Brussels battleground for primate research debate

The debate on primate testing rages as a revision to an EC directive regulating animal research makes its way through the EU parliament. Sophie Petit-Zeman reports
Laboratory macques monkeys
Laboratory macques monkeys, used in testing for medical research. Photograph: RDS/Wellcome Trust

"After 15 minutes the 'doctor' said, with no trace of a smile, 'About six generations ago you had syphilis in your family, you have worms in your brain and your tremor occurs when the worms fart'. I was so relieved to be diagnosed with something other than stress that I accepted this without a second thought. It was only later I began to have doubts. Farting worms in my brain seemed so implausible."

Many doctors and four years later, Mike Robins' progressively severe tremor was diagnosed as Parkinson's disease (PD). While hospitalised for an emergency appendectomy in Shanghai, he became friends with a neurologist, teaching her English as he recovered, and she realised what was wrong.

Back in the UK, Robins was referred to Tipu Aziz, an Oxford neurosurgeon, who offered a technique he had pioneered called deep brain stimulation (DBS). This alleviates PD symptoms by implanting electrodes into the brain, powered by a "pacemaker" in the chest. Aziz claims to have used about 30 monkeys over 20 years to develop this work and related techniques, and believes 40,000 people worldwide have benefited.

Robins says DBS has revolutionised his life, a certainty that took him recently to Brussels to make an impassioned plea to MEPs wrangling about the importance of research involving primates.

Probably the most controversial area within the highly charged debate surrounding the use of animals in medical research, testing on primates is rising up the agenda as Directive 86/609/EC, which sets out how animal research is regulated, grinds its way slowly through EU parliamentary revision.

While the scientific establishment has repeatedly concluded that primate work remains invaluable to medical progress, most recently with the so-called "Weatherall Report" (after Sir David Weatherall, the doctor who chaired it) into "The use of non-human primates in research", some MEPs and campaigners are calling for a ban on primate research to be enshrined in the revised directive.

Indeed, 433 MEPs - a record number on an animal protection measure – signed a written declaration championed by Animal Defenders International (ADI), a UK-based animal welfare group calling, in part, for a timetable to be established for totally replacing primates in scientific experiments.

While this number of signatories (over half of all MEPs) led to the declaration being "adopted" last September, whether a majority of MEPs would vote to ban primate research remains unclear and it is believed any such proposal would be resisted by the European Commission and Council, both of which, together with the Parliament, would need to support a ban.

Energetic lobbying from both sides of the debate is under way, and there is certain amount of confusion. Many MEPs have supposedly signed this declaration, but are also calling for more research into cancer, AIDS and other diseases, for which primate research is fundamental.

But even for those who can accept the use of animals in medical research (opinion polls show that most of us do) primate work presents extra challenges.

The RSPCA, which has a division focusing exclusively on research animals, calls primate research "a matter of extreme concern". Its arguments against it are compelling, centring on the well-accepted fact that primates are highly intelligent, social animals, biologically very close to humans and able to experience a range of emotions, from anxiety, fear and distress to interest, happiness and excitement.

While great apes, considered to be at the top of this tree of sentience and experience, are not used in medical research in the EU, there is little doubt that any work involving creatures that are so like us stretches the limits of the "cost benefit" analysis that is part of every licence granted for research on any animal.

Put crudely, the cost (suffering) to the animal is weighed against the probable benefits to us. Neither of these variables can, of course, be measured with certainty, and while some argue that it is the similarity of non-human primates to us that makes them such good research models, others cite precisely this, and their ability to suffer much like us, that makes their use unacceptable.

Simon Festing, executive director of the Research Defence Society, a lobby group whose main focus is defending the use of animals in research, has been putting the case for primate research, in Brussels.

While he understands the "reasoned argument" against primate research based on their higher sentience, he fundamentally backs it because, he says: "I see compassion as an individual thing and can't support the phase out of the very small number of primates used in research up against the suffering of the very large numbers of people affected by, or who will be affected by, the devastating range of conditions that primate research tackles."

It's certainly a tough call, but when Robins switches off his brain stimulator, the PD tremors that rack his body are so severe you can see why it was impossible for his wife and children to stay long in a room with him.

You can also see why he went to Brussels.

· Sophie Petit Zeman is head of external relations for the Association of Medical Research Charities

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