Why are millions of animals used in laboratory testing and experimentation?
Animal experiments have been considered the “gold standard” for drug development for decades. Regulatory requirements often suggest testing on two species – typically a small animal like a mouse and a larger one such as a dog – before human clinical trials.
Different animals are used depending on the type of medical research being done. The 2024 annual statistics of scientific ‘procedures’ (experiments) using living animals in Great Britain released by the Home Office in September 2024 show that 2,554,447 animals were used in experiments, including:
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1,651 dogs
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1,861,424 mice
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1,472 monkeys
Animal experiments account for a large proportion of medical research, yet we are no closer to curing many of the world’s most common and debilitating diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Many diseases are uniquely human, so using animals to study them often leads to misleading results.
Positive results in animal experiments have even led to unsafe treatments being tested in humans with devastating outcomes. Over 92% of drugs fail during human clinical trials, while Alzheimer’s disease drugs have a staggering 99.6% failure rate, despite promising results in animal tests. Animals like monkeys don’t naturally develop Alzheimer’s, or live long enough to study aging in the same way that humans experience it, so these outdated methods are simply not giving us the answers we need.
Innovative, animal free New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) like organ-on-a-chip, lab-grown human tissues and advanced computer models are revolutionising the way we test new medicines, without the use of animals. These technologies are human-specific, accurately mimicking the way human cells and organs behave, while being more accurate in predicting how a drug interacts with the human body than an animal.
2,554,447
animals were used in experiments in British laboratories in 2024
Examples of Animal Testing and Experimentation
Animals are used in different ways depending on the requirements of the research being done. But some examples of animal testing and experimentation include:
- Mice used to test the effect of viruses or substances via invasive brain surgery that implants devices, tubes and recording wires.
- Using tubes to administer test substances directly into the stomachs of dogs like Beagles.
- Deliberately inducing stress with methods including bright lights, cage tilting, intermittent air puffs, vibration and/or exposure to argon gas to test animal responses.
- Healthy mice, rats and chickens used to test “humane” killing methods.
