Betsy is helping FLOE and our supporters Ricky Gervais, Peter Egan and Dr. Jane Goodall call for a rigorous public scientific hearing, mandated by Parliament and judged by independent experts from the relevant fields of science. The debate conditions for this hearing have been endorsed as “well set out and fair” by human rights defence barrister Michael Mansfield QC.
The hearing’s experts will judge false claims made by the animal experimentation sector: that animals can predict the responses of humans in medical research and safety testing. Never before has such a hearing been called for and it is long overdue. It cuts through common calls for animal cruelty regulation to be merely ‘reviewed and improved’; the hearing will apply science that is widely available today, to end animal testing, via experts who defeated a multi-million pound animal laboratory at Cambridge University, with a precedent ruling on ‘national interest medical and scientific grounds’.
Because FLOE is calling for the science hearing to be mandated by Parliament the judges decision can become law, and the animal modeling of human patients will be banned. Funding can then be redirected towards human-based methods which have a track record of success. These human-based methods are not interchangeable ‘alternatives’ to animal testing, they are the opposite because they don’t come with a 90% failure rate – as animal tests do; human-based methods work very well and deserve all the funding.
FLOE’s called-for science hearing will spotlight how animal experimentation ignores current knowledge of evolutionary biology, complexity science and genetics which produces critical complex differences between species, now demonstrated to be entirely derailing the search for human treatments and cures. You can read more about this current scientific knowledge here or at Scarlett’s science page.
Over 100 cross-party MPs have signed Parliamentary EDMs calling for this thorough scientific examination.
Many institutions which benefit from grants for animal modeling have signed a ‘Concordat On Openness On Animal Research’ – which proclaims to develop communications with the media and public – however, no one from the Concordat has agreed to this level of public scientific scrutiny.
A new book chapter has just been published by leading medical doctor Ray Greek and finance professor Lisa Kramer, outlining the urgent need for the science hearing, you can access that here.