The closure of HLS would be a step toward the activists’ ultimate goal of ending all animal testing and research in Britain once and for all. Along the way they may also threaten the future of Britain’s medical- research industry. The cost to science could be steep. Britain, the country that gave the world Dolly the cloned sheep, is home to the research labs of a clutch of topflight global companies. This research is also vital to the health of Britain’s pharmaceutical industry, whose exports totaled £7.1 billion last year.
Investors have already grown leery. Research directors from five leading pharmaceutical companies have written to the Home secretary, warning that security worries compel them to reconsider expansion plans in Britain. Japanese companies are rethinking £1 billion worth of investments in British research, according to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. Says spokesman Richard Ley, “However [the activists] dress this up, this is a campaign against the whole pharmaceutical industry and new medicines.”
A robust animal-rights movement is not new in this country. The sentimental attachment to animals runs deep. Charles Darwin, father of the theory of evolution, actively opposed vivisection. In the 1980s British activists spearheaded the movement against animal furs. Violence by the animal-rights fringe has disfigured political campaigns to an extent unknown in the rest of Europe. “I have stopped counting the death threats I’ve received,” says Mark Matfield, director of the Research Defence Society, which speaks for scientists involved in animal research. Most threats prove hollow, he says (though protesters once trashed his car). Hollow or not, they’re hard to ignore. Even before the SHAC campaign, Colin Blakemore, an Oxford physiology professor and one of the very few academics now prepared to argue publicly for research, was a regular target. He’s had demonstrators march outside his home and terrorists threaten to kidnap his children. One even delivered a bomb packed with needles through his mail slot.
But the campaign against HLS marks a worrying escalation. The dozen or so full-time activists who run SHAC have so far confined themselves to shutting down dog and cat farms that rear animals for the labs. HLS, by contrast, has a staff of 1,100, with 200 more in Princeton, New Jersey, and ranks among Europe’s largest contract research labs. In recent years it has worked for 40 of the world’s top 50 pharmaceutical companies. Staff have received hate mail, threats, abusive tele-phone calls and protests outside their homes.
Activists are even targeting companies linked to HLS. Lamp posts in plush districts of London carry stickers giving the names, addresses and photographs of senior figures in the pharmaceutical industry whose companies use HLS. The message: “Animal Killer. Let him know what you think of animal cruelty.” Earlier this month protesters barricaded themselves for 11 hours inside the London offices of the Bank of New York, which had been holding some HLS shares. Charles Schwab, the online broker, ceased handling HLS shares after protesters dressed in rabbit suits clambered onto the roof of its Birmingham office. Says Greg Avery of SHAC: “The roll call of companies that have distanced themselves from HLS is very, very impressive. We are pulling one supporting pillar after another out from under them.”
The strategy has been effective. In January HLS came close to shutting down after the Royal Bank of Scotland–a target of repeated demonstrations–refused to extend a [Pound sterling]22 million overdraft facility. Only a last-minute offer of funds from the U.S. investment group Stephens–now itself a target–kept out the receivers. HLS stock has fallen from 27 pence per share in 1999 to just five pence today. Chairman Andrew Baker attributed last year’s [Pound sterling]10.9 million loss in part to the campaign’s “negative impact on orders.” Says a spokesman: “People aren’t going to place two- or three-year studies here if they don’t know whether we are going to be around.”
HLS is a test case. Pharmaceutical companies have been pressing for greater legal protection. The government is rattled. M.P.s are now considering tightening controls on hate mail and demonstrations outside private homes. Home Secretary Jack Straw visited HLS last week in a show of support and criticized the cave-ins by City institutions as “pusillanimous.” In reply, firms point out that staff security must take priority. “These are very difficult decisions to take, but we are talking about the very real, physical intimidation of individuals and their families and children,” says an industry-group spokesman. Still, most firms acknowledge that capitulation sets an awkward precedent. Says Brian Winterflood of the City market makers Winterflood Securities, which earlier this month ceased all dealing in HLS shares, “It’s anarchy one, democracy nil.”
SHAC organizers take care to disown violence or lawbreaking in any form. Such actions, they say, must be the work of the fringe zealots. “At the end of the day the real villains aren’t on our side,” says Joseph Dawson, 18, a student helping to rally a group of protesters outside a private home in a smart London suburb. “But people are disgusted by the cruelty–and we can understand how some of them get frustrated.”
The charge of cruelty hits HLS in a vulnerable spot. Every year the company uses some 70,000 animals. As elsewhere in the industry, most are rodents and fish; dogs and monkeys make up 2 percent of the total. Its projects range from interspecies transplants–putting, say, a pig’s heart in a monkey–to testing pesticides for safety. Its work has contributed to research into diseases from AIDS to cancer. But instances of cruelty have marred the company’s record. In 1997 an undercover researcher filmed harrowing images of mistreatment, including lab staff punching an uncooperative beagle. The courts subsequently convicted two employeesof cruelty. The government insisted on a 16-point program of improved practices as a condition of renewing HLS’s license to work with animals. HLS says it has cleaned up its act.
The blots on HLS’s record help the campaign tap a far wider public disquiet. More than 2 million animals are killed each year in British labs. That’s half the number killed 20 years ago, thanks partly to new techniques that allow researchers to work with tissue cultures. But the decline is now leveling off. In coming years advances in genomics are expected to yield new types of drugs, which will need to be tested on animals. Scientists admit that test animals suffer. Is using them really necessary? No, says the anti-vivisection lobby: poor funding has prevented the development of alternatives that might be just as effective (see story). Already it’s sometimes possible, for example, to study a disease by monitoring human volunteers with ultrasound scanners. “Science is bizarre,” says Geoffrey Thomas of the Hadwen Trust, a charity that promotes alternatives. “It aims to be cutting-edge, but the culture is often very conservative and slow to change.” Besides, some research may be downright misleading or plain wasteful. The differences between species mean aspirin might fail animal-safety tests. And is it really necessary to force-feed dogs and monkeys artificial sweeteners when more than 100 similar tests have been carried out worldwide?
Orthodox scientists rebut these claims unequivocally. Safety testing on animals is often a legal requirement. More important, research on animals is essential for the kind of fundamental studies that yield long-term results. Besides, animal testing is so costly and labor intensive–you need vets, accommodation for the animals and government licenses–that scientists use it only when they have to. But when zealotry, science and ethics collide, however, there’s little hope for compromise. For extremists, the death of one animal in the lab is too many–and humans who stand in the way must take the consequences.
