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In her book, The Rat Trap, Safer Medicines Trust Research Director Pandora Pound, highlights that a key way forward for facilities using animals in their research is to invest in non-animal methods. She quotes Safer Medicines Trust founder Kathy Archibald in her concern that, “We’ve got human-relevant methodologies for pretty much everything, but they’re all sitting in tiny labs without the money to scale up and develop and optimise.”

Although it is not a technology which replaces animals, in 2020 Pfizer entered a partnership with mRNA technology developers BioNTech. BioNTech had been developing this technology for over 30 years before they were able to convince Pfizer to invest and partner with them to co-develop a mRNA-based vaccine to prevent Covid-19. Without Pfizer’s investment, this technology may never have been used in vaccines, instead lingering in a potential cancer-treatment marketplace indefinitely, in the proverbial ‘tiny labs’. It often takes the investment of a major company to develop and scale these modern technologies.

Not all acquisitions of smaller drug companies are in the interests of purchasing intellectual property to invest and develop them into human health solutions. These are called ‘killer acquisitions’ and are described as “terminating the smaller firm’s projects and destroying its potential as a competitor.” But research by Yale School of Management showed that only about six percent of these acquisitions can be considered ‘killer acquisitions’, although this may represent around thirteen fewer drugs brought to market each year.

However, Kathy Archibald’s guidance is not something which some vocal animal advocates, particularly anti-vivisectionists, are willing to allow pharmaceutical companies to do either, with one exclaiming, “what they are doing is buying more and more cruelty-free companies to cover up their true nature, as an animal tester of epic proportions.”

Contradictorily, that same voice which opposes companies buying or developing non-animal methods also praises Harvard University’s Wyss Institute, which pioneered organ-on-a-chip and other sustainable technologies. But both Harvard University and their Wyss Institute use animals in their research, with the Wyss Institute’s website explaining, as most facilities working in this area do, “the Institute recognizes that pre-clinical animal work is equally important.”

Laboratory animal scientist Cindy Buckmaster says, “all of research, probably at every level has involved, for as long as I've known about it, some integration of non animal as well as animal methodologies for understanding what it is we're trying to understand.”

We often hail the invention of the car as the great saviour liberating horses from their lives as human transport. Even though cars were a direct replacement for horses, that transition took decades to noticeably reduce the number of horses used. The same which has been stated about non-animal methods of research, that they will be driven by technology advances and not by the cultural ‘problem’ of animal use, was said of the wide-adoption of cars, that “automobile inventors and manufacturers certainly did not create their motorized vehicles to solve the horse manure problem in the world's cities”. Modern technology advances are not creating non-animal methods of research to solve the replication crisis in science caused primarily as a result of animal use. They are doing so because modern technology allows it.

It may not be that the investment in these technologies is intended to directly replace animals used in research. Nor is it always going to lead to the development of the technology if they have been purchased to remove the business threat of a competitor. But without the investment from major organisations, these technologies will almost certainly remain in ‘tiny labs’, never having the opportunity to contribute positively to modern research and never having the opportunity to reduce or replace the use of animals in research.

We criticise major organisations for using animals in their research, particularly where there are alternatives available. Then, when those organisations invest in non-animal methods of research we tell them they are just humane-washing their animal research. And finally, when they replace their animals with modern technologies we tell them they should have been doing it all along.

They are on this journey regardless of our presence. What we need to do is join them, pressure them into faster progress, and not always be the hypercritical ones following along behind.