Why damaging dogs is not an effective way to better diagnosis and treatments for people with osteoarthritis

This is a photograph of a small beagle dog, under anaesthetic and laid on a table in preparation for a 2kg weight to be dropped on her bent knee.

To artificially create an arthritic-like knee in a perfectly healthy dog requires an awful instrument known as the dropping tower. This device drops a 2 kg weight onto the bent hind leg of an anaesthetised dog – most commonly a beagle, but Labradors, golden retrievers and German shepherd dogs are also used for this. The … Read more

Septic shock- replacing sick mouse ‘models’ with healthy human volunteers makes for better science.

The Oxford Medical dictionary defines sepsis as “the putrefactive destruction of tissues by disease-causing bacteria or their toxins” and there is no argument that sepsis, or ‘blood poisoning,’ is a serious health problem. Around the world, sepsis kills more people than AIDS, breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. In people, sepsis can affect anyone but … Read more

Engineered to suffer

This picture shows a mouse with ALS, his hind legs are paralysed and curled up and he is small and scruffy.

ALS – or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – is a progressive, fatal, neurodegenerative disease. Only five to 10 percent of ALS cases, called familial ALS, are believed to be inherited; the great majority of ALS is known as ‘sporadic’ with no known genetically inherited component. But the key features of familial and sporadic ALS are the … Read more

Novel technologies offer hope for asthma research, without animals.

Asthma is on the rise. This complex condition currently affects more than 300 million people globally, with a further 100 million people likely to have asthma by 2025. Around 250,000 people die every year from the disease, which has no cure. Medication for asthma can only control the symptoms – to reduce the likelihood of future … Read more

Science in transit- the move away from animals in research

In December 2016, I was invited by the European Commission to speak on a scientific panel at the conference Non-Animal Approaches – The Way Forward. The event was organised as part of the EU’s response to the citizen’s initiative ‘Stop Vivisection,’ which presented more than one million supporting signatures from across the EU to the … Read more

Monkeys in glass tubes and rats on rolling rods are not the answer for early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease in people.

World Parkinson’s Day (April 11th) aims to raise awareness of Parkinson’s disease and the desperate need for effective new treatments. However, many people may not be aware of how animals suffer in labs, used for research into Parkinson’s disease, when the answers we need may lie with patient-centred research and not animal testing. For people, … Read more