A statement has been issued by a charity called ‘Animal Free Research’ (AFR) who promote the most misleading of all the 3Rs – the 1R called ‘replacement with alternatives’.
The 3Rs is an outdated policy established in 1959, for ‘humane experimental technique on animals.’ The 1R promoted by AFR is part of an outdated law which AFR uphold on their website. AFR’s position statement on this web page is indicative of their highly misleading position: ‘Working to create a world where human diseases are cured faster without the use of animals.’ This statement falsely claims that human diseases have been cured by animal experiments in the past, and we just need to drop animals to cure patients faster. This is typical nonsense from the 1R/3Rs community.
Charities, like AFR, claim that by promoting the 1R – replacement with alternatives’ – they are somehow helping human patients. They are not. Firstly: abandoning failure is never dependent upon what else is available. So even if there were no human-based methods, animal experiments should immediately stop because they are now proven to also harm and kill humans. And ‘replacing’ failure with an alternative does not make any sense. Human-based research is not an ‘alternative replacement ‘ for animal experiments – these are opposites, not alternatives for each other.
Cures for human treatments and diseases are being derailed by incompetent charities who are not qualified in this specialist medical science field. By promoting the 1R – which is part of the outdated 3Rs – and by funding animal experimenters to use ‘alternatives’ to a method that kills people, AFR use nonsensical language and an outdated law to provide the basis for their 1R, which states that animal experiments must be used unless there is an ‘alternative.’
AFR should stop funding active invasive animal modellers. They should help us campaign for the immediate abolition of the outdated law upon which their 1R is based, and start supporting our called-for science hearing, as outlined by Parliamentary EDM 250: a hearing to be mandated by the Government and judged by independent experts from the relevant fields of science.
Our Government currently believes that animal experiments save human lives – have saved human lives in the past – and therefore should continue. We urgently need a science hearing to prove to our decision makers that they are being duped by an outdated vested interest, including the 1R community, and that in truth, animal modelling harms and kills humans and must stop now.
For more information please browse our website and watch the filmed conversation between our senior doctor Ray Greek and Ricky Gervais, below; please scroll forward to 25 minutes and 1 second to listen to Dr. Greek speaking about the harm caused to patients by the 1R and 3Rs communities: