Dive Brief:
- The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection wants to end all animal experiments and is taking its campaign directly to UK politicians, the WSJ's Ed Silverman reports.
- On the other side, the advocacy group Speaking for Research is pushing back, saying that ending veterinary research would severely compromise the ability to make advances against cancer, heart disease and other conditions.
- Overall, 68% of the British population says that they can accept the use of animals in research, according to 2014 government survey.
Dive Insight:
Animal rights activists are a unified force that capably uses statistics to state its case. One key point the group argues is that only 13% of the four million animals used in 2013 were directly related to developing medicines for humans. Nonetheless, popular opinion in the U.K. supports the use of animals in research. Also, according to Speaking of Research, the number of animals used in research in the U.K. is decreasing---a total of 0.4% since 2012.