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thought-provoking quotations in my editorials. Indeed, I am always on the lookout for something which will give me a start, when I am told by my Managing Editor or Production Editor that they must have an editorial within 24 hours. This occasion was no exception. I had two good quotations and I thought that all was well ― then it all went wrong. The first quotation, mentioned in a sermon by Bishop David Leake at St Andrew’s Church, East Runton, Norfolk, a few weeks ago, is: As I grow older, I believe more and more in less and less. These are the opening words of the Introduction to a wonderful little book by Canon Dr Alan Hargrave, entitled An Almighty Passion.1 Having trained as a chemical engineer, Dr Hargrave worked for the Anglican church in Argentina, before being ordained and serving as vicar in a new parish on the edge of Cambridge. He is now Canon Missioner at Ely Cathedral. His thesis is that he believes more and more in the great doctrines of Christianity, and less and less in secondary issues of faith. I absolutely agree with him on that. I immediately realised that Dr Hargrave’s words apply very much to what I now feel about animal experimentation and alternatives. I had no trouble in getting together lists of the things I no longer believe in and of those that I must hold on to at all costs. For example, I don’t believe: that the EU REACH system is a manageable and affordable way of protecting human beings and the environment; that the 7th Amendment to the EU Cosmetics Directive can solve the ethical and scientific dilemmas involved in the testing of cosmetic ingredients and products; that EU Directive 63/2010 represents an acceptable advance on Directive 86/609; that the rodent bioassay can be used to identify human carcinogens; that animal studies can be used to identify potential human teratogens; that there can be any ethical and scientific justification for using the higher primates as laboratory animals; and that the humanisation of animals to make them better models of humans is either acceptable or useful ― I could go on, and I am sure that the regular readers of ATLA I refer to above, could extend this list for me, but it is already long enough. By contrast, I am confident that non-animal procedures and testing strategies, rigorously developed and intelligently applied, can provide essential information on human diseases, their nature and their treatment, and the risks inherent in exposure to chemicals and products of many kinds ― to the benefit of all concerned, humans and animals alike. My confidence is based on what I do believe: that the new and emerging technologies can be ethically applied directly to humans and human-based systems, thus circumventing the problem of species differences and the dubious task of extrapolating knowledge gained from animals to humans and human conditions. The second quotation, spotted in an advertisement in The Economist (a weekly gift from one of my economist sons), is from The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,2 by John Maynard Keynes, who said: The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. This, I thought, would be useful, as a way of considering why so many people seem to be blinkered, and stoically regard animal procedures as virtually the only way of understanding, treating or preventing human disease. Sadly, this inability to escape applies, not only to administrators, lawyers, politicians and regulators, but also to many scientists as well. A good example of this lamentable situation was recently presented to us, when The Lancet published an Open letter to UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Health Secretary Andrew Lansley on safety of medicines.3 Kathy Archibald, of the Safer Medicines Trust, and 21 other signatories, had written to our current political leaders to ask them “to initiate a comparison of a set of human-biologybased tests with [the animal tests] currently used, as proposed in the Safety of Medicines Bill 2010–11”, since “our reliance on animals to establish safety results in the exposure of clinical volunteers to many treatments that are at best ineffective and at worst dangerous”. I fully support that request, but I question why it should be necessary to make it at all. If the Government’s advisers were any good, and if the Government listened to them, they would be well aware of worldwide concern in the pharmaceutical industry about the increasing frequency of the withdrawal of drugs during clinical trials, or even after their approval for clinical use, because of the failure of animal ATLA 39, 201–202, 2011 201

Animal Experiments and Alternatives: Matters of Belief and Trust