Learned this week
Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, July 28, 2007

ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS RISING

The number of scientific experiments on animals in Britain -- home to sometimes violent animal rights action -- rose four per cent in 2006, driven by increased use of genetically-altered mice, according to the government.

Scientists increasingly use engineered animals to better understand how genes function in search of better treatments for a wide range of illnesses in humans.

Britain's drugs industry argues such research is vital to medical progress but critics argue it subjects animals to painful and cruel experiments.

Mice, rats and other rodents made up the vast majority of the 2.95 million animals used in about 3.01 million experiments over the past year, according to annual figures from Britain's Home Office.

Dogs, cats, horses and primates accounted for less than one per cent of experiments, which reached a 15-year high, the government said.