24 April marks the World Day for Animals in Laboratories, with the aim of remembering the animals that are victims of vivisection and opening a debate so that scientific research may, in the future, change. To this end, we spoke with Michela Kuan, biologist and national head of the animal-free research division at Lav, to better understand the situation in Italy.

Vivisection or animal testing?

"There are no differences between the word vivisection and animal testing," Kuan explains. "The word vivisection is simply not used because it frightens people." According to the official definition of the Italian Ministry of Health, which is responsible for authorising procedures involving animals, "the term animal testing refers to all research techniques that involve the use of live animals for scientific purposes." Animals are generally used in pharmacological, physiological, physiopathological, biomedical and biological research.

Specifically, in Italy, almost 600,000 animals are used every year in laboratories, including dogs, cats, primates, rodents, ferrets, goats, cattle, pigs, frogs and fish, to name but a few. This figure refers to data published in 2017, and no more up-to-date numbers have been released since. In the latest report published by the Ministry itself, a slight decrease in the overall number of animals compared to previous years is noted, but there is also a recorded increase in the use of dogs and a sharp rise in the use of macaques.

This figure introduces one of the threads running through many aspects of vivisection — from the number of animals used, to the allocation of funds, to the enforcement of laws: there is a lack of transparency. "These are figures from four years ago and there are no more recent ones. We citizens have no access to this information. The institutions present a self-referential wall that communicates only with itself. For example, the number of animals, their state of welfare, how they are kept — these are data compiled by the person in charge of the research or by someone else within the same research group. That is why they are not reliable," Kuan explains.

Can we talk about animal welfare?

The area shrouded in the most shadow of all is that concerning the conditions of animals in laboratories — what is termed "animal welfare" — even though one is naturally prompted to ask whether the words vivisection and welfare can truly appear in the same sentence.

"It is absurd that the idea is put across that an animal is doing well in a laboratory. First of all, it is not possible to guarantee their welfare, because they are removed from their natural environment and, on top of that, they undergo procedures that cause them pain. And indeed they often exhibit stereotypical behaviours. The Green Hill case was enough to show this — and it must be remembered that the animals there were only being bred, they had not yet undergone any procedures at all. They were catatonic, did not respond to stimuli, had muscular problems because they did not move, had never known sunlight, and were fragile. Not only that," Kuan continues, "we rescued two colonies of primates from universities and among the most classic behaviours we observed was pacing — that is, moving back and forth — because for a long time they had been confined in a tiny space. We know that mice are bred and kept in cages the size of a shoebox, stacked one on top of the other."

Those who conduct experiments have no interest in showing what goes on inside laboratories. It is no coincidence that every time cameras enter, they uncover abuse and violence.

Michela Kuan

Added to this is the fact that animals "do not only undergo sample collections or injections, but we are talking about sutures, organ transplants, electric shocks, bone fractures, poisoning with substances that cause fainting, diarrhoea, tremors, and psychological conditioning." What is also lacking, according to the expert, is a basic competence among the staff who interact with the animals, who very often are not trained to recognise the signs of pain in the various species they deal with. This is an even more serious matter when, in the same Ministry of Health report referring to 2017, it is stated that 46 per cent of animals are used in procedures with "moderate" or "severe" levels of pain.

It is a scenario in which anything is done to any species.

Michela Kuan

Transparency is also lacking in the evaluations carried out for the use of animals

In an attempt to protect what is referred to as animal welfare, European legislation has provided that every breeder, supplier and user establish within their own facilities an Animal Welfare Body (Opba): each Opba is composed of at least the "animal welfare and care officer," the "veterinary surgeon," and, in the case of a user establishment, a scientific member.

But here too the practice proves to be lacking in transparency. "The Opba should always be public, but this only happens on a few occasions. If I have to assess a protocol bearing the name of a colleague of mine, how can I form a critical and objective judgement? Those who sit on this body should belong to a different institute or research centre. Furthermore, if the Opba is called upon to evaluate compliance with the law, there should be at least one expert in alternative methods. But there never is. So how can they assess the possibility of using alternative methods if no one has specific training in them?" Michela Kuan points out.

Alternative models are not receiving sufficient funding

In theory, Directive 2010/63/EU aims to limit animal testing as much as possible and to eliminate it entirely in cases where it is not necessary. Indeed, by law, alternative methods should be favoured and the use of animals should be a last resort. It would therefore be logical to assume that the majority of funds made available by the Ministry would be directed towards projects using alternative methods, but the reality is somewhat different.

Nothing is done to develop alternative models, and then there are complaints that alternative models do not exist.

Michela Kuan

"Funding for projects that use animals exceeds one billion three hundred million – Kuan explains – compared to just six million allocated for the three-year period 2020-21-22 for alternative models. It's small change compared to the other funding. Just consider the case of the macaques at the University of Parma [on which researchers wanted to study partial loss of sight caused by brain damage, ed.]. That project was worth two million euros, on its own. It's the same figure that was set aside to fund all experimentation using alternative methods in Italy in a single year, and the ministry isn't even making those funds available, because the minister's signature is missing to authorise their use. It's nothing compared to everything that is invested for animal experiments, and not even that nothing gets approved."

Why animal experimentation continues

"From a technical standpoint, animal experimentation is a legal smokescreen: using animals is an escamotage to get around many legal problems. The battles against tobacco are a case in point," explains Kuan. "The major tobacco companies spent years experimenting on animals, claiming that smoking did not cause cancer. The trouble is that animals do not develop the same diseases as us. Legally, however, they were protected," she concludes.

In 2014, Italy passed a law banning the use of animals to test drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Seven years on, due to pressure from those very same lobbies, this law has never been brought into force and all these substances continue to be tested on animals. "Animal experimentation makes it possible to put a great many dangerous substances on the market — that's why they test them on animals. Only once they are on the market and administered to large numbers of people can a more complete picture of the problems they cause be obtained." And this applies to medicines too. "It is no coincidence that 50 per cent of drugs are withdrawn from the market due to adverse reactions that were not previously identified through animal testing. We are the guinea pigs of the second process — that is why the dichotomy 'I experiment on animals to save a human being' is nonsense from a scientific point of view," Kuan explains.

LAV ✓ @LAV_Italia

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♥ 76💬 4 20 apr 2021 · Apri su X →

The pandemic and vivisection: has anything changed?

With the arrival of the pandemic and the need to develop a vaccine quickly, there was a vertiginous increase in research on animals, particularly primates, but also on cats, ferrets, hamsters and mice. Alongside this slaughter, however, the emergency situation did allow major companies to avoid certain animal tests. In the dossier published by Lav, Sperimentazione animale e covid-19, a che punto siamo realmente, it is noted that "one of the pioneers was the American company Moderna, whose vaccine was able to bypass some of the animal tests and move rapidly to those on humans: this was made possible by moving beyond the traditional method in which people are injected with an inactivated or weakened version of the virus. […] Moderna's mRNA-1273 vaccine was the first to begin phase 1 human trials, on 16 March 2020, after 'only' one test on mice, which were given an experimental vaccine for Mers produced in the same way."

We asked Kuan whether this could in some way presuppose the beginning of a positive shift in the world of science, but unfortunately the number of animals killed in other experiments remains far too high to allow for such a claim.

Talking about vivisection is frightening. It is frightening to see what happens in laboratories, but it is also frightening to think about what would happen if there were no activists to show us. It is frightening that the very Ministry of Health, which should protect both us and animals, does not act as it should. It is frightening to see that, once again, money is capable of obscuring reason. Vivisection is frightening in every one of its aspects. But that is precisely why we must talk about it. As the writer Hans Christian Andersen teaches us, every change, every revolution — great or small — begins with a single voice that becomes aware of what is happening around it, that sets itself apart from the crowd. And that has the courage to cry out that the emperor has no clothes.