Neuroethics and the Future of the Animal Rights Movement
Innovations are enabling a move away from animal models in neuroscience.
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The following article is an opinion piece written by Anoutia Allymohamed. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Technology Networks.
Public and legislative attitudes towards animal testing are rapidly changing, yet a significant proportion of medical research still relies on animal models. In 2023, 2.68 million scientific procedures were carried out on living animals in Britain, not including those carried out on “non-protected” species such as crabs and lobsters.1
In May 2024, a bold landmark campaign was launched calling for the UK Government to introduce legislation for the transition to animal-free medical research, with the ambition to completely phase out all animal testing in medicine by 2035.2 The proposed legislation has received significant parliamentary3 and public support, with 70% of the British public in support of the legislation.4,5
Why are animal models still used?
Neuroscience is one of the most challenging areas of science to apply animal-free technology. The Home Office reported that 52% of animal testing procedures in 2023 were carried out for basic research purposes, with the most common research area being on the nervous system.1 The most critical challenges lie in two key areas of neuroscience research: toxicity assessment and disease and injury modeling.
Toxicity assessment affects every scientific discipline where drugs can be applied as a treatment method within clinical practice. In clinical neuroscience, toxicity tests are key to examine the safety profile of new treatments affecting the central nervous system. These tests typically involve the forcible administration of substances through a tube into the stomach or by rubbing substances onto a patch of skin. In some tests, this includes subjecting the animal to increasing doses until the point of death in order to determine the lethal dose of a substance.6,7
In injury modeling, researchers deliberately inflict an injury to an animal subject in an effort to understand the physiological consequences or to investigate the effectiveness of a treatment. In the field of neuroscience, these injuries include but are not limited to blunt force trauma to the brain, spinal cord injuries and administration of substances to elicit brain damage.8,9,10 Alternatively, animals can be bred or manipulated to mimic a human disease, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), thereby allowing researchers to observe disease progression and apply interventions at different stages of the disease cycle.11
According to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), the use of animals in drug development remains the only accepted way to reliably test the safety of a new drug before it moves onto clinical trials.12 Unfortunately, while many treatments may work in theory, they need to be tested in a living system to ensure that they work safely in practice. Moreover, treatments can often work differently in vitro than they do inside a living system.13
Ethical implications of animal models and their impact on people and animals
According to Hutchinson, Owen and Bailey, the practice of animal research itself involves an inherent contradiction.14
“It relies on the belief that animals are similar enough to humans to make the results relevant, but that they are different enough to make it morally acceptable to harm them in the pursuit of human benefit.”
However, in the current research landscape, evidence shows that there is often insufficient progress in the effective transfer of treatments from animal models to clinical trials. For example, in AD research there is a 98% failure rate, with many treatments failing at phase 1 or 2.15Could the reliance on animal models be holding research back?
As society continues to become more compassionate, and as animal sentience becomes more widely understood, animal testing continues to raise complex ethical questions: Should we be able to deliberately inflict a disease or injury onto a being, deciding their life course in the process? Is it okay to harm animals for our benefit? Do the ends always justify the means, and who can ultimately decide what is morally justifiable or morally greater? Moreover, if we have the opportunity and the resources to invest in alternatives to animal models but choose not to, how can we justify our decision as ethical?
As a result, there are significant negative mental health impacts on the researchers who carry out animal experiments. A survey held in Poland found that 72% of respondents “felt an emotional burden” as a consequence of carrying out animal experiments and observing the animals in distress.16
At present, UK law states that animals can be used in research when there is no other satisfactory alternative method available.17 But, as public perceptions change, how long will this be tolerated? Public trust of the scientific community directly impacts its ability to carry out research due to public influence on funding and animal welfare laws. A recent example is the successful campaign to ban the forced swim test in the UK.18
In addition, public distrust may have a wider detriment to human health and wellbeing. For example, negative public perception of a new treatment could lead to a knock-on effect of people refusing the treatment, thus negatively impacting those individuals and possibly their proximate communities.19
A better future for people and animals
Innovations in biosciences now enable researchers to grow organoids, three-dimensional simplified organ replicas developed from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) which can be derived from somatic cells in human skin or blood.20 For example, researchers can use patient-derived iPSCs to build an organoid model of the brain to study neurodegenerative diseases, like Parkinson’s disease, more effectively.21 This technology not only allows for a human-focused approach, but also enables researchers to look for precise patient-centered solutions.
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Furthermore, micro-scaled physiological models of human organs are being developed onto microchips as a method to investigate organ-specific diseases and aid in the drug development process.22 Organ-on-a-chip technology has the potential to mimic complex biological systems such as the human blood–brain barrier. It allows researchers to study the barrier permeability to different drugs, screen for the most effective treatments against neurodegenerative diseases and even incorporate living cells from patients to create a personalised study of the disease.23
It is also now possible to mimic natural tissues by layering and linking different types of cells together.24 3D bioprinted models of brain tumors, for example, allow researchers to explore the characteristics of different tumors within a human-focused system. Or they can be used to tailor cancer models to an individual patient, allowing for more precise drug development and testing.25
These projects are not without their own challenges, and are still in the early stages, but have significant potential to simultaneously replace animal models and improve treatment efficacy for humans. But it is of vital importance that these research efforts receive continued support, investment and attention, and that scientists and policy makers continue to work closely together to actively pursue and develop these exciting modern avenues of research.
While animal testing cannot yet be omitted in certain areas of research, it is paramount to ensure that the ethical concerns of the public are heard. As concepts such as personhood and speciesism within the animal rights movement continue to expand, it is likely that such ethical concepts will accelerate the shift towards animal-free research in the future.26 It is evident that the demand for human-relevant research is growing rapidly, and the scientific community must be ready for change.
