BATTLE lines are being drawn for a confrontation next week that will decide the future of an international neuroscience centre. Why the controversy? Because the centre, to be built in Britain on the outskirts of Cambridge, will experiment on primates, our nearest animal relatives.
Leading the opposition to the centre are animal welfare groups. Not only do they object on moral grounds to experiments on primates, they also plan to challenge the entire scientific rationale for such research. Ranged against them are the centre鈥檚 supporters, who say that failure to build it will stymie neuroscience across Europe. Without it, they say, progress towards badly needed new treatments for stroke, Parkinson鈥檚 disease, Alzheimer鈥檚, schizophrenia and substance abuse will be delayed.
The stakes are huge. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has personally backed the project. He and his government insist that it must go ahead 鈥渋n the national interest鈥�. The fear in Britain is that if the centre is blocked, elite neuroscientists will quit the country, which will then fall behind the US and others that already possess state-of-the-art primate centres. Neuroscientists around the world also actively support the centre, fearing that a setback in Britain would strengthen the hand of opponents elsewhere.
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But if the centre does go ahead, a wave of violent protests by antivivisectionists may well follow. Fearful for their safety, neuroscientists at the University of Cambridge and elsewhere have gone to ground.
Their case has not been helped by allegations of cruelty to marmosets, following a 10-month undercover investigation at University of Cambridge labs by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV). New Scientist has learned that a Home Office investigation into the matter is likely to clear the lab of the charges. But mud sticks.
Supporters of the centre are equally passionate that it be given the go-ahead. Scans of live humans remain too crude to reveal the brain circuitry that might be linked with a disease, they say. And potential drugs for conditions such as Parkinson鈥檚 cannot be tested on tissue samples or through autopsies on humans. Primates are the only models that yield results, they insist.
Non-human primates are the only animals with well-developed frontal and temporal lobes. These portions of the brain are vital for advanced thinking, perception, attention, memory and planning, says Mark Matfield, a witness who will give evidence for the Research Defence Association, which presents the case for animal experiments. Unlike mice and rats, primates have large amounts of grey matter and folded forebrains.
Experiments on monkeys have already borne fruit: 鈥淭he entire neural circuitry implicated in human Parkinson鈥檚 disease has been unravelled,鈥� says Matfield. We now know that the tremors that blight the lives of sufferers result from the overactivity of a structure in the brain called the subthalamic nucleus. From this, a new treatment has emerged in which patients have electrodes implanted into their brains that disable this region, removing the symptoms.
But opponents insist that primates are poor models for human disease. 鈥淚t may be argued that there is a national need from a prestige point of view, and to keep talented scientists here,鈥� says Gill Langley, scientific adviser to the BUAV and a witness at next week鈥檚 inquiry. 鈥淏ut the scientific arguments are too weak to support the case for the national interest.鈥�
Her arguments echo those of Ray Greek, an American medical doctor and author of books attacking the value of animal experiments. Greek, a leading witness for a coalition of antivivisection groups, will argue that non-human primates are too different from people to provide worthwhile medical insights. 鈥淭he primate brain is not a scaled-down version of our brain,鈥� he told New Scientist. 鈥淐himp brains and human brains are similar in structure, but that doesn鈥檛 mean they perform the same functions,鈥� he says.
Greek and Langley agree that we have learned a lot about our physiology through comparisons with the gross structure and organisation of organs in animals. But they argue that the quest for drugs that modify human behaviour and brain function requires a subtlety not available through the study of primate brains.
In fact, they say, such research can be both misleading and harmful. In his evidence, Greek has listed at least 50 examples of drugs that have worked in primates but failed in people.
Greek advocates skipping animal trials. The money could be better spent on studies of human tissue and human subjects, both alive and dead, and on computers to test 鈥渧irtual鈥� drugs in 鈥渧irtual鈥� bodies and organs.
Neuroscientists accept that such rhetoric is appealing. But they also say that the strategy behind it is hopelessly impractical and unrealistic. 鈥淚t鈥檚 bullshit,鈥� says an insider linked with the project to build the centre who wished to remain anonymous.
All the approaches advocated by the protesters are already being pursued anyway, the insider says. John Strandberg, who is responsible for allocating grants to the eight national primate centres in the US run by the National Institutes of 午夜福利1000集合, says that non-human primates are the only mammals that develop the senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles that are symptomatic of Alzheimer鈥檚 disease. Without them, researchers would not be able to test new drugs to combat the condition. Neuroscientists can also investigate the brain鈥檚 basic functions, and how they go wrong, by removing parts of a primate鈥檚 brain to see which behaviour or activity is impaired. This has proved invaluable in stroke research.
Another investigative approach is to implant fine electrodes at precise points in a monkey鈥檚 brain to give feedback on the firing of individual neurons and circuits. The sight of electrodes sticking out of a monkey鈥檚 head stirs powerful emotions, but researchers claim that this does not cause serious pain. Once the skin around an implant is healed, the monkey feels no discomfort, they say.
The fact that people with Parkinson鈥檚 readily accepted a treatment involving implantation of electrodes buttresses these arguments, researchers believe (see New Scientist, 2 November, p 26). Strandberg also points to a practical reason why researchers will want to spare animals any pain: the stress caused by pain will invalidate the experiment, because stressed animals behave differently. For diseases that involve complex behaviour patterns, such as schizophrenia and drug addiction, investigations would be impossible by any other means.
The neuroscientists contacted by New Scientist all stressed that they only experiment on primates if they cannot avoid it, and that alleviating unnecessary suffering is always the priority. Monkeys are also expensive, costing up to $7000 each and using lab samples would be far cheaper.
Each side will vigorously defend its position at the inquiry. But Nancy Rothwell, president of the British Neuroscience Association, argues that even if it rules against building the centre, the research will still be done. 鈥淚f it鈥檚 not done in Cambridge,鈥� she warns, 鈥渋t will be done somewhere else where animal welfare might not be so strictly enforced as it is here.鈥�
