This week I’ve had a stark reminder about a condition of the research we fund, which we haven’t been very good at communicating. We do not fund any projects using live animals, including invertebrates. 

Partial Replacement

Replacement has historically had two approaches:

Absolute, or full replacement methods completely replace animals in research and testing, including animal-derived products. This could be by using human volunteers, tissues and cells, mathematical and computer models, cell lines and more complex 3D cell co-cultures like organoids, spheroids and organs-on-a-chip. These are often known as non-animal methods.

Partial replacement might include the use of some animals that, based on current scientific thinking, are not sentient, or capable of having “feelings that matter” like pain and pleasure and are not protected under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 (ASPA). This includes all invertebrates (animals without a backbone and spinal cord, other than octopus, squid and cuttlefish) so using animals like insects or nematode worms, and also immature forms of vertebrates as set out by ASPA, would be considered partial replacement. But it also includes primary cells (and tissues) taken from vertebrate animals killed for this, or other purposes, that do not include an experimental procedure under ASPA.

Historically, FRAME had funded research using ‘non-protected animals’, like insects. But times change and so have we.

Let me take this opportunity to make our current position very clear: Replacing Animal Research does not fund any projects that use live animals, including invertebrates

The issue with invertebrates

We’re constantly learning more about the other animals we share this planet with. Now, decapod crustaceans like crabs, crayfish, lobsters, prawns, and shrimp are recognised as sentient in the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022. The Home Office is exploring the implications of this for ASPA.

As with crustaceans, evidence from insects now shows they are much more complex and sensitive animals than we have previously thought. More research on insect welfare is underway, and entomologists are adopting a more considered 3Rs approach to their work.

How do we know if an animal is sentient?

Some scientists suggest that some animals might only respond reflexively to injury, without experiencing pain. But do they have feelings that matter to them? Although there is no universal definition of sentience, and it seems to be more of a spectrum of consciousness (I feel this will be the subject of another blog), all animals have to be able to perceive and respond to their surroundings to avoid injury and survive.

Feelings like pain are private and subjective experiences. Pain can be distinguished from nociception: the detection and processing of harmful stimuli, which leads to reflexive responses. Scientists have long known that invertebrates display nociception, but nociception is not necessarily an indicator of pain.

Animals can’t talk to us about their experiences and our inability to recognise pain in non-verbal beings is horrifyingly shown by the relatively recent treatment of babies during surgery. Up to the 1980s, many surgeons believed babies could not feel pain and rarely used anaesthetics. It was assumed that babies’ screaming and writhing, were “just reflexes”. Even though we still can’t prove babies feel pain, mercifully most now accept they do.

For any being who can not talk about their feelings, we need to rely on common sense and probability. The more indicators of sentience found, the higher the probability of sentience and therefore suffering.

Regardless of sentience

If insects such as flies and cockroaches only show a couple of the indicators of sentience that we see in animals such as mammals, then we should apply the Precautionary Principle and err on the side of caution.

While animals like Drosophila fruit flies remain unprotected by law, they are continued to be used in their millions, and possibly billions, in labs and in classrooms across the world. Regardless of whether they are sentient, and therefore have the capacity to have feelings that matter to them in the way that vertebrates do, they are “experiencing subjects of a life”, their lives have inherent value and they have an interest in living that life.

Ethics aside, the work we fund focuses on biomedical applications, those that lead to advances in improving the lives of human patients. Invertebrates are even more distant relatives (evolutionarily speaking) than the vertebrate animals like mice, rats and fish commonly used in medical science, and so this further reduces the likelihood that human conditions can be accurately ‘modelled’ by their use.

We know that modelling human conditions requires human-based systems. By substituting one animal for another, we will only end up having to replace the replacements.