suffering to animals overall.

"We use thousands fewer normal mice by applying transgenic technology," he said. "It means we can study exactly the gene that we want to, and find out exactly what its function is. It also means we don't have to breed so many mice.

"More importantly, it could be that in a few years we will not need to use mice at all. Once the Human Genome Project is complete, in about 2003, we might be able to read off all the genes straight out.

"But until then, I expect a growth in the use of transgenic animals."

The number of experiments on animals peaked in 1969, when more than 5.5 million were carried out in the UK. Since then the number has fallen steadily.

The rise in the use of transgenic animals has alarmed Lord Alton of Liverpool, who has followed the debate.

"The number of genetically modified animals used now is phenomenal. In the early Nineties it was a few tens of thousands. But this shows that in the past few years, laboratories in Britain have produced more than 800,000 genetically modified animals," he said.

"The sheer scale of what's taking place is all happening without proper public debate," he added. "It's really outpacing any debate about ethics."

Animals in

the Lab

GM Total

animals experiments

1995 215,308 2.75m

1996 303,850 2.72m

1997 353,000 2.64m

Source: Home Office